Bigfork student restores dad's sailboat for senior project

When Jennifer Wirth had to select a topic for her senior project she knew right away what she wanted to do, restore her father's old sailboat. Her father, however, wasn't so keen on the idea.

"When I told my dad I wanted to restore his sailboat he said 'let's do that this summer together,'" Wirth said. "I think he was nervous about me changing it. He wanted it to look like it did when he bought it. I think he was pretty surprised when he saw it because he hadn't seen it looking like that in a long time, and I really didn't change much."

The boat in question is a Sea Snark, a lightweight lateen rigged sailboat measuring about 11 feet. Brad purchased the sailboat in 1969 when he was 15 years old from a Sears catalog for $150. The boat arrived as little more than a piece of Styrofoam, a few pieces of wood for the rutter and centerboard and a do-it-yourself fiberglass kit. Brad Wirth assembled the boat and added several personal touches, including lights, a stereo, a coat of paint and installed some wood pieces to close off the bow area for housing the fixtures he added. He kept the boat at the family cabin at Lindbergh Lake where he spent a great deal of time on it every summer.

A couple of years ago Brad brought the boat out from storage and showed it to Jennifer telling her he wanted to teach her to sail it as a lead in to eventually sailing the family's 22 foot Catalina. However, the Sea Snark wasn't looking quite like it did when Brad used to sail it. The fiberglass had holes in it and the paint was fading, among other things. So it seemed like the perfect fit in Jennifer's eyes for a senior project, which is a requirement to graduate from Bigfork High School.

"I wanted to do something that I would have an actual finished product of when I was done," Jennifer said. "Also, I wanted to do something where I was working with my hands."

Jennifer stripped off all of the old fiberglass, sanded down the boat, recovered it with new fiberglass, stain and paint and installed new furnishings.

"The whole thing was just messy and hard, but it was really fun," Jennifer said.

For the most part, Jennifer kept to her word in not changing the boat from its original appearance. She did paint the boat a brighter shade of blue than what her dad had and she chose to leave the wood panels at the bow unpainted.

"I really like the way it turned out and I like having a little part of the boat," Jennifer said. "Since I worked on it I feel like it's a little bit mine."

The project required a lot more money, time and work than Jennifer had originally anticipated. She spent about $250 on fiberglass and paint alone, which is more than the boat cost her dad. Jennifer put about 30 to 40 hours of labor into the boat, in addition to the time she spent purchasing materials, meeting with her mentors and working on the other required parts of the senior project, including journaling, making a video, creating a scrapbook and writing papers.

"I thought it was going to take two-and-a-half weeks max," she said. "I don't know what I was thinking. It was basically like the never-ending project."

Jennifer wasn't totally alone in her project, though. She enlisted the help of Mike McKinnon, the owner of Custom Coatings and Refinishings in Lakeside, as one of her two required mentors, to help her with the fiberglassing. She also recruited the assistance of BHS shop teacher Les Sarri, who helped her with refinishing the wood.

The toughest part for the first-time renovator was the fiberglassing.

"I followed all of Mike's instructions, but it didn't go as easy as I thought it was going to after we talked about it and practiced what I was going to do," Jennifer said. "Everything was going terrible and I was so nervous. Half-way through, I thought for sure I wasn't going to get it finished."

She said she was constantly getting ripples in the material which she had to sand down. Then while sanding she often put holes in the fiberglass that she had to patch up. The cold weather in March and April also made the fiberglass take longer to dry.

"I don't think I gave her enough credit when she first came to me with the project," McKinnon said. "As a professional, and knowing what it should look like, and knowing that she had never done this type of thing before, I was pleasantly surprised with the job she did. It looks fantastic and she never complained about anything."