Early in 2024 I (Finn) came across a weathered but well-built 1968 Wayfarer dinghy, sail number 1773. I had been looking for a boat small enough to introduce my daughters Poppy (5) and Bonnie (3) to sailing, and sturdy enough for family adventures on the harbour throughout their childhood. Wayfarers are excellent cruising dinghies but very few have been built in Australia, so I was thrilled to come across one so close to home in the Northern Beaches. This one had excellent bones and was clearly the work of a talented shipwright, but she was tired and crying out for a full renovation.
This wasn’t my first time reviving an old timber boat. I’m the owner and director of Manly Sailing, a sailing school and yacht charter company based in the Northern Beaches, and I have a love for the romance and beauty of timber boats. In 2016, I put our flagship yacht Southwinds through a major restoration in order to bring her into commercial survey standards. To say it was a challenge would be putting it lightly. But miraculously, when I came across the Wayferer, those challenges faded into a distant memory and I was ready to dive into a new restoration project.
The first question was where I was going to take on such a job. At 16 feet long and weighing more than 250 kilograms, there was no way I could work on her at home in our garage. Noakes Shipyard, who had previously assisted with the restoration of Southwinds, generously provided a shed for me to work in. Working at Noakes was a joy in itself- the team there are masters of their craft and there’s an authentic shipwright spirit at the yard that’s increasingly hard to find today.
The restoration started with stripping all fittings and running rigging. Even on a small dinghy, this amounts to a great deal of work to refit all the parts. I then stripped all the old paint from the deck, which would receive new sheets of fiberglass later. The starboard side of the transom showed delamination, so I dug out the delamination as far as feasible, filled the void with West System 105 resin and 206 hardener, then clamped it back into place to create strong lamination. Inside, I sanded the cockpit and removed two floor timbers that needed to be repaired and re-affixed.
Next she needed to be flipped so that I could work on the hull. This was no mean feat and took six men to manage. I carried out repairs on the hull before returning her upright. I laid new sheets of epoxy over the decks to strengthen them, then began the painting. Meanwhile we noticed that the top of the Douglas Fir was completely rotten and in need of attention, the rotten section was cut away. Then a double scarf was epoxy glued in to place then faired.
I rarely worked alone. What I loved most was how my friends and family, scattered across the globe, became part of Belle. My brother Jonty and a close friend joined me at the shipyard, happily sharing the workload and making the process all the more memorable. My mum helped with painting while she was visiting us from her home in Africa; my dad in the UK repaired rope bags and sent them over to us; my grandmother designed the name that we painted on the transom and my wife selected the paint colours. Even the girls were involved, choosing the boat’s new name — Belle.
It wasn’t until June this year that the restoration was finished and Belle was ready to set sail. The finishing touch was a bronze plaque fixed to the foreword bulkhead that reads “To my darlings Poppy and Bonnie, you will always be my greatest adventure. All my love, Dad.”
By carrying out the bulk of the work myself, I now know Belle inside out — knowledge that will serve me well when teaching my daughters to both sail and maintain her in years to come. Bringing Belle back to life was a true labour of love, and the result is a sound, seaworthy Wayfarer ready to teach the next generation the joy of sailing timber boats.
