Boat Renovation- Raising The Hesperus

I had just sold my Lund Pro V and was already regretting it. I was given an offer I couldn't refuse, but now I didn't have a boat. It was time to find another one. The plan was to find an old boat to fix up like new. I scoured the classifieds for a week.

A boat showed up one day that looked interesting. "18 foot Alumicraft KingFisher".  I never heard of the KingFisher model before, but it sounded interesting. I called the guy up and asked him about it. He explained that he spotted it out in the country, parked in a field. He was an older guy, and he said "you probably don't remember this, but back in the 60's the KingFisher was the boat that everyone envied and wanted".  This kind of got my attention even though it was older than I wanted.

 He then told me that that he negotiated a price a price with the owner with the idea of making it a project with his son. The boat he said, had been all over, even Lake Superior. So he bought the boat. He didn't tell me what he pais for it. 

His son wasn't so sure. Dad, "You're 75 years old and you're fighting prostate cancer and I'm working 12 hours a day trying to run a business." He didn't think it was a good idea.

So I went out to look at it. It was at his son's business in Chanhassen.  I liked the size, otherwise I was not impressed. It had dents, peeling decals, and a rotting floor. His son had broken the front end of the tongue of the trailer moving it around with a lawn tractor. It was welded back together. There also was a patched hole in the hull.

He was much more motivated to sell than his father. It was taking up space in his parking lot and wasn't exactly bringing in business. His dad wanted $1500 for it. No way. The son started trying to sell it to me. "Well what will you pay for it?"

I looked at it for a long time. It was May and it wouldn't be ready to fish with until the following year. But if  I could pay cash for it, I could fix it up over time without going into debt. "$1000" I said. I was still thinking about 18 feet.

   "Oh no!  He would never do that. He thinks the trailer is worth $500." I said nothing.

   "How about $1400?"

   "No."

   "It's got a VHF antenna, that's worth a hundred bucks."

   I shook my head.

 He tried hard to point out the boat's virtues, but he could sense that he was going to lose me. Finally he said, " I tell you what, write a check for $1300 and I'll write you one for $200. That way my dad will feel better and I'll have this boat out of my hair."

   Fuck.

   I couldn't argue with that. "Okay, you got a deal."

Now The Fun Part

   The first thing I did when I got home was google Hesperus. It was on each side of the boat and across the front of the steering console. All I could find at first was the Longfellow poem "Wreck of the Hesperus". Huh.

That explains the hole. I found some other obscure stuff from Greek mythology but obviously Hesperus referred to the poem. This boat had a story and was full of ghosts. I felt better about the whole situation.

   First things first. Clean out the shit, there was plenty of that. Almost everything inside was useless. The seats were bad, the floor was rotted, and as I found out later, the steering cable was obsolete. Fortunately the steering system was a Teleflex Big-T, first built in 1963 (the boat was a '64). The Big-T is still in use today.

   I burned a lot of stuff in my fire pit. The floor would have to wait until I found some marine plywood to pattern it after. As you can see by the picture above right, it had a lot of styrofoam insulation under the floor. Even that was rotton. As everyone said when they saw my upcoming project-"You've got your work cut out for you".
   Once I got out all of the styrofoam, I checked the hole repare, there was still light shining through. This wasn't hard to fix with bondo. After it dried I sanded it down and painted it silver. You have to look real hard to find it and it's never been a problem leak wise.

I had all of the old decals taken off, then had it repainted white. Had some striping done too.

There was no drinking involved, the beer can was
used strictly for perspective. 

   
At this point I found someone who sold marine plywood.  I used the the old floor as a pattern. Using 3/4 inch plywood for the floor was probably over doing it, adding more weight than necessary. Going even farther, I primed and painted the wood before gluing down the carpet. The boat manufacturers don't even do that.

   A word of warning, if you start a project from scratch like I did, it will take on a life of its own. A lot of time went into designing the steering column/dashboard. In fact I spent more time trying to figure out how to fit everything together than doing the actual work. But eventually everything came together and I could finally say" IT'S ALIVE!"

   I won't go into great detail about the live wells I built except to say that they both were found on ebay, along with a lot of other stuff. The valves and cables,  to make the live wells function properly,  were bought through Flow-Rite. Using their equipment will make your system as good as anything new.