OK to Kirribilli, batman.
1/ The first pic is the overview - she has been turned over and Ted had removed the keel - actually the reverse order for that! Starboard side is mostly stripped and cracks in the planking have been splined as they have been uncovered so the hull doesn't move around too much. The paler lines are the splines.
The grooves for the splines have been cut with a router and are a slightly veed profile - maybe 6mm wide at the bottom of the bit and the width of the bit at the surface about 8mm. The planking is around 16 to 19mm thick so the router has been set up not to go right through but to finish around 5mm from the inside surface of the hull.
The router has been guided by temporarily tacking a batten parallel with the crack between the planks so that the bit will run along the crack when the edge of the router base plate is run along it.
Most of the starboard side has been stripped and splines are now in all the cracks.
2/ Here is the port side showing the locations of the splits. The ribs inside the boat are close spaced on around 1 ft centres and are laminated. They are in beautiful condition except in a couple of places where they cracked and have been fished with metal plates bolted to the sides. The floors - the timbers that run across the boat in the bottom of the hull finish just underneath the two splits you can see in the area that has been stripped (I'm making all these descriptions as if the boat was upright).
By the way - that is a
Eureka Canoe in the background.
So we are looking at pulling out the existing floors and replacing them with deeper ones that will spread the keel loading further up the hull.
The splits in the area near the top of the pic are in the solid "built up" keel and are purely from side to side bending as the boat is tacked and the keel loads reverse.
3/ Here is a close up of Ted's splines and plugs. The hull is western red cedar and has water stains over much of the surface - remember the boat was built in 1956. So no clear finishes for her. Almost all of it is quarter sawn and there are scarfs about every 20 ft- beautiful scarfes glued with resorcinol - paper thin gluelines.
4/ The next pic shows some interesting detail. Firstly the plethora of waterlines and boot top lines scribed on the hull as she sunk deeper in the water as she got older - more junk aboard and she would have been dry sailed originally - hoisted out of the water after each race. We plan to get her back very close to the original waterline and are going to be manic about limiting the weight that goes back into her.
Also you can see just how extensive the splining is. the basic problem is the ribs have been highly effective in preventing the planks from splitting on the inside hull surface, but the outside has suffered from both shrinkage because of dryness but mostly it is just the structural damage from years of racing a lightly built boat - high rigging and keel stresses and the inadequate floors.
So we will be increasing the depth of the floors and also epoxy glassing the outside with a very light cloth. It looks like we will set it at 45deg to the planking angle so both directions of fibre cross the plank joins. This will require the boat to be fully epoxy sealed to prevent much future water absorbtion (and thus swelling and shrinking) and allow the glass to have the effectiveness of one double the weight.
The glass will take any tensile loads and transfer them safely across the plank joins.
The idea too is that it makes quite a simple job of preventing further damage to the structure. Because we will be using a very light glass it would also be possible to sand it off in future if someone has the dollars to do an absolutely authentic restoration. But the aim is to get the boat sailing regularly again and to reduce the loads on her structure. Generally boats that are being used regularly keep in good condition - neglected boats deteriorate quickly.
By the way here is a historic feature. This boat was built not too many years before all the 5.5metres went toward fin keels with separate rudders mounted further aft. The rudder on Kirribilli is mounted on the back of the keel.
For racing 5.5s there was great incentive to reduce drag by reducing wetted surface so the backs of the keels were moved as far forward as people dared to do. The "dared" is because moving the back of the keel forward means that the rudder moves toward the centre of the boat so it has a lot less power because of the reduced lever arm between it and the boat's axis of rotation. The end result is that 5.5s of this era were a bit wild downwind and some sprouted the skeg shown to try and tame them when heading in that direction - like a surfboard fin. Upwind they are very beautifully balanced and you can steer with one finger. But downwind a bit dodgy in a breeze under the big spinnaker they carry.
5/ The last pic shows how the boat has shrunk. David Wilson is not spectacularly tall but Kirribilli doesn't look that big beside him. Funny how big it looked when it was upright!!! Note how he is hamming it up with the plane - he felt he should attempt to look like he was doing something - even if it involves faking it.
I'll see if I can get more pics next week.
So which one of yous mob got Kirribilli? 5.5 metre yacht restoration 
I was watching that one in the hope it would be handed in and I could snap it up for a song 
... and some wombat flamin well got it at the auction 
So much for that theory an here I thought I was becomin an oddity around here with me dreams an such an there you go takin me thunder 
Life as we know it has changed 
Is it that obvious daddlydaddles? 
