Sinking Time Into Boat Repairs Can Save You in the Long Run

I like boats because you can fix them yourself. You can paint and patch them, spruce up the varnish, slap antifouling on the bottom, bleed the diesel, tune up the outboard and trace out a short in the wiring if you take your time.

Few experiences are as satisfying as finishing up spring commissioning and watching a pretty boat roll down the ramp and float like a swan. Unless, of course, you have three more project boats waiting under musty winter tarps for their turn.

It's a disease. When boats get old, people give up. They know all the problems and just can't face them anymore. They'll do anything to get rid of the old rust-bucket, which is where bargain hunters like me come in.

When March winds start to blow, we take stock. Let's see, all the exterior teak on the 35-year-old sailboat needs to be stripped and revarnished, the bottom, the boot stripe and cove stripe need repainting and there's that pesky short in the ignition.

The Whaler needs bottom paint, a thorough interior scrubbing, the carburetors on the outboard need cleaning, the fuel filters should be changed and something's come loose in the tilt-and-trim wiring.

The Gucci boat needs its varnish stripped and redone on the cockpit coaming and rub rails and a fresh coat on all other brightwork; the engine cover must be refastened and painted, the waterline needs repainting, the fuel filters have to be changed, the hull sides need paint and the interior has to be scrubbed for mold. Oh, and there's that cracked place in the deck canvas . . .

The crab boat? Ouch. There's a two-foot patch of dry rot near the oarlocks, a major epoxy job, and the rub rails are shot through with rot. We'll drill out all the old, rusty screws, replace the rub rails with "man-made materials," which is to say plastic, then repaint the waterline, hull sides and interior. We need a new stern seat, too. Gene can handle that.

The sailboat and the Whaler are mine. Gene Miller is my partner on the Gucci boat and the crab boat, the two wooden vessels in the fleet. I could not own wooden boats without Gene, a carpenter by trade.

The 22-foot Gucci boat is a 16-year-old replica of a Smith Island crab-scraping skiff, beautifully built of Alaskan spruce by Joe Reid of Mast & Mallet in Mayo, Md., with a little two-cylinder diesel that pushes it along at six or eight knots like the African Queen. We use it to take the ladies downtown for lunch -- a real showstopper.

The crab boat is a mundane but practical 18-foot plywood skiff, roughly built on a Nova Scotia design by some unknown fellow who traded it out for a used car, as I recall. We bought it for $1,500 after the old crabbing skiff Gene and I built years ago rotted beyond repair.

I will admit that there are times when I question my own sanity, owning all these old boats. Then there are times when having your own fleet pays off.

Such was the case last weekend when I volunteered the Whaler as photo boat for an event by the nonprofit organization Annapolis Community Boating at City Dock. ACB, whose mission is to make boating accessible to all Anne Arundel County residents, had a half-dozen sailboats tied up at the new Sailing Hall of Fame docks Sunday, offering free rides to registered attendees. I was due at 11:30 a.m. and dutifully left home at 11.

Unfortunately, one of the jobs I hadn't got around to was the carburetors on the outboard, which sputtered and fussed all the way into town, finally coughing and dying at the entrance to Spa Creek. I was tearing the cowling off and wondering what to do with no tools and no time when Gene appeared like a vision, having taken his family downtown to brunch in the Gucci boat.

"Problems?" he asked cheerfully.

"Not anymore," I happily replied. He towed me into the Hall of Fame, where I called my wife to come pick him up and commandeered the Gucci boat as the world's shapeliest photo boat, all gussied up with new paint and varnish. When the day's work was done, I used it to tow the Whaler back home.

Rescued by my own self! What could be more satisfying?