Basic Wood Repair/Replacement Advice - Abbot Wayfarer Mk. 1

[Viper426]

Hi YBW,

This fall I picked up a beautiful (if aged) 1974 Wayfarer Mk 1 GRP. I have plenty of experienced with GRP boats, but this lady comes with a fair bit of wood on her and I'm hoping to pick up some basic advice and tips for repair, replacement and upkeep. The hull and upper decks are entirely GRP, but the rudder, centreboard, cockpit benches and cockpit deck are all treated wood which needs some TLC.

The rudder and benches are easy - I just need to sand, treat and coat and they'll be fine - but the rest clearly needs more love than I know how to provide.

The biggest project is the deck. To the best of my knowledge it's never been replaced meaning that it's been subjected to 40 some-odd years of Canadian weather. There aren't any integrity issues, but since it's a flat deck I can easily foresee myself spending more time doing basic upkeep than sailing as pooling water eats away at even the most resilient sealants. My gut reaction is to replace the entire thing with fiberglass, but (to the best I can tell) the Mk 1 was never made with a fiberglass deck so it's not like I can just hop on ebay and find a replacement. Another idea was to glue a layer on top of the wood - textured linoleum or something similar - but I'm not sure how well any glue that I can think of would stand up to the combination of water and winters. If anyone has a 3rd option or advice I'd be greatly appreciative.

The second project that has me scratching my head is repair of the centerboard. Again, I think this board is as old as the boat and as such the individual layers of wood are starting to come apart. I know there are heat-and-vacuum treatments available that will breathe some life back into the board, but I worry that the wood is simply so old that it will need re-doing at least once per season and thus isn't worth the constant cost. Once again my gut tells me to replace the entire thing with a fiberglass board which (barring any errors in my ability to gauge depth) should last quite some time, but I'm hitting the same "this boat never came with that part" wall and thus haven't been able to find a suitable off-the-shelf replacement. I THINK the centreboard from a Mk 2 should do the job, but I haven't been able to find a credible source to verify this. Again, any insight or just a nudge it the right direction would be fantastic.

Thanks in advance!

 

[lw395]

If the deck is sound, either varnish or paint it and invest in a good cover.
Best bet is to try to get it in a shed for the worst of the winter?
The centre board, again if it is sound, epoxy it and maybe add a layer of glass cloth.
You might find the class association helpful, or maybe one of our chandlers like Pinbax or sailboats.co.uk?
Is the board ply, or made of strips?
Moulded glass boards are pretty modern in UK dinghies, many still use wood.
And they are quite expensive to buy.
Also, there are more dinghy oriented forums on the website of the UK mag yachts and yachting.
Also the CVDRA has some useful folk...

Hope that helps a bit?

 

[Kelpie]

Good choice of boat!
The Mk1 was made in al all GRP version, as well as a wooden one, or a composite (GRP hull, wooden deck).
For repairing/replacing a wooden deck, everything you need to know is here: http://www.wayfarer-international.org/WIT/maint.repair.ref/woodie.restoration/RestoreManual.pdf

But you could simply paint it, or to make it bombproof give an epoxy coating and light glass cloth scrim over the top.

Re the board, being a one design class then any board should do, even a brand new one. But you could just paint up the one you've got. Maybe two pack would be good for this. A brass strip along the tip is a good idea to preserve the board in case of the inevitable bumps.

Are you going to dry sail the boat? If so, I really wouldn't worry overly about it. I kept mine on a mooring so needed to keep the centreboard waterproof to avoid deterioration.

 

[EuanMcKenzie]

My mark 1 wooden boat was older still and still has the original deck. The owner previous to me took it inside for a winter and thoroughly dried the whole boat out. he then epoxied the deck with a build up coats and i think a layer of glass but its thick enough to give a smooth finish which was then varnished.

My floor boards looked a bit shabby so i sanded them roughly then painted both sides with international deck paint on both sides. It seals the quite well and gives a nice non slip floor.

My centre board had been removed sanded back to the wood repaired with epoxy and filler then primed and painted in enamel. It you make sure you thicken up the leading edge it will take a few grounding that might scratch the paint but shouldn't remove the epoxy.

If you can't get everything dry then don't do it. Water trapped under the epoxy will freeze and lift it wrecking the wood

 

[Viper426]

Thanks for the help, all!

The deck is no longer a problem - once I sanded off all the old paint I found the wood to be in astoundingly good condition. 8 solid hours of sanding followed by 5 layers of textured DeckOver did the trick. I'll eventually have to re-visit the issue and possibly re-build the deck entirely, but not for another 5 years at absolute least.

The centreboard is a bigger problem. Now that she's been launched I finally got the chance to pull the board out and there's no chance it'll survive longer than a season, even with epoxy. There's just too much damage from years of hitting rocks up in Georgian Bay before I bought her. A local shop pointed me to C&L boatworks since the CL16 is essentially a (poor) clone of the Wayfarer which has become popular in Canada ever since Abbott Boats burned down and stopped producing parts.

In any case, the CL16 board is cheap and local, but I'm not at all convinced that it will fit (image embedded at the bottom - I'd be interested in your opinions - I'd much rather get something I can drive to rather than ship across the pond), so I've been looking at http://www.tridentuk.com/ who seem to be the only ones selling parts these days (or at least the only ones with a site that Google will find). The problem is one of a complete lack of Google-able info on the Mk1. Seriously - "Wayfarer Mk1 Centreboard Width" comes up with nothing but a redirect back to Trident... Does anyone know if the CB is 19mm or 21mm? (I know later models are 21, but even the seller doesn't know what the measurements from the 70s were.)

Should have bought a CL. :friendly_wink:

 

[Kelpie]

That cb looks very different from a W one.
Scanned scaled drawings of the W cb do exist- I will see if I can track them down.

The later boats are indeed 21mm- my W World has one- I think a 70s boat will be 19mm. If in doubt buy/make in 19mm and you can pack it out.

 

[Kelpie]

That cb looks very different from a W one.
Scanned scaled drawings of the W cb do exist- I will see if I can track them down.

The later boats are indeed 21mm- my W World has one- I think a 70s boat will be 19mm. If in doubt buy/make in 19mm and you can pack it out.

 

[Viper426]

That's what I was worried about. 21mms are easy to find, but I've yet to find a GRP 19mm from a reputable source. If anyone has a definitive answer, I'll keep checking back. (And yes, I've thought about measuring my exiting board, but since the layers have started warping apart I'd have no way of getting a measurement that's accurate to within the 2mm difference between the two versions.)