Saturday, December 29, 2007

Major Overhaul for Little Old Boat - Summer '07



After having "Little Old Boat" for almost 10 years, I finally got the chance to haul out and fix her up a bit. Before Chris gave me this boat in 1999, he made me consider it over
a weekend to think about what I was really getting into. I had no idea how much work she would turn out to be.

She was commissioned by an old seagoing dude as a retirement pleasure boat, and laid up in East Hollywood in 1963 by Hank McCune Marine. (Interestingly, Hank McCune was not only a yacht designer, but also the star of his own sitcom, the Hank McCune Show, famous for using the first laugh track in 1959.) My boat's design, the All-American 28, is touted to be the first fin keel with spade rudder on a fiberglass boat used for off-shore racing.

In 1982 she was donated to Ventura County, where she served as a training vessel for sailing students for ten years. She was then auctioned to a man named Ken Robinson in Ventura, who sold it to my brother Chris shortly after. Little Old Bay has been in the San Francisco Bay area ever since.

A few major things had to addressed ...

Saturday, December 1, 2007

What She Needed




Add Image

"L.O.B. did not sail up-wind very well. She needed more lateral resistance from the keel and the rudder is nearly rusted off again, which provided very little lift if any. The rudder was made of flat ferrous steel with no dimensions. I put a new rudder made by Advanced Carbon Concepts, complete with gimballed-bearing rudder tube. I also fared the keel in with a couple of different types of foam and lots of epoxy and fiber glass. All of this happened at the boatyard over the summer.

I was shocked to find this other All-American on the web. Check it out!

Another All-American 28