Headlining Part 1

The worst thing about Westerlies would probably be the headliner. Eventually the glue turns to shit, causing the vinyl material to sag. But if you just scrape it all off, the bare fiberglass looks pretty nasty. My plan is to either scrape the vinyl off and then put bead board over it, or leave it up and just place the bead board on top of it. The advantage of this is that there would be some insulation to the ceiling. The down side to doing this is that the original headlining would get moldy and possibly cause the wood to rot. Another problem with this is that I don't want multiple layers of vinyl/bead board over the galley, because I plan to make a wood burning stove. (  See Wood Burning Stove Part 1 [coming soon] ) I was going to put tile on the ceiling above it, but having the vinyl, bead board, AND tile on top of each other wouldn't be great.

I'll let you know my decision in my next post, which will show you the actual project.

Intro

When I was about five years old, my dad purchased a '72 Westerly Chieftain for around $1000usd. It wasn't exactly in the best condition. The boat had sunk on the hill at Dataw Island Marina, where he was employed. After hurricane Matthew hit Beaufort, SC in 2016 there was no shortage of shit to be salvaged. The deal was that I get the boat when I turn sixteen. I'm fourteen now, and the boat is sitting in our yard with trees growing out of it, looking like hell, so I have plenty of work to do if I want to take off as soon as it's officially in my possession. I'm creating this blog because, there being only 79 Chieftains in existence, there are very few such websites detailing the renovation of one.

About the Westerly Chieftain:
Length: 26'
Beam: 8.5'
Draft: 3'
Displacement: 6700'
Built: '72-'76
Number built: 79

The Chieftain was built from the Westerly Centaur hull. Pretty much the only change between the Chieftain and the Centaur would be that the Chieftain has an aft cabin, sacrificing the larger cockpit of the Centaur.