We began the restoration by calling in surveyor Alan
Olford, a wooden boat specialist based in Cornwall who
gave Sea Jay a complete health check. He had surveyed the
yacht 16 years before, and his report and recommendations
became our bible. Our aim was to keep her as near original
as possible, and the first reality check came when we asked
Hillyards to replace Sea Jay’s transom. Their quote was
twice what we had paid for the boat, so we decided to do it
ourselves – a nightmare job requiring varying reverse
angles to match the edge to the planking.
Alford also recommended that we pull out all the keel
bolts to check for corrosion, even though they had been
replaced just prior to his previous inspection in 1983. We
couldn’t turn any of the nuts, so gave Hillyards’ quote (of
£1,131 to replace the 11 bolts) much greater credence.
Thank goodness we did, because it took two of their men
five days to complete the job. The bolts, of course, were
fine! The iron floors, which also showed little signs of
corrosion, were removed and galvanised, but the boltsholding them to the hull had caused galvanic damage to
the planks. The blackened wood had become extremely
brittle, and had to be cut out and replaced with 3in-long
graving pieces. Another problem was that fuel oil had
been absorbed into the bilge planks and was visible on
the outside of the hull. Replacing planks was not on our
agenda, so we applied a heat gun to lessen the viscosity
of the oil, then wiped the outer hull down with liberal
amounts of acetone. This was repeated five times over a
two-week period, then left for a month to see if more oil
leached through. It didn’t and we were able to apply paint
without worrying if it would adhere to the hull or not.
The transom job highlighted another problem –
sourcing the right wood. The quote from one timber
merchant for Brazilian mahogany was a budget-busting
£730 per cube. Cubic foot or cubic metre? I didn’t bother
to ask. We were buying wood not gold!
We finally found the answer. Utile, which has a similar
colour to Brazilian mahogany, cost us £16 a metre inSea Jay’s £24,000 restoration
Above: Barry and
Sea Jay get their
day, sailing in the
Round the Island
Race