PINNIPED

PINNIPED was relaunched on Lake Champlain in July of 2019 following a cosmetic restoration by Darling’s Boatworks. She was built by Frank Day Jr in 1999.Coincidentally my parents brought me to Maine in 1999 to sail with a family friend on their Concordia Yawl, I was eight years old. Before setting sail the owner insisted that we go meet Frank Day Jr and Doug Hylan, to see what projects were in their shops. Fast forward to the summer of 2017. We were back in Maine to sail in the Camden Classic Cup and the ERR on Mashnee, and were staying in Northport. That is where we found Pinniped, sitting on blocks and stands, with a for sale sign on the windshield. The offer we made that summer was not accepted and we figured that she would be sold to some other lucky boater. We were surprised to find her in the same yard in 2018, made another offer, and trucked her back to Vermont.We stripped most of the electronics, put in a new exhaust hose, and rebuilt the hydraulic steering ram. Then the real work began, all loose paint was scraped and sanded. We fiber glassed the decks so they could be painted with Awlgrip. The toe rails had to be removed to glass the decks, they were bedded with 5200, so new ones were fabricated and installed. The cabin top and wheel house had already been fiber glassed, those are also painted with Awlgrip. The topsides were rolled and tipped with Epifanes and the bottom painted with Pettit Vivid. We added a canvas awning, using bronze tubing. We made patterns for the awning’s hardware where it sits on the cockpit coaming. Those brackets were cast by Port Townsend Foundry. We are working on a plan to get Pinniped back to Maine soon.