Thanks all for the compliments.
We do spend more time on the
cutter but the little boat is fun to sail lakes or rivers. This little dink was built in Gloucster, MA for a lawyer in Memphis in the 80's. He eventually
sold it to a doctor who then donated it to the Muscle Shoals Sailing Club in
Alabama. They found it not what they wanted to teach
kids how to sail so they put it on eBay. I was the lucky bidder for the Whittholz Dinghy. I drove down to pick her up from Pennsylvania. Yes, I must be nuts. The
deck was delaminated, the transom was toast. Yikes, what have I bought??? That is the problem with
buying something unseen. I am a person who would never buy a larger vessel without a
survey and this boat proves this is always good
advice. I had a good finish
carpenter who had done some
work for me in the past on bigger vessels and he worked on the
deck and transom over a
winter in his shed. When I picked it up in March, it was my task to remove the
paint and handle the
rot that was throughout the
hull and oh yes, I found she was holedand had been repaired poorly. With dremel tool in hand and a couple of containers of Git
Rot, I was on my way. Did I say that I am not a
wood worker? After the Git Rot cancer treatment, then it was West System. I fixed the hole with
fiberglass cloth cut in diminishing sizes and
epoxy and then micro balloons. A bit of fairing and then a couple of coats of
paint and you can see the final result. She does turn heads. She won the
Restoration award at the Small Craft Festival in St. Michaels, MD and yes, that is the Inn at Perry
Cabin. This year the original
builder who now lives in DC traveled out to see the little dinghy. He and his wife got to take her for a sail. Things do come full circle.
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