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A few months ago, I took delivery of a large pond yacht in need of some major restoration, the yacht had suffered some extensive damage to the stern area and deck. The remit for the restoration was to repair the damaged area as well as an entire re-paint to match the original colour plus new sails and rigging along with deck fittings etc. With the mast and rigging removed work could commence on repairing the hull, as you can see from the photos the first job was to re-align the underside of the hull which would then be glued and filled prior to sanding and smoothing thus creating a surface ready for painting. Now with the underside repaired I could move onto the deck which required some very careful panel beating as this was made from aluminium sheet that had become worn over time. Once the hull repairs had been completed the hull was then primed with filler primer and wet/dried with various grades of wet/dry papers then primed with the base coat before 3 to 4 coats of finish colour were applied, this was then left to harden for 2 to 3 weeks before final polishing. Once the paint had finished hardening it was then polished to finish, the next stage was then to deal with the deck area which had an unusual finish so with a few tests and various mixes of paints the perfect finish was achieved then recoated with a matt varnish to protect the surface.
With the hull now complete I could move onto repairing some of the mast fittings and replacing the wood detail strip on the deck for the eyelets to be refitted at a later stage. Whilst all this was taking place my wife took care of making the new sails that certainly proved to be a challenge owing to the size of the main sail on the model. Once the repairs had been completed and the sails made the next task was to make a centre deck cover from timber and colouring it to match the other wood detail on the model. The final stage was now to re-rig the entire model, the first task would be to re-attach the mainsail to its booms and then with new mast rings attach the whole assembly to the mast before attaching all the rigging for this part of the re-rig. Now with the mainsail re-attached the two forward sails could be attached and re-rigged thus completing the restoration, as with all jobs the final task was to check everything over before handing back to the customer.
Overall this was a very satisfying restoration of this stunning model.
