Rejuvenate a tender
Russell Eden gets to grips with the basics of glassfibre boat repair with a tender restoration project – he bought the boat for just £20
One reader’s winter project to restore an old tender, gaining experience along the way
Afew years ago, I was looking to find a small project to see me through the winter and, since I’d never worked with GRP, if there were some GRP repairs along the way that would be a bonus. I found this little beauty on eBay, and snapped her up for just £20.
Upon first sight, she was in a sorry state. Sections of the gunwales were hanging off, the thwart was rotten, there was a hole in the hull, and the paint was flaking off in some areas. It could have been worse though, so I set about stripping back to expose what needed to be done, and arrived at a bare hull with a hole low down on the bow.
I was going to need to fit new gunwales, keel and thwart, so my local joiner friend supplied me with what I needed from his scraps skip, but not before machining it into 6mm strips for the gunwale, and 20mm for the keel. I bought the smallest West System two-part epoxy repair kit, some matting and a roll of mesh, and some paints. That was it.
The hardest work was scraping the old blue paint from the inside. In some areas of smooth GRP it came away very easily, but the rougher areas took a lot more effort. I tried some paint stripper and it barely touched it, so it really was necessary to use scraping tools and elbow grease. I ran my orbital sander over the external surfaces to provide a key for the paint.
During this work, I identified that the upper transom was rotten where it was encapsulated in a GRP sleeve, so it needed replacing. I had some hardwood to hand and it was a good fit, so I glassed it in place, making sure I wrapped the glass around the corners for structural integrity.
The floor was quite flimsy, so as well as adding strength to the keel I added some plywood pads using epoxy, and glassed them in. They have made quite a difference to the stiffening of the hull, as has the new inner keel which was bent into place and filled around with epoxy before having a strip of glass mat laid on top. The pads were chamfered to make it easier to glass over, and to prevent them being a tripping hazard.
The keel needed a decent piece of timber to protect it when beaching, so once I’d done the repairs to the hole in the hull I used marine mastic and stainless steel screws to hold it in place. Working alone makes jobs interesting, so for this task I aligned the centreline of the hull under the rafter in my workshop, from which I used props and anything to hand to bend the keep strip to the hull.
The gunwales were built up with strips of 6mm hardwood sandwiching the topsides, and then planed and sanded smooth. I used market stall clamps to hold them in place until set.
Laminating them like this is easier to get the bend in place, and the finished effect is really pleasing. I used offcuts to build out to take the rowlocks.
To finish off I added a U-bolt towing eye, mounted on more offcuts from the gunwales, and a pine thwart, then painted it all. The outer was primed and painted with Dulux non-drip front door paint, the insides with garage floor paint, and the woodwork with International Woodskin. I found a couple of metres of black rope in a chandler’s bin and fitted that with cable ties, and put a few fenders on. The finished boat is a gem. She looks lovely, rows beautifully, and I learnt a lot during what was a very enjoyable project.