Blanchard Wood Boat Repair, Seattle Washington June 1977

Background (such as I recall it): I was one of a group of partners who bought a Blanchard Senior in early 1977. It was orginally moored alongside a houseboat on Lake Union. By June we all agreed that we had to have her hauled-out so we could do some "basic maintenance". hahaha. "Basic Maintenance". It was a wood boat. We ended up replacing a lot of the deck and reworking the beams around the mast. Repainted the hull, didn't like the color we first chose, and repainted the hull a second time. Stripped and varnished the cabin exterior. Did some repair work at the fore end of the keel and painted the bottom.

This sloop was Gunter-gaff rigged. The mast is somewhat shorter than it might be otherwise, and the gaff significantly longer. The gaff is pulled up much more closely to the mast than in most gaff rigs, sometimes almost vertically. This gives as much sail area as a conventional gaff rig but with a shorter mast height. Local benefit: we could clear even the Fremont Bridge without having to have it opened!

FUN FACT: the hull was strip-planked. Rather than the hull being planked conventionally with wide-ish wood planks that were then caulked, the hull was made up of myriad square cedar strips about 7/8" square, each nailed onto every rib. And no caulking. None. When the boat was lowered back into the water the hull immediately flooded because the strips had shrank. You could literally see sunlight and down to the bottom through the hull when it was first lowered into the water. The boat sat hanging in the slings overnight, and by the next day the strips had swollen-shut enough to render the hull (reasonably) water-tight, and it could be pumped out. Soon after we got new moorage: down at Rainier Beach on Lake Washington. Ektachrome slides.

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Blanchard Wood Boat Repair, Seattle Washington June 1977

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