Sunday,
December 8, 2002 was the day that started it all. Well, sort
of.
It actually goes back to
sometime in the summer or fall of 2001, when I was suffering from some
form of "project withdrawal" with the completion of the work
on Glissando,
my 1963 Triton #381. Much as I enjoyed the obvious pleasures of
sailing the boat, and despite the fact that there were still plenty of
smaller projects to complete, I had to face up to the thought that I
actually missed having my project boat in the backyard. At this
time, I began thinking of what sort of project I might enjoy getting
involved in at some point in the future.
I kept my eyes open for a
possible project boat during this time, and found several possible
candidates--though I wasn't really looking seriously. Because of
the complete and utter changes I intend to make to the boat for the
daysailor project, I needed to find a boat in atrocious condition, and
available for next to nothing. With nothing on the immediate
horizon, I decided to just sit back and wait for the day to come when
something would make itself known to me.
As is usually the case,
once you start looking for something, it inevitably shows up on your
doorstep. The doorstep, in my case, was South Dartmouth, MA--home
of my friend and fellow Triton owner Jeff. In fact, he owned two
Tritons, one of which, Sea Witch, #100, he was willing to part with.
An innocent trip with a friend to visit Jeff and see the progress he had made on
his nearly complete restoration of Triton #30 Kaynee turned into the
genesis of another major project for me. I had been looking loosely for
another project boat--including another Triton--for a while, as I missed the
fiddling around inherent with such work, but I never dreamed that circumstances
would conspire to begin me down the project road at this point. They say
that when something is meant to be, it just seems right. That was the case
on this day.
Read
my progress log for December 8, 2002 by clicking here.
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The boat was trucked to my backyard on December 23,
2002, without incident. Read
about the transport here. The boat
arrived too late in the evening to get aboard to explore and take photos, so on
Christmas Eve I managed to make some time to climb aboard for a few moments, in
between party preparations and last minute Christmas details. In addition
to wanting to get a series of fresh "before" pictures, I also needed
to get some sort of cover over the boat as much as possible, since the
companionway was wide open and a huge snowstorm was predicted for later on
Christmas day.
Below is a matrix of photos of all parts of the
boat, in her raw and as-purchased, as-delivered condition. In many ways,
she was vintage Triton--paint application by straw broom, the Voguest of chipped
and peeling interior paint, and only the most stylish of delaminated fiberglass
cabin soles. In other words, she was the perfect candidate for some major
surgery.
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