James Silver Western Isles Chance Restoration

  The story start back in the early part of the 2000's when Simon was asked to do some work on Token as Chance was called at that time.. This name had been hers for many years, since she was sold by her first owner who had her commissioned by the renowned boat builders James A Silver of Rosneath in Scotland. Chance as she was originally called at the time of her launching in 1948. My wife Tricia would visit me while I worked on Token (Chance) and would ask if we would be in a position to ever be able to have a vessel like Token. To which I answered not every likely as we were not in a position to own such a vessel of her size or perigee. I continued to work on Token until the owner moved her to another place. At which time I lost contact with her. Fast forward to 2021 and while looking on the YBW forum I cam across Token (Chance) once more and a person had taken her on as a project to restore her.  However,, this owner had not told his wife about the boat or how much work it was go

Sorting out the workshop shelves into different parts of the interior of Chance, this shelf as all the  doors and butterfly hatch lids and a few of the smaller galley locker doors on this shelf This shelf has the main part of the cabinetry parts and the cockpit lifting roof  hatch which needs dismantling and rebuilding there are also a number of small items which were taken out which need replacing with new bits such as work tops for the galley and the main cabin starboard side cabinet which was cut about by one of the previous owners to fit a diesel cooker in the main cabin which will now be fitted in the galley where it should have been all along.    The bottoms of the main cabin floorboards given their first coat of grey bilge paint to seal the undersides of these floorboards to stop any more bilge water and oily water and dirt soaking into them once they are put back in the boat. The drawers in a poor condition having been in the boat when the interior had water in the cabins and t

This is a walk through Chance's interior to show what we are going to be doing over the next few months and for the rest of the year.

 A fter the Christmas break has come to an end it was time to go down to Chance and survey the damage the high winds and rain had done to Chance. Thankfully, Chance was in reasonable condition given that I had not been able to get down to her apart from securing the cover on the ground so that it did not get damaged anymore than it had already.  Chance had taken on a lot of water in her bilges because I was able to get the cover over her before today given the high winds and the rain made it dangerous to work on her decks. So today was the first day that it was safe to get on her decks and get her cover back over her again and start to empty out her bilges which were full of fresh water, a bad type of water to have in any bilge.  Now that I have the cover back over her topsides and tied down again, it was time to make a start on emptying out the water that had collected in her bilges. This was a job I had done before the Christmas break, but having the cover come off the boat I had to