Life's a Gamble, so lets take a Chance Restoration Project

  Chance Reborn 2025. Giving Chance a Second Chance New Just now As many of our followers know, Simon, his wife Tricia and their son Michael with the aid of Simon's brother John, have over the past 4 years has done a vast amount of work on getting Chance stripped down to a bare hull apart from Chance's main bulkheads and removing Chance's transom and much of the starboard side deck from the transom to the wheelhouse. To the point where Chance can start to be re-build. Much of the early work has been back breaking and difficult at times has Chance was in Woodplumpton near Preston in Lancashire and we live in North Essex near Colchester. Also the fact that when we became Chance's latest owners and guardians it was in the height of the Covid Pandemic so we could not work on Chance at first until we were able to move freely and purchased a large caravan to use as a base of operations while we worked on Chance at very chance we had to get to Chance while Chance was in Woodpl...

These are the surviving parts apart from the door which is on the shelf in the workshop. The parts need a bit of work to get them back together. The work involves fixing the places where each of the parts fix together. They were taken apart without out much care. which is a pain. however, there a few places where the edges in places needs the small areas of rotten wood replacing before it is put back together again.  This is the hanging locker front at the bottom of the companionway steps into the main cabin. We will  have to make a few new parts, as a few of them are broken and have pieces missing. The missing part is the top rail in this photo just to the right of the sash clamp, the other part that needs replacing is the rail which is taped together with a bit of blue masking tape.  The main parts of this hanging locker front are made from large pieces of mahogany and are mortise and tenon jointed together  The whole of this hanging locker front is made up of a nu...

The two parts that make up the corner as you go forward into the galley area in Chance. There is a fair bit of oil that as got into the bottom edge of the galley front panels we are hoping to get rid of as much of this through cleaning with degreaser. One of the panels that was up against the main cabin to galley bulkhead is rotten along part o its length the rest of the panel is ok so we are going to glue a new piece on this edge from the mahogany we have been able to source that is a good colour match to the original. A bit of damage to the corner that will be sorted by letting in a piece along this edge before screwing the two halves together once the repairs are done to both halves. The inside of the panels will be getting a fresh coat of white gloss before it is refitted in the boat in the galley. The worktop is original and shows the marks of long usage over the years. We intend to continue to use this top as it is part of the character of the boat.   The underside which...

The starboard hand side galley unit now reconstructed again with the rotten corner repaired to match the rest of the galley front. The top left hand corner now repaired and the bracing on the back now glued in position it is time to look at giving the whole of the galley front a quick sanding and make up some wooden plugs to go in the screw holes so as to hide the fixings once more. Now that the galley front is together again in one piece it is going to be easier to router out the area where the two holes are in the right hand side which were where a pair of modern taps were fitted and which are not in keeping with the return to how the galley was originally made or used. I now have to get the gallet doors from the pile of doors and refix them in place and then in time varnish the whole of the galley front.