Another Swift Rowing Boat Repair

The local rowing club had an incident whilst towing their boat resulting in a large pair of splits right through the hull, about 1.5m long. The hull had distorted around the damage.

Filler card showing the severity of the damage

 I had to cut the deck off to get to the inside and key up the areas to be repaired.

 The outside was sanded right back to the core material either side of the splits. Once the inside was glassed up the lid was bonded back on.

 Work began on glassing the outside with layers of very fine glass cloth and epoxy that were eventually feathered into the original skin. This was then covered in a very thin screed of epoxy filler, faired, primed and painted.

 The bow was badly chipped and looked pretty rough so that was tidied up and received a coat of black paint to smarten it up. The last thing to do was flat and polish the white paint and apply some black cove line tape to the deck/hull joint.

Coastal Rowing Boats Completed

The 2 Coastal Rowing Boats are complete and they left for Switzerland on a single trailer earlier this week. The hull and decks of the 4 were all painted in the same week and the rigging (seats, stretchers and their tracks) turned up in the nick of time. A couple of weekends were ignored entirely and several very late nights meant that the boats were ready for the trailer just in time. They were built largely from kits supplied by a group of guys in Guernsey who are really into coastal rowing.

The central trough clears water to a sump for the self bailer

Unusual wave breaking deck shape

The single prior to fitting out

Interesting built in riggers feature on both boats

A very tight squeeze between the bars on the trailer

 The finish on the hulls came out really nicely and made all the preparation worth it. The unusual design of these boats will mean they can be used even in the most choppy conditions on Lake Geneva.

About 11m from tow hitch to transom!