Dorothy's Secrets: The Story of a Historical Wooden Sailboat

The stories of any old wooden sailboat are scribed in her planks: both rough and meticulous repairs, sistered ribs, planks replaced due to exposure or rot, a separating of functional parts, signs of hogging or caving. For 12 decades, various owners worked to maintain Dorothy, the lovely wooden yacht to the best of their abilities. Some hired shipwrights to re-plank and repair her. Some updated her with modern elements to suit how they wanted to sail, such as winches. Her original owner W.H. Langley swapped out her centre-board for a fixed lead keel sometime in the early 1900s. Under some owners, she lost her shine, was subject to fires, abandoned to languish on docks with the peril of freshwater soaking her decks, until someone was captivated by her lines and rescued her again. Over 127 years, a sailboat collects a lot of stories. By delicately excavating and reading the signs, shipwrights like Tony Grove can uncover those stories and make them alive to the friends of Dorothy who have gathered to save her... yet again. #shipwright #woodenboatrestoration #wooden #sailboat #yacht #bchistory #gaffsail #cedar #PNWcoast #woodenboatbuilding #WoodBoat #WoodSailboat #WoodenSailboat #AntiqueBoat #OldBoat #OldSailboat #BoatRenovation #BoatRefit #Sailboat #LiveAboard #ClassicBoat #ClassicBoatFestival #Ladysmith #SailboatAntiques #OldWoodenBoats #ClassicBoats #VintageBoats #SailboatRestoration #WoodenBoatRestoration #SailboatLove #SailboatLife #WoodenBoatLife #CanadianHistory #MaritimeSociety #YachtLife #YachtCharter #YachtEnthusiast #YachtDreams TRANSCRIPT: (Tony Grove) Wooden boats need to be constantly maintained and wood needs to be replaced if it gets rotten or if it's getting old. And with Dorothy too, it's she's a small boat, she's not a big yacht of some kind. She's small sailboat that can be maintained. These planks aren't as tight as they should be... You can see the caulking on the inside here. The gravity just starts pulling it, trying to change its shape, because they're designed to sit in the water. Ah neat, how they put this together, it's kind of revealing. Again it gets back to that point of being able to look into a boat that was built of that era, and being able to dig inside and find markings and and scribes, where the boatbuilder had marked a plank or marked a piece of wood inside. I get to see that and be part of that history".