I started this Tenderly Dinghy build at Fyne Boats who conveniently are only 15 minutes away from me. I’d helped build a Gaffling 4.1 dinghy there last year for our sailing club and enjoyed the process so much I wanted a boat for myself. Not having workshop facilities I hired space at Fyne Boats for a couple of weeks after the initial weeks build with the guidance of Kurt who is brilliant at getting the best out of a novice builder.

It all went smoothly, the hardest part was fitting the outer gunwales….the first attempt snapped the wood!  We tapered the bow end down to half thickness and tapered back by about a meter, on both strips of wale. This made it much easier and gave a nice taper to the bow which Kurt had suggested would look good…it did!  The lengthiest process was fitting the inner broken wale, getting the blocks just the right size and spacing to match up with frames and the oarlock blocks.
The hull build and outer wales were completed in the first week, fitting the inner broken wale, the seat supports, daggerboard casing etc took up much of the second week, with routing, sanding, final epoxy coat, the third week.

I did make a couple of modifications to the boat. I fitted an inner false bow stem in sapele, partly to look traditional but also to take a bolt through bronze eye bolt for a mooring/tow rope. I fitted a knee and vertical piece to the transom, again to look traditional and the vertical piece of sapele to take bronze bolts for the rudder gudgeons which are bronze rather than the stainless ones provided in the kit.  The seat stiffeners are glued and screwed to the underside of the seats, countersunk with sapele plugs hiding them. I could see no reason why I’d need to unscrew them as per the plans and I didn’t want unsightly screws in the seat tops.
The floor fasteners will be bronze rather than stainless and if I can find suitable machine screws to fit the seats down, I’ll replace those with bronze too. This is all the fault of the kit providing bronze oarlocks….carrying the theme through is a costly exercise!

Last edited by Jays (18 Jul 2023 9:37 pm)