Covering Froonie's Restoration

 

In May, the business owner occupying the building where I am doing the restoration work on Froonie loaned me his portable garage…and helped me put it up!

Here is a picture of the new tarp placed on the 6^th of June, 2009 – all dried in.  The first tarp I set-up did not fully extend over the stern, and would allow water into the work area.  Not having Froonie fully dried-in prevented me from removing deck hardware and the toe rails – problem solved!

Repositioning #217 for Restoration

 

Hydraulic trailers are probably the coolest thing going!  I enlisted the expertise of Tom Wagner, of Wagner Trucking, for the repositioning of the Sea Sprite from a storage yard to the work area that I had chosen to perform the restoration.  Because I was staging the Sea Sprite in an area without a yard lift or crane, I need a specialized piece of equipment to secure the boat on jack stands.  As you can see from the photo, the large 6x6 posts slide through the trailer to provide support for the boat's keel, and the trailer's hydraulic accuated pads are used, as jack stands are, to balance the boat.  When the trailer is used to place a boat, the trailer's post are replaced with ground blocking, jack stands are set in place aft, the trailer is pulled forward and the process repeated for the forward jack stands.  The repositioning took a couple of hours; now staged with access to power and water, I am ready to begin the restoration.