People like free stuff

[Andrew_Butchart]

Well - my old "Cheap Canoe" that I built in 2002 has hit the end of it's life.  Water got into the plywood in 2007 causing some tree fungus to take root.  I patched it (poorly) at the time and let it sit becuase I actually haven't gone canoeing in a couple of years.

There's a trip planned next month so I pulled of the sheet of plastic that was covering and started repairs on the bottom.  A lot of bondo later, the bottom was fine so I flipped the boat over only to find that the inside was badly delaminated as well.

The boat was originally coated with (I believe) 2 coats of epoxy and then latex house paint (yes I know ....) but interestingly it really only lasted a year or so longer than my One Sheet Skiff that only had latex paint and no other water-proofing.  Since the boats were stored together, they were subjected to the same environmental issues - they even had the same variety of tree fungus growing out of them.

The good bit of this was that it hasn't ended up in the landfill or burned like the skiff was.  Within 15 minutes of putting it at the side of the road, 1 truck slowed down to look and one stopped.  The second truck took the boat and is going to use it as a flower-bed.