I had just bought a 36 foot sailboat to live in, and travel the coast with, but it had a terrible inflatable dinghy that was falling apart. So I bought this sailing dinghy from Facebook marketplace, and use it as my rowboat to get to shore.
The sellers assured me this was a sought after sailing dinghy called a Sabot, and that this was a really good make. I paid $500 for it with the mast, boom, and a couple extra poles he thought was for a spinnaker sail. However the dinghy didn’t have any of the other hardware, dagger boarder, or a rudder, and I had no idea how much it would cost to buy all of it. What I also didn’t notice was the front bow was separated from the bottom park, starting to delaminate, and much of the old hardware holes were crumbling.
So essentially I was desperate for anything that wasn’t a sinking, and deflating dingy. So I went with it despite feeling ripped off, and I had no idea how badly till I started seeing other better dingys for sale on marketplace later on. Oh well, made my bed, and now I will make the best of it.
Well despite all the issues, it did row like a dream. As long as I kept the bottom clean of course. Here you can see I had it filled almost too the brim with “firewood”, which I gathered in the concrete jungle of Vancouver city. Eventually I became pretty fond of this little dinghy, and enjoyed the act of rowing places. Good exercise, and it keeps you warmer than sitting still in the boat while using a motor.
That’s why they say that wood heat, warms you up three times over. First when you cut it, then when you haul it, and then again when you burn it.
Fast forward a few years, I’ve learned a lot more, and I’ve made some good friends on the water. Including a friend who’s a professional shipwright, living on his gorgeous 67’ wood sailboat, and raising a child with his wife. Who have become good friends while they were staying near Salt Spring Island for a while.
One day while we’re hanging out, I was just talking about the history of my dinghy, and he says to come by the next day because he’s doing projects, and can help me with the dinghy. So I come by the next day, we raft our sailboats together, and he helps me haul the dinghy up on deck.
He then gets me to tap it off, before he grinds away all the old crumbling fibreglass. He then goes back to working on his own projects, but he uses the extra wood from his projects to make a rudder, and dagger board for my dinghy. Next he was doing fibreglass work, and then helped me do my dinghy again with the excess material, plus some I bought to make sure it was enough.
We then made a mast step to make sure the old hole was strong enough. Which involved covering the mast with wax, and then fibreglassing a mold around it. Then fibreglassing that mold into the dinghy.
After two days, the dinghy was put back in the water, and I then had to rig it. Thankfully over the years leading up to this, I had been collecting all sorts of sailing bits and bobs. So I managed to have almost all the bits I needed, with only the rudder mounts needing to be created from makeshift parts.
The last thing was the sail, which I did not have. So my shipwright friend pulled out a scavenged sail he had that didn’t fit anything, and cut it into a sail for my dinghy! Admittedly we forgot the square when we went to land to cut the sail on a flat surface, but he did a pretty good job of eyeballing it.
Frankly I haven’t sailed any other dinghy’s, and don’t know of mine is good or bad, but I don’t care! I love this thing, and can be seen very frequently cruising around the bay in light winds. I don’t care if it’s slow, I just want to float around on the breeze!
I later added some extra coats to protect the wood, and reinforce the rudder mounts. The mounts only ended up lasting a few weeks, but I have since fibreglassed them now that I know how to fibreglass.
Another skill I got taught, was whipping rope ends. This involves using waxed twine to wrap the rope end to prevent fraying, and to create loops to connect things like this brass clip. You then burn the loose end, which seals it together with the wax. This particular clip is to keep my mast from falling out, in the case my dinghy flips upside down.
The paint job on the bow to cover the fibreglass work. As well as an access hatch we added to reach inside the bow. It used to be that the top and bottom snapped together, and thus could be opened, but we fused the bow together to make it stronger again.
More whipping work I did.
A film photograph a fellow sailor took of me on a sail by his boat.
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