Sailboat Project or Bust

Welcome. This blog contains photos and text showing how my wife and son are helping me restore a forty-year-old sailboat. The sailboat is a 1974 Yankee Seahorse 24, with a swing keel. The boat had been in the water for over seven years prior to my son and I purchasing it. We pulled the Seahorse out of the water and placed it in dry dock.

The boat was stored at our lake cabin for two years prior to the beginning of the restoration. For this project we will use 100 percent acrylic exterior latex house paint for the top and sides. We will explain why we choose to use house paint instead of marine paint for the hull. For the bottom paint, we will use CM-15 two part epoxy, covered with a latex primer and a final top coat of a 100 percent acrylic latex paint.

We plan to sail the boat as soon as the work is completed. We will maintain records and photos of the exterior condition of the boat for those interested in how exterior latex paint will hold up on a sailboat.

Note: The work days stated in each post are not consecutive days, but are more to give some indication of the amount of actual working time a particular restoration process took us to complete. Most workdays for me represent anywhere from four to eight hours of actual work time. My son and wife will also be helping with various parts of the restoration.

Thank you for stopping by. This is an ongoing effort and we still have more work to do. If you would like to get up to date progress reports with photos, please sign up to follow our blog and learn how we went

Happy Sailing.