My Sailing Boat Restoration PICS and descriptions. 1960's Robert Tucker Mystic 21

[HandmadeMatt]

Hi guys.
I've owned this wonderful boat for a year now and have finished the restoration.
There's a full article with before, during and after photo's on my website.
The boat is also now for sale, is there a for sale section in this forum?
Thanks.

www.HandmadeMatt.com

 

[sarabande]

not only are you a real craftsman, but you tell a good story about how your projects develop.

Well done.


The For Sale forum here has a limit of £400, but ebay, boats and outboards, apolloduck, are the usual avenues for selling a boat, apart from - of course - the YBW magazine website. A neat boat such as the Mystic should sell easily.

 

[Fantasie 19]

+1 on what Sarabande said.. lovely job - well done!

 

[MoodySabre]

The boat looks great, well done.

The camper is marvellous. I'd love to see my wife's face if I turned up in that!:encouragement:

 

[itchenseadog]

Frankly, if I were a surveyor, I would condemn that repair as a bodge job which will always crack around the edges letting water in which will rot the plywood even further. A plywood hull should always be repaired with plywood. It may look nice now but 12 months down the line........? Pity the poor purchaser if he doesn't have a survey. Remember, people can loose their lives through bodged boat repairs and this sort of thing should not be encouraged.

 

[burgundyben]

I have to agree.

I have owned what is essentially a plywood boat for a long while, my take is that if there's rotten ply that the entire piece should be chopped out, back to the join.

 

[Sixpence]

Oh goody, we haven't had a plywood repair method argument on here yet so this is looking good for a start
Not like us to disagree, BB, but as Sixpence is a similar boat and was in a similar condition, I do feel a little bit 'qualified' to comment
From what I can see, the repairs are as good as my efforts, probably way better as it sounds like I'm a right old bodger from some comments. So glad I haven't dared go to sea yet
Ah, I forgot, I have been out sailing in her, she handled very well, and thanks to my poor planning and not paying enough attention to the weather forecast, she withstood quite a severe storm and very rough seas. Scared the proverbial out of me watching the bow plough into the trough of a wave then pointing towards the sky as the transom vanished below water level, but she survived and proved how good she is
Personally, I wouldn't have any issues with setting to sea in what looks like one hell of a nice, and sound, vessel
She looks lovely, well done to the o/p for doing the work and I hope she finds a new keeper worthy of her :encouragement:

 

[Kukri]

As someone who is comfortable with timber, I would have cut back to adjacent frames and stringers and scarphed in a new panel. It would not have occurred to me to do it this way, which I suspect was more labour intensive and more expensive for materials, but since the OP makes it clear that the timber was properly dried,an anti-fungal treatment was given, and a good bond was presumably obtained, I think the repair is probably OK.

The trouble with plywood,as we all know, is that if moisture enters, it migrates rapidly along the interior voids, which are present in even the best ply (though the best ply has far fewer of them!) and because it can't get out again it stays in. Once moisture is present, rot spores, which are omnipresent, will get a start, and the mycellium will propagate along the damp voids.

Generally in a ply or cold moulded boat the wet gets in at the deck edge or where there has been a collision which has broken the ply (looks like what happened here?) and gravity and capillary action does the rest. Hot moulded boats like Burgundyben's old girl and my son's Firefly are for some reason more resistant to this, but it will still happen.

 

[HandmadeMatt]

Good points everyone.
My philosophy is to do what I can with what I've got and do the best I can.
If the damage was under the waterline I would have got someone else to do the work.
Fibre glass and filler are supplies I had in abundance and skills that I have developed over time.
I feel if the join was a straight line it would definitely crack but the fact that it is bonded to such a good keyed shape gives me a lot of confidence.

In short something had to be done and this is what I could do.
Prospective buyers are of course always welcome to have a survey.
It depends what you want. She's perfect as a fair weather day sailer in Chichester harbour for example.
If one wants a boat for the high seas I don't think a 50 year old £2,350 boat is the one for you.

There's no right or wrong, just different philosophies I guess.

 

[Lakesailor]

Hi guys.
I've owned this wonderful boat for a year now and have finished the restoration.
There's a full article with before, during and after photo's on my website.
The boat is also now for sale, is there a for sale section in this forum?
Thanks.

www.HandmadeMatt.com

Lots of work and a very nice job.
The limit of the for sale forum is £400 (but if you keep quiet I'll give you £500 for it. Shhhh)

 

[itchenseadog]

Good points everyone.
My philosophy is to do what I can with what I've got and do the best I can.

In short something had to be done and this is what I could do.

Well, obviously with your limited skill base you think you've done the right thing.Tarting the boat up and selling on quickly reminds me of a dodgy car salesman who would put a load of grp & filler in to a rusty old wreck, give it a quick respray and sell it on to some gullible person who then risks his life by driving it.

There's no right or wrong, just different philosophies I guess.

Sorry, but there IS a right way and a wrong way. The right way would have been to have cut out to sound plywood, fit, glue and screw a piece of ply at least 3" or 4" larger than the aperture on the inside and then fit, glue and screw a graving piece into the hole which makes the whole structure solid. It's difficult to see which part of the boat the repair was made but if it was anywhere in the region of the chainplates, you risk the mast. In any case it looks as if the rot extended into the deck edge which will create a weakness.
In my opinion (as a wooden boatbuilder, and founder of what is probably one of the largest companies carying out insurance repairs on yachts and motor boats in the country today), I consider this to be a complete bodge on a decent little boat. Buyer beware !

 

[DownWest]

I am with Minn and itchenseadog. Apart from the ply issue, filler,if polyester based, is not waterproof.
Matt, have you used the boat? or was this an exercise? I liked your camper add on to the pick up, but your construction methods are very heavy for the result.

 

[jon711]

I also agree with Minn, itchenseadog, et al... Not a good way to repair a wood boat. One of the early things I learnt when I was doing my boatbuilding apprenticeship, was that Poly resin does not stick to wood, unless the wood has been prepared with accelerator as the wood will pull the catalyst out of the resin, leaving a layer of uncured resin between cured poly and wood. Should have been repaired with plywood. Only time I would ever use a repair like that, is when I want a bodge repair to get me to the end of the regatta, knowing that I would be pulling it all out afterwards, to fix it properly.

I will make an offer of 100GBP if it includes the trailer (I need a new trailer).

Jon

 

[oldharry]

I have owned many old and mostly rotten plywood boats over the years, including a Mystic. She looks fantastic, but I am afraid the repair is about as sound as filler on a rusted car chassis, and I give it 18 months before it falls off again.

1: polyester resin and plywood is the worst possible combination, and is known as the 'boat killer' in ply boat circles. Polyester is a poor adhesive, and the damp will almost immediately creep by capillary action in under the repair, and reactivate the rot. Yes i know you used anti - rot, but I can promise you from bitter experience, you will not have killed it off the way you did it. It takes a great deal more than a 'few weeks' to reduce moisture content in plywood to the under 15% moisture content needed for any except polyurethane (moisture curing) glues to work. For epxies and polyester the optimum content is around 5% - not acheivable in an old boat outdoors even under a cover.

2. You may have thought you had cut back to sound timber, but you did not. The 'sound timber' is already infected with rot. You needed to go back quite ruthlessly at least another 75cms ALL ROUND the damaged area. Faced with a hole like that, I would have removed timber and ply at to at least a metre all round. As someone else said above, ideally the whole ply sheets should be replaced, together with framing etc in the vicinity. Why? because capillary action will have sucked rot spores at least 50cms back from the beginning of apparently sound timber through the core laminates. Plywood rots from the inside out, unlike ordinary timber. it is impossible to displace the moisture already in the grain, and inject anti fungal treatment uniformly.

3. 1960s plywoods had a service life of around 25 years because of the inferior glues used in those days. Thats why there so few around now. If tyhis boat has been lying mouldering in a mud berth as she appears to have been, much of the strength of the ply will have been lost.

I was breaking up a plywood boat of the same vintage a few years ago. Rot had gone way beyond the point of no return in the deck/hull joins, although the underwater parts seemed absolutely fine until somebody dropped a small sledge hammer on the bottom sheeting: it went straight through! No sign of rot, but the sheeting had lost most of its strength.

The only way to preserve an old ply boat is to replace the ply.

Pity, because she looks just great.

 

[doug748]

Good points everyone...
In short something had to be done and this is what I could do.
Prospective buyers are of course always welcome to have a survey.
It depends what you want. She's perfect as a fair weather day sailer in Chichester harbour for example.
If one wants a boat for the high seas I don't think a 50 year old £2,350 boat is the one for you.
...

Blimey Matt, you done yer best and got caned for it.

The irony is that blagging a bit of ply on the back would have been easier, if lacking your light cosmetic touch.

I think your repair will last a reasonable time and you have given an old boat a new lease of life. Good stuff. Sad to say these boats, well all boats really, are not selling well at the moment and you may well take a hard knock on your asking price.

Good luck with it. How much is a simple sheath knife BTW?

 

[Seajet]

Matt,

well I hope you are proven right, at least you have put a lot into what is now a rare little piece of sailing history.

First boat I ever sailed was a Mystic, achingly pretty boat - just don't expect warp speeds !

Very young Seajet;

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