Dandy is the name of our Abaco dinghy that we found a few years back in downtown Schenectady, of all places. We were thrilled when we saw this 14ft. wooden sailboat made by famous Hope Town boat builder Winer Malone. When we found out it was for sale, it took me about two seconds to whip out my checkbook and she was ours!
When we got the boat back home, and got over the fact that we finally had our ‘dream’ Abaco dinghy, we looked at each other and said, “Now what?” Since we were quite unfamiliar and naive about wooden boat restoration, we had lots of pondering, planning, and research ahead of us, before starting any work. At least the mast, boom, and sails are in good shape, but the hull had a few sprung planks.
We finally brought it up to our boat barn in Ticonderoga last year and have finally started working on her.
First, Dave made a hoist to get it off the cradle and turned it upside down to get at the bottom.
In the past few weeks we have removed, checked, and reinstalled all the bronze screws, replacing any that were stripped or broken off below the waterline. We both have the blisters and sore hands to prove it. Some screws needed to be longer or wider to grab good wood and fasten the planks to the inside ribs of the boat.
Next, all the old paint was removed with a heat gun and scraper. At one point I almost burned the boat up, when I left the heat on in one section for too long and it sparked a splinter. Oops! I still smell the scorched old wood. I can also picture the headlines in the local paper, “owner burns down garage with heat gun!”
After we were down to bare wood, we had to remove all the caulking between the wood planks. Boat caulking is different than anything I have ever seen before. It is actually made out of cotton, and then a sealer is put on top. What we have been pulling out is original and quite old, so it is hard and brittle. Now we have to take new cotton material and twist it to make it small enough to fit into all the grooves again. Then we will seal it, cover the recessed screw holes with wood putty, sand the whole boat, and paint her! The project won’t get completed this year, but I’ll keep you posted on Dandy’s progress.
Meanwhile, we think we have found out a bit of her history while talking to one the Hope Town Sailing Club members who owns a very similar boat. Every Abaco dinghy is a bit different, but Dandy and this other boat named Coconut are so close (the only ones made that weren’t painted inside) that they may have been built at the same time. No one knew what happened to the boat that we now have possession of, once it left the Bahamas. I believe it ended up in Michigan and the Great Lakes, but it has gone through several owners. We will take more measurements and pictures to compare to the one in Hope Town this winter, before saying if this really is the missing link.
In case you are wondering, we came up with the name Dandy after reading about another Abaco dinghy that used to ply the waters of the Sea of Abaco back in the mid 1900’s. It was lost in a storm one night, so we thought that we would bring this historical name back to life while returning our more recent Dandy to its former glory.
