Around 1980 or so my mother found and purchased a fiberglass fireball for my dad because of the maint.. was easier. The varnishing every few years was a pain. It has a chute tube newer hardware ect.. So.... The wood boat was sold to some friends of ours up at Silver Lake (highway 88 near Kirkwood Ski Resort / 7300') where I grew up sailing the El Toro and Lasers and of course the fireballs. Over the years they quit bringing up the boat and quit sailing somewhat. My father, also has gotten older and moved into cruising boats 26-30 footers on the SF bay- little less exciting but hay we all slow down little. I bought the glass fireball from him and continued to sail it & still do.
About ten year ago our friends had told me that over the winter a tree branch had fallen on the boat, putting a hole in the deck of the transom. The question was brought up to me... Would you like the boat back.. no cost.. Free.. His reason was that it's been sitting in his back yard for years, his kid's didn't want it, & he wasn't/couldn't fix the hole so... The project began... Looking over the boat, it needed allot of work. I always like the wood one better so I decided to take the it on.. I thought that I could just replace the rear decking and refinish the boat and wa-la easy... Wrong.. Finding out that a boat is one of the hardest things to build/rebuild. Not a straight piece of wood anywhere (with a few exceptions). With the help of my dad we took the entire deck off, found out that most of the glue had broken down. Loose joints everywhere.. Nothing some West System epoxy couldn't fix. The entire boat was stripped down to wood. I reinforced some key areas. Epoxied the entire boat (joints/surface areas/every thing). Wow what a job that was, but work every min. - that boat is bomb proof.. not a loose/wiggly part any where. Plus I was able to get the bottom glass smooth.. A coat or two of paint on the inside of the bulkheads. I modified the way the deck laid down toward the transom and sides and where the shrouds come down. The old deck used to: the plywood came together at a weird compound angle and never look good / left a un-comfy place to sit. I looked at boats in mag.s & on your site to see what I could do about it. I flared down and built up the deck so the deck now lays smooth(shown in some of the pics). I was able to find metric ply 4mm x 4'x 8'plys so I thought. The funny thing was that, I knew the boat was 16'2" or so and that 8 footers would come up shy to get only one seem. I was going to have to piece it together. I forgot that metric ply is alitte longer than 8 feet - about 8'3". By the way 10 foot marine grade sheet of mahogany ply is impossible to find, or it's $150-up if you special order it with a 3-4 month wait, at least on the west coast.. I didn't figure it out until I got back to the shop to start the redecking -- Oh happy days - only one seam and it looks great. Three coats of epoxy on the top and a couple on the under side the deck went down. Wow it looks like a boat again.. Some of the work is starting to pay off.
The boat was moved to my father-in-law's up in Napa where I sprayed on the
top coats of varnish (1 good base coat & 3 lightly sanded and scott-brite
top coats - glass smooth). I am working on spraying the bottom paint. So
that's my story and where I'm at today. Can't hardly wait to put some new
hardware on and Christen the rebirth & life of new boat. If you know any one
who has good pics or diagrams of different ways to rig the boat I would love
to see some.. Someone always has a new good idea -some good some bad. Plus I
know kind-of how I like my boat... Simple... with just enough things to trim
out the sails and make it work. Some boats I've seen, man there must be some
reason for 10-miles of rope and rigging.. but please.. most of these guy's
still finish last.. ha ha. I'll try to up date you with some new pics &
e-mail of some of the painting and the rigging soon to be going on, and
of-course the launching.. Happy sailing,
John Taylor
