It started out with an email from a club member saying there was a good deal on a boat kit on ebay. There wasn't much info, but it was a Pygmy Arctic Tern 17 HV and the bid was up to $95. For $150, you could buy it outright and skip the auction and I figured if I wanted it, that was the way to go. Not being an avid ebay buyer, I had a bit of trepidation, but forged ahead putting my trust in PayPal. Good or bad, I was the new owner.
It was a couple days of worry before the owner, Terry, called me to make plans to pick it up. It was supposed to have been a bonding experience for him and his teenage sons, but that had faded. Online, he had said he had done step one, which from all I could tell meant butt joining the small sections into the full length pieces, so I was happy to hear the whole shebang still was in the original 8 foot long box. I made plans to pick it up and conned my friend Ken into a road trip with his van to pick it up.
It was an eighty mile trip to Thousand Oaks, but it went quickly with the holiday traffic and Ken and Barb to chat with. We got there real early and I was glad that Terry didn't look anything like an axe murderer when he opened the door! We loaded up two boxes sight unseen and headed home in anticipation.
Back at my house, we opened our prize and spread out the pieces of wood on my garage floor. I figured I couldn't lose, as the box must have held $150 worth of packing peanuts alone!! I saw that they actually had butted the joints, but had cut them apart to fit back into the box! Looking at the rough nature of the joints, it seemed just as well they'd taken them apart. There was a lot of epoxy and loose FG, but it looked like it wouldn't be too much trouble to get them cleaned up. The resin gave me a bit more worry, as there was an inch and a half of crystals forming on the bottom, but a bit of reading of the enclosed literature told me that a warm water bath would have it back to good as new.
I had already figured I'd probably paint the hull of this boat; an opinion strengthened by state of the end joints. I still have hope that the deck can be left natural, if I don't screw it up any more! I spent my afternoon trying to clean up the joints with a razor knife and sand paper and progress was slow but sure. The problems now seem more cosmetic and I've decided that at $150, cosmetics shouldn't be too much of a concern in this project! So day one has started with most of my fears allayed. Only the horrors of epoxy catastrophes lay before me.
