Ferry Repair

'Tis the season for repairs, as owners realise their boats are in no fit state to go in the water, and time is slipping away.

This is a nice example of a Scottish-built former ferry, retired into private hands no doubt due to issues with maintenance or safety. She had every kind of mastic in the lands to keep out the water, when what she needed was more water between the lands to make them swell and keep her watertight. Clinker is the only boat building method that requires a boat to be leaky in order to float.

That's the theory, and a bit simplistic as a tight clinker boat will not leak and never will, especially those with a thin bead of something brown and rubbery between the lands.

This boat may well need some time to take up. We will see, but after 28 hours of scraping out every inch of her, including the accumulations of paint between timbers and planks, and doubling the worst splits, she bloody well better not leak too much to begin with...