About twenty years ago my father and I restored a derelict cedar strip boat that was slowly rotting away at a cottage nearby ours.

It took us several years, and I think we did a ripping good job. We don’t have a “before” picture, but here’s how it turned out:

Unfortunately as is often the case with these things, we got it to about 98% restored then ran out of steam. There were a few things that we simply never got right. We lived with it for a few years, then we put in storage for 15 years or so.

We were storing it in a building belonging to our cottage association. But then the building was sold. This means we were faced with an important decision. Get rid of it, or sort it out.

We decided to sort it out and put it back in the water. Since neither of us has the time to work on it anymore it went to Woodwind Yachts and we (by we I mean my Dad) paid them to sort it out for us. There wasn’t much that needed doing, but that final 2% is often the most difficult part, as anyone who has tried to restore a vintage vehicle of any kind will tell you.

We got it back this week and took it for it’s first ride. We then had to immediately pull it out of the water and store it for the winter.

It doesn’t look particularly different, but there are some important structural changes that make it much more usable. Since we’ve got it back I’ve been working on replacing the hilariously dim incandescent bulbs in the running lights with LEDs. More on that to come…