My prime time sailing was when a lot of people built their own boats. Plastic boats when first becoming common where quite expensive. I drive past one sitting on an empty lot that has been there for years about once every two months now.

I knocked at the nearby house door some time ago and asked a few questions. I figured it was probably their boat. Aparently there had been a house closer to the boat that burnt down and the boats owner went back to germany and never returned.

I toyed with contacting him and getting the boat out of there. If there were better anchorage near the cottage I might have taken it on. Superficially it still looks pretty good. Still has american registration numbers and feel it could be had for a song. Put it around thirty feet as well with a conventional keel and inboard.

People felt initially that plastic or fibreglass boats would last indefinatly. This unfortunally did not turn out to be the case. They are subject to serious issues over time. Saw that the mast and rigging were still there but the sails may have gone in that house fire.

A firm in england called hamilton brothers and maybe defunct by now was the best sailmaker I ever used. We never knew what prices would escalate to back then but safe to say they are a total joke in comaparison now. . The last time I was into a canadian sailmaker. They now produce garbage in comparison or at least that one did.

Just had a few repairs done when in Toronto on the racing scows mainsail. The scow carries a lot of sail area high by design. Tends to be high maintenance because of it. The batttens are very long. I also needed a couple of stays repaired. Someone had trailored the boat with them dragging on the ground behind at one time I think.

Another thing about that abandoned I believe fibreglass hull is it is going to be hard to extract it from it's current position. It does not have any form of cradle strong enough to keep it upward on a large truck. Not difficult to build one. currently it is just sitting on four steel extension pads to the ground.

There is no local mobile crane that can pick it up either. So it would have to be installed in a strong cradle and pulled out and up on to a flatbed. Or jacking the cradle up and driving the flatbed under it. Finding the boats owner would not be that difficult or the lot would have been seized for no property tax paid long ago. The keel is siting on the ground so the boat has to be elevated to even get a transfer crib under it. With no crane access somewhat difficult but far from impossible.

Or maybe it has been and that would further increase the difficulty as the neighbour told me that to her knowledge no one knew where he was. Except they thought germany. For a young guy interesting in sailing that could be a decent start if the boat still surveys well. As I was typing this I was trying to remember what the prime destructor of fibreglass boats was.

In the boat area it is Water absorption by osmosis I think. Delamination could probably occur or severe weakening. The same reason you should not use polyester resins with fillers or normal auto body fillers extensivly on cars as they will absorb water. Products like mar glass and others with simular names are much harder to work but have a far greater waterproof rating. Still bringing the repair level up as high as you can with them and then finishing it off with a skim coat of the normal types of body filler will give a much better end repair product.

The space to post notes like this does not seriously impact anything I can think of. So no harm is done. There is far more sailing done on the great lakes than our current maritime ocean location. Part of the reason is dealing with the tides. Sailing can be a lot of fun and it if nothing else is energy efficient. It all started for me with a seven foot sail boat plan in some periodical like popular mechanics when I was about nine years old and built it at that age. My grandmother even made the sail for it out of bleached muslim for me.

I will finish with another short story. We had an american member with a 26-28 foot double ended hershoff type design. Maybe a friendship sloop.Other than a compass he carried no instrumentation. So whenever he approached shore eventually he usually was not quite sure where he was.

Used to go on weeklong excursions quite often. Well anyways as always they made landfall on the american side but did not know exactly where they where. Still knowing where they wanted to be. Saw a large bonfire down by the waters edge and it was well after dark. So they ran the boat in as far as they could and he donned a red plastic rainsuit jumped in and got ashore.

I would assume the people around the bonfire had not noticed his boat closing the shore. Anyways when he walked up out of the water he was noticed. He thought the people had a strange way of looking at him so he looked down. He only had the plastic rainsuit on and when wet it was pretty well transparent.

So thinking what the hell anyways now that he was a pretty well nude apparation walking out of the water seemingly from nowhere. He would ask his question.

What direction down the shore was the town or city he was looking for? Now it was his turn to be shocked. No one present knew the direction and he could not get any other useful information out of them. Aparently they did not even know where they really where either. So he just turned around and walked back into the water muttering to himself something like unbelievable back to his boat as he had come. He did have a tendancy to mutter things to himself sometimes. We got told the content of that event from the person with him.

I should have called him an ex american as few there would do this. He logged a lot of milage on that boat over time. I felt he may have been the clubs only really eccentric member or that being too generous held the crown.

Canada was probably safe though as he probably did not identify himself as being from either side. Some of our members may have made a sizable contribution to the expression of those crazy canadians.

I was always more than welcome on the american side at a couple of places. One of their popular members had hit some rocks with his power boat on our side. They pulled the shaft after getting the boat out of the water and arranged ground transportation home. Taking the bent shaft with them.

I had a look at the damage in the strut area and knew they could not repair it without equipment they probably did not have. So I thought if i made a competant repair with them not even knowing who did it there would be no harm before they returned. Otherwise I thought they may have just tried to straighten the strut with nothing to guide them much and tried for home.

They basically hunted me down after arriving and finding the repair was done. When I absolutly refused payment for the gesture they found it incredable. I simply told them there where no facilities locally to do the repair and I felt they would lack the equipment required to do it when they returned. It had only taken a couple of evenings through the week to do it.

It was somewhat of a complex repair to get it stronger than when the hull was new. The end of the story was they told me that when over on their side of the lake they would make it known to give me a car to use or whatever I desired there with no questions asked. I thought that was just extending good will but found that they really meant it. They just slipped the shaft back in got the boat lifted back into the water and returned home.

There were literally hundreds of strange events that occured there. The stories of Ted Lukeman a graphic artist of some ability went well past the norm. Fuelled mostly by his artistic temperment. He was the owner of the converted north sea trawler. I could probably post one item a day when I think about it for months if I set my mind to it.

Ever have your spinnaker go out of your posession when racing and they refused to return it during the race? I still prevailed in that race though yet still further antagonizing the guilty party. In hindsight I should have let them win. They had tried so hard over a long time to get me at least once might have helped. It was driving them crazy.

Most members had become somewhat amused in their hilarious tactics in an attempt to prevail. My pre race inpection of the boat was extra concientciously done. Not that the thought was not there that they might tamper with something. They never did.