Hello Damoedge and welcome to our forum :-)!
I've read through the posts from the beginning, and I would like to put some thoughts before you that by some here will be considered absolutely heretical. But there are many in this forum whose names might be McNulty or Corrigan or some such, and yet they have no knowledge of
Ireland :-)! So let's nail down a coupla facts:
The boat is filthy. It's about 24 feet
LOA and doesn't have all its
gear. IOW it's a wonderful project for a totally green
novice who wants to learn about “yotting” from the “ground up” (Ahem!), and who doesn't take himself or the boat too seriously. And five hundred quid is neither here nor there. It's the equivalent of two nights in a
hotel in Dublin with a good dinner in between, isn't it :-)?
So don't worry about what make the boat is. That's a totally trivial consideration. Unlike a Galway hooker, she is NOT built from
wood but from “frozen snot” - Glass Reinforced Plastic. Wooden boats are on life support from the moment they leave the builder's yard, whereas GRP boats never die – you have to ASSASSINATE them. Whereof this boat is apparent proof :-)!
Your pictures show that you are inland. Dunno why, but your pics bring Ballinasloe to mind. If that surmise is correct, then your nearest briny would be Galway Bay — where the hookers live — and to get there you have a longish paddle down the Rivers Suck and Shannon. Now I haven't been in those
parts since the Ford Defect (as we used to call it) was
le dernier cri in automotive luxury, so I don't know this for sure: There is bound to be a motorway twixt Dublin and Galway these days, and that means a bridge, probably on the Suck before its confluence with the Shannon, and that would explain why the boat has no mast!
So if I were in your boots, I'd grab the boat, buy a pressure washer just like someone said up above, clean her up and spend the coming summer on getting 'er tiddly. Don't worry about mast and rigging. You can do that next year, and it needn't cost you an arm and a leg. Don't worry too much about paper, but DO get a proper bill of
sale. I doubt that anyone would challenge you for the boat. I don't know what the licencing/registration requirements are for boats in
Ireland these days, but your local garda can point you in the right direction. If there is a licence/registration number anywhere on the boat, the authorities in Dublin should be able to verify it's
current ownership. If you find nothing there, just go with the bill of
sale.
That “bridgedeck” that sticks out into the
cockpit suggests that the boat has/had an inboard
motor. Let me know if so, and if so what. If there is not a serviceable inboard motor, get a little outboard motor. A little 9.9 horsepower
Honda will do nicely. Stay in touch, and people in this forum will take you by the hand and lead you through how to mount it. :-)
I'm going to let the cat outta the bag. My forebears were among the
men from the long boats with the stripey sails that were welcomed with such open arms by the colleens around what is now Dublin. So I claim a seafaring heritage of twelve hundred years, and although I'm now settled on the western shore of
Canada, I'm a tad short of patience with the propensity for conspicuous
consumption that rules in these
parts.
I see that Ann Cate posted. Ann is our resident expert on needlework, and she's been cruising in a serious way for thirty odd years. We have another lady who is a dab hand at marlinspike seamanship. For what it's worth: Three score years ago I made a new
mainsail for my boat. From scratch. With some success. So if you want to get stuck into a wonderful hobby/learning experience, have at it! It'll cost an arm and a leg if you accept too much “new world”
advice, but it can also be done for a relatively modest cost. As long as you keep you wits about you :-)!
Ádh mór ort!
TrentePieds
Re: Can anyone identify this boat please?
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