All this talk of Junket boats has got me thinking. If I'm brutally honest with myself, I really can't justify keeping Dorothy any longer. I can't make much use of her at Ravenglass, and none of my family have shown interest in taking over custody, sadly. She's based on Iain Oughtred's Acorn 10 design, enlarged to 11ft 6in (see the correspondence below). After I reported on building her, Iain designed the Guillemot to the same size, maximising the size of hull that can be got from 3 sheets of plywood.
I built her in 1989, using the best Okoume 5-laminate 5mm plywood, Brazilian mahogany, WEST epoxy, WEST varnish, 709 2-part paint, gunmetal rowlocks, etc - the best of materials, to create a little jewel of a boat that attracted at least one compliment each and every time I took her out. She features on the cover of JRA NL31 - that photo was taken at the summer rally when I sailed her from the Hamble over to Cowes, and got three rousing cheers from the junkies who had made the passage in larger boats on a rather fresh day. On other occasions, I sailed her as far down the west Solent as Newtown and as far east as Wootton.
She comes with a road trailer (the buyer will have to make their own assessment of roadworthiness after all this time, but the tyres have stayed up and the wheels go around), launching trolley and acrylic canvas cover. She has had two junk rig sails, but at the moment only has a western standing lugsail rigged, plus a copy of Fanshi's sail minus one panel, which I never got around to rigging, though I bought the batten tubes. With the aft-raked mast, I have to admit that the helm would balance better with more sail area forward, so a SJR would suit her.
To build her now would cost way more than the £500 that I'm asking. The plywood alone, to the same high spec, would cost £350 (Robbins Elite marine ply BS 1088 5mm). She's almost in as good a condition as the day she was launched, needing just a lick of varnish around the top strake where the cover has chafed. She was in storage whilst I was away cruising, so has had very little use since 1996. So here is your chance to acquire a high quality dinghy for less than the cost of building, ready for you to make the JR of your choice and trail her to a Junket.