Oh Joy's restoration, bringing a 1961 Pilot Yawl back to life.

Sparkman & Stephens unveiled the design for the first Pilot class in Yachting's October 1945 issue, well before plans were purchased by Henry Hinckley in 1955. Aage Neilson, a freelance designer working with S&S at the time, drew the first Pilot class lines. The boats were constructed in wood by Fisher Boatworks in Detroit, Michigan until production was moved to Thomas Knutson Shipbuilding Co. in Huntington, Long Island, NY when Fisher shut down. The originals specs were 32'11" LOA, 24'DWL, 9'6" Beam and 4'9" Draft.

Oh Joy is a 1961 Knutson 35 Yawl built by the Thomas Knutson Shipyard in Halesite, NY. back in 1961. She was derived from Sparkman & Stephens design # 539, the very same design that the Hinckley Pilot was built from. Matter of fact, she was built as a "New Pilot" with an LOA of 35'6", Beam of 9'10" and Draft of 5'6" as well as a bowsprit and staysail stay. While there were five K-35 yawls built, Oh Joy was the only one equipped with a sprit and almost 200 sq ft more sail area that a stock K-35 or Hinckley Pilot. This is the story of her refit which turned into a restoration.

  1. Waiting again...

    by on 07-31-2010 at 11:33 AM (Oh Joy's restoration, bringing a 1961 Pilot Yawl back to life.)
    Oh Joy is sitting outside the shop waiting for me to get back to her. Unfortunately for her, that may be a while as we work on paying boats including a full restoration of the "Lady J", Kettenburg K-40 hull number one. I'd blog about her here but don't know how to start a separate blog.
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  2. A little rainy day work...

    by on 04-03-2010 at 09:21 PM (Oh Joy's restoration, bringing a 1961 Pilot Yawl back to life.)
    It's been a while since I've touched Oh Joy because of the paying boat. However, ya can't sand outside in the rain so we worked on the old girl Friday and today. We set in the sister to that bad rib aft and I put the fasteners to it today.



    I still have to clean it up.



    ...
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  3. A transom knee and a B-Day party

    by on 03-06-2010 at 09:18 PM (Oh Joy's restoration, bringing a 1961 Pilot Yawl back to life.)
    I got in some of that big Locust today. A single board weighs right at 100 Lbs. Ya oughta try wrestling with this stuff when try to cut it.



    I decided to make one of the transom knees. Here's where I'm doing the cutout.



    Then it was time for the bandsaw using angles from ...
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  4. New cockpit shelf and more deck beam work.

    by on 03-01-2010 at 07:50 PM (Oh Joy's restoration, bringing a 1961 Pilot Yawl back to life.)
    Got into the shop to finish up the cockpit shelf for the Starboard side. When setting and drilling holes for fasteners inboard yesterday, we noticed it splitting. I found a suitable piece of scrap Locust just barely big enough to fashion the piece from. It's a compound curve, both along the curve of the cockpit and fore and aft.



    It also has notches outboard for the deck beams and ...
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  5. Setting deck beams finally...

    by on 02-26-2010 at 07:19 PM (Oh Joy's restoration, bringing a 1961 Pilot Yawl back to life.)
    Another rainy day in the shop. I received some fasteners from Jamestown Dist. and started working on actually bolting down some deck beams. We had soaked the clamp with Ethylene Glycol a few weeks ago and followed up by plugging the bottoms of the bolt holes today and filling them with CPES. I also sanded the old paint off and brushed a coat on for good measure. We then coated the deck beam end with it as well.

    Once the wood was treated I laid out marking lines for reference to ...
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