One wet cruise too many!

The Ms. Bettencourt is a 25-foot Albin trawler, built in Sweden in 1972. She is Hull No. 1117 of about 2500 produced. The boat came to me in 2003 as a gift. Before the boat reached my dock on the Savannah River at Augusta, GA, it had been abandoned for about 12 years.

Since 2003, I have restored the vessel, adding new canvas, a teak anchor platform, a teak swim deck, dinghy mounts and numerous interior amenities. I have cruised the boat about 4,000 nautical miles, mostly on the east coast of the US, from Cape Lookout, NC, to the Florida Keys.

The decision to build a hardtop came last month, after at least a couple of years of study and more than a few wet cruises. Hard rains penetrate the canvas top.

The new hard top is to be made from 3/8” Marine plywood, epoxy resin and fiberglass cloth. The project is inspired by the top on Hira Reid’s A-25 "Shatoosh". Hira helped immeasurably by happily supplying numerous photos, builder specifications, measurements and drawings from her Albin.

My wife, whose maiden name is Bettencourt, and I established a budget of $2,500. By last week about half had been expended on orders for marine plywood, lumber, resin, fabric, tools and related stuff.

Job #1 was to clean out half of our garage and build an 8x12’ table. The table will be used as the surface on which the marine plywood sheets will be joined and shaped. Once the plywood is ready, I plan to build a strongback structure on the tabletop. The strongback will be used to shape the plywood top’s curvature and as a fixture to hold that shape while ribs are glassed in place and fabric and paint are applied.

The general strategy has two major parts: Build a permanent base structure on the Ms. Bettencourt to which the top will be attached; then build the hardtop in the garage. The two will be joined at some future date.

Meanwhile, we have built the table:

And we have made a start on building a structure on the boat to receive the top once it is made:

This band around the cabin top, which has not yet been completely shaped, is made of a PVC 1x4 lumber product that Lowes calls "trim plank." It is stuck in place with thickened epoxy and secured with stainless steel screws.

That's where the project stands today. If our Georgia weather holds dry and relatively warm, I will likely have more to report after this weekend.