Week 1-2

Hello and welcome to the blog chronicling the restoration of the Egan Institue and Nantucket Shipwreck and Lifesaving Museum's 26' Monomoy Surf Boat. This boat spent most of its life off the shore of Kings Point, New York, for which it is named, serving as a training vessel for Merchant Marine cadets. The Egan Institute purchased her off eBay, fitted a trailer to her, and brought her to Nantucket. Now she sits in Eric Holch's mother's yard on Cliff Road, awaiting a proper shop space, where I have conducted a thorough survey and begun the process of scraping and sanding all the old paint off.

Alfie Sanford (designer of the Magic Class 30) is in charge of the overall project and working under him, I, Connor Wallace (one of the builders of the Magic Class, an restorer of the 1916 Herreshoff Fish, Pompano) will be the muscle behind the work. There has been a lot of interest in part time volunteer efforts, which locals Duncan Fog and George Young have spearheaded by helping out with the project.

The first week of the project was spent conducting a thorough conditions survey of the vessel which outlined the work ahead of us. What I found were 16 broken frames due mostly to fastener failures but also an impact under the water on the port side midships, a large portion of the keelson that was badly split due to the expansion of rusty iron keel bolts, 3 hood ends that have splayed out, a missing centerboard, and some iffy thwarts. Other then these serious issues, the paint needs to be completely scraped and sanded, and the caulking in between planks needs to be re-issued.

The initial sanding and scraping has begun and after a solid weeks worth of work it looking much better. We begun by scraping off the old paint and coming in behind that with sanding machines.