The days are hazy, hot, and humid, the steamed crabs are hot, and the beer is cold. It’s summer at last! Most of our shops are reporting that they have finally completed the enormous backlog of bottom painting and other spring commissioning work caused by the winter that wouldn’t end and the cold, wet spring that followed it. [gallery type="rectangular" ids="5761,5762,5763,5764,5765,5766,5767"] Here at PropTalk, we mostly stick to powerboat stories, but two of our reports this month deal with repairs to sailboats. The techniques described can be applied to any hull. Mike Moore of Cutts and Case in Oxford, MD, sends us the following update. “Cutts and Case is currently working on the restoration of a 1935 Ralph Wiley-built Tancook Whaler, Country Girl. The “Cutts Method,” which involves wrapping the hull with Kevlar cords that have been epoxied into routed grooves, is being employed. This method has been proven to bring new life to older wooden hulls. Two other Wiley Whalers, Fox and Vixen, are available for sale, both comfortable cruisers and proven racers. They may be seen at the yard. Spring and early summer fitting out continues, with Alfred Loomis’s Hotspur on the railway and a Tom Gilmore-designed Blue Moon yawl being readied for launch.” Jim Jacobs of Osprey Composites in Tracys Landing, MD, has just completed repairs on a Little Harbor 50 whose coatings were damaged by “seven years of shrink wrap,” as Jim explains. The repair required a four-step process: the hull was peeled, faired, primed, and finally painted. The results were spectacular. Jim also reports a major repair in progress on a Cruisers 30 that was built with a balsa-cored bottom and keel which failed. Removal and replacement is really the only solution, according to Jim. Joe Reid of Mast and Mallet in Mayo, MD, brings us up to date on what he’s been doing, “The start of this season’s boat preparation may include the use of wet and dry sanding. Fortunately, I have an indoor shop that allows a 45-foot boat to be brought in for service. This past month, I painted a 27-foot Wayne Goddard built fishing boat, a 1949 Chris Craft Sportsman in for caulking, and a Mainship 34 in for a bow thruster installation and cabin painting. I also welcomed the new owner of a Thomas Point 40. The original owner kept Bessy in Virginia. Regina Marie will now hail from Annapolis. She may be mistaken for Sawdust, another Thomas Point that is painted the same color, AWLGRIP San Mateo Wheat. Mast and Mallet sanded the bright transom to bare wood to remove the previous name, and Brendan Brandon of Designs and Signs gold-leafed the new name. Many coats of varnish were then applied. Another project completed was the painting of the hull and boot stripe on a Cape Dory 28. She was painted AWLGRIP Jade Mist Green with a white boot stripe. Lastly, JUNIPER was hand-painted on the transom by Annapolis’s own Cindy Fletcher-Holden. [gallery type="rectangular" link="file" ids="5768,5769,5770,5771,5772,5773,5774" orderby="rand"] Britt Lilly of Lilly Sport Boats in Arnold sent us this update. “All the race boats have been finished. Pictures are up on sharkey-images.com. We are putting motors back in a 36 Nortech Cat right now, big blower motors: Mercury Racing 850s, twin Wipple charged, which means dual superchargers on each engine. They have 577 cubic inches of displacement, much bigger than a normal big block. Each engine is rated at 850 hp. They were just rebuilt by Ron Potter out of Florida and delivered up here. We are putting them back in for the owner. The paint shop is working on an all-over paint on a 37 Intrepid center console.” Any angler will tell you that some boats catch fish and some don’t. Jason Corsini of Quiet Waters Boat Works in Riva, MD, seems to think his new Hill 16 is a catcher. Jason filed this report last month, just a day or two after the deadline. “The boat I built and launched last year was a winner. On Saturday (April 19) we won third place in the Boatyard Bar & Grill’s Opening Day Rockfish tournament with a 43-inch fish. Not bad for a 16-foot locally designed and locally built custom boat, especially when you consider the winning fish was the third fish ever landed on that boat. And it was caught while trolling just four rods, with no fish finder, no electronics, and only an iPhone nav app. You can always check out quietwatersboatworks.com for more information.” Martin Hardy at Composite Yachts in Trappe, MD, reports that they are in the final stages of assembly and interior construction on a 36-foot sportfisherman being built for an owner in Florida. His crew is also taking a 1959 Chris Craft utility boat down to the wood and doing a complete re-varnish job on her. A just completed repair and refinish job is a 2000 Mast and Mallet 20-foot custom mahogany runabout named Gatsby. She was taken down to the wood and completely refinished. Gatsby’s original power plant, a fuel injected Chevrolet 350, was retained, but all the engine compartment fittings and hardware were replaced. A major project currently underway at the shop is a retrofit of a completely updated electronics suite for Salt Lick, a sportfisherman. Pete Mathews of Mathews Brothers Boats in Denton, MD, reports that the backlog of commissioning and refitting work has finally been nearly completed. His latest new build, a 29-foot Patriot II named Mallard was just delivered to her owner in Florida. The Patriot II is an updated and refined version of Mathews’ long standing Patriot line of Chesapeake-inspired cruisers. The Patriot II offers reduced draft, greater maneuverability, and faster speeds than the standard design. Some of the Mathews crew is delivering one of its boats back to the Annapolis area for the summer. In January of this year, Mathews Brothers teamed up with Annapolis-based Eastport Yachts to build the popular Eastport 32. The Eastport 32 line was originally built in Washington, NC, but the builder succumbed to the recession. The 32 in the Mathews shop was begun in January. Her hull and deck have been completed, and work is progressing rapidly on the interior, so she should be enjoying the Chesapeake this summer. Another project nearing completion in the Mathews yard is the refitting of a Duffy 35 with teak woodwork. New teak coaming caps, a teak toe rail, a new teak pilothouse interior, and teak aft helm station were installed. They also replaced the rotted core in the pilothouse structure with divinycell and pulled, painted, and rebedded the window frames on the pilothouse. The shop of legendary racing hydroplane builder Larry Lauterbach in Chester, MD, has been a busy place. He has been restoring a 17-foot 1948 Chris Craft runabout. The exterior varnish work, done to Larry’s usual high standards, is complete. The interior is nearly finished. Larry plans to send the boat to the upholstery shop for new seats shortly. A project completed over the winter was the complete restoration of a 1950 hydroplane that was among one of the first boats built by his father, Henry. The boat, which Larry named Uncle Henry, is the oldest Lauterbach hydroplane in existence, at least as far as he knows. “Uncle Henry was what all the employees called my dad when we had our factory building boats,” explained Larry, “so I named it in his honor.” Uncle Henry is powered by a flat head Ford V-8 originally rated at 60 hp but modified to produce about 115 hp. The boat is small by modern standards, but like her restorer, Uncle Henry is still a competitor. “We took the boat to the Sunny Land Chapter of the Antique and Classic Boat Society show in Mount Dora, FL, and we won Best in Show. We beat all the runabouts, the mahogany Chris Crafts, the Gar Woods, and all that. The trophy is the Miss America IV trophy they present every year to the best boat in the show.” Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) Boatyard program manager Jennifer Kuhn reports the 1931 Potomac River Dory has been launched on Oak Creek and is getting her engine re-installed after the boat spent some time swelling up in the Miles River. With the Big Dory now out of the boatshop, room has been made for the museum to do spring maintenance on several of its small craft. Sailing and rowing boats, including the Good Little Skiff and the North Shore sailing dinghy are getting sanded, painted, and readied for use by the public during CBMM’s Public Sailing Days, which begin June 20 and run on select Fridays and Saturdays through September. Boats used range in size and usually accommodate one to two people, with two-hour morning and afternoon sessions on the Miles River offered. Restoration of the skipjack Rosie Parks’s push boat is wrapping up in the museum’s pole shed, with the just restored skipjack expected to make her first public sail June 14 during CBMM’s 27th annual Antique and Classic Boat Festival.