Dan Jones headed up the project and saw it through to completion. He started by building external moulds to support the hull located with about 4-foot sections between them. The cockpit, house, interior, engine, transom, stem, floor timbers, hanging knees, mast step, mast partners and deck beams were removed then they removed every other frame and about half of the planking so the new frames could be clamped to the old planking still captured by the moulds. After the new frames were steamed in and temporarily fastened the other half of the frames were removed and the rest of the frames were steamed in to complete the framing. At this point the moulds were removed and the new deck beams were fastened.

Elie Sainfeld built a new transom from local laurel and locust milled by the school. We then removed what remained of the old planking and lined off the hull for the new planking. During the lining off process, great care was given to eliminating as much of the extreme plank shapes as possible, although due to Flirt’s hull shape there was still a considerable amount of frown in the planks making scarfs necessary in most of the planks. Flirt had seriously hogged over the years so we put her original sheer back in her during this process, this was achieved by adding 2" to the transom height and 4" to the stem height as well as notching some of the deck beams amidships. NEXT PAGE