By Aaron Porter

BAR HARBOR — Jim Elk’s shop has become the clinic and counseling center for sailors afflicted with the recent mania for aging L-16s.

His Bar Harbor shop has been the site of a number of resurrections since the Southwest Harbor Fleet revived racing of the elegant little sloops in 2002. Last week, another restored classic Luders was pulled, gleaming from the shop. But Andvari is different from the others. First of all, she’s not going to be staying in the neighborhood. The Reece twins, Nat and Brooke, who summered on Mount Desert Island, will keep their restored sloop in Padanaram, Mass. Secondly, she’s not made of wood.

Andvari stands out among a crowd of other L-16s and some larger sailboats at Jim Elk’s shop in Bar Harbor. Boat builder Kevin Cadraro puts the finishing touches on Andvari’s cockpit last week. (At right) The forward end of the cockpit was a mess prior to the rebuild. STAFF PHOTO BY AARON PORTER

This is the first fiberglass boat I’ve ever worked on,” Elk said. Looking at the boat, his preference for wood is obvious. Andvari, which arrived from her competitive past in Mississippi, was less-than-beautiful when she got here. Her yellow hull, originally built in Louisiana in 1972, was pocked with blisters from water damage where the molded seats were attached to the hull and around the chain plates.

Elk said the hull was brought into the shop in October, and he immediately ground the blistered areas to allow them to dry. But there was more water in the aging hull. The void in her keel was filled with water. A hole had to be drilled to drain it. 

The deck had been made of balsa wood sandwiched between layers of fiberglass. Water had made its way in there, as well. Elk said panels of soggy balsa had to be cut out and replaced with new wood and fiberglass. A nonskid that had been molded into the original fiberglass deck surface was ground off, and the entire deck was puttied, along with the hull, in preparation for finishing.

Her new deck surface is painted white with a full dose of nonskid for traction. It looks as much like a painted canvas deck as a fiberglass deck can. The hull was hand painted with Awlgrip to a glossy blue finish. However, Elk’s real accomplishments can be seen best in the custom woodwork that graces the revived fiberglass hull.

The most notable change is in the distinctive rounded trunk cabin that sits on every L-16. The fiberglass model sat like a dull-painted bubble just ahead of the cockpit. It had no ports nor bulkhead between the cockpit and cuddy. Looking at Andvari’s wooden sisters in Elk’s shop, it’s easy to see that there had to be a change. The classic L-16 sloops had the same curved cabin only they were made of laminated mahogany and were graced with two ports cut in the side. Elk ground the fiberglass housetop, and cut mahogany laminates to fit over it. Using epoxy, he essentially sheathed the trunk cabin in wood.

To install a bulkhead in the boat, Elk was able to use one he’d taken out of an old wooden Luders as a pattern to make a new one. It marries beautifully to the aft end of the cabin he’d sheathed.

Working aft, the cockpit was next to see major changes. The thin wood coaming that had passed for elegant trim on Andvari’s previous incarnation proved to be inadequate. Again, using the coaming from an old Luders as a form, Elk was able to make a jig on which new coamings could be laminated. Using three layers of quarter-inch mahogany, he created new coamings for Andvari. The boat’s original molded seats were thrown out and replaced with elegant mahogany bench seating, all varnished and well matched to the new coaming and cabin.

“Basically, it looks like one of these wood Luders now,” Elk said, walking through the few hulls still in his shop, some awaiting rebuilds, others resurrection.

He pointed out the weakness of the original laminated L-1 s that were made of mahogany veneers glued together with a heat-cured glue. The hulls were literally baked in a vacuum bag. Over the years, the hulls stayed very strong unless they got water soaked up into the laminates. Specifically, an area of the hull just forward of the fin keel shows the frequent failures.

Elk is very familiar with what has gone wrong with the wood models, but the fiberglass hull was new to him. And while he doesn’t relish fiberglass work, he said he’s proud of the transformation of Andvari.

“I almost got more satisfaction from that one than working on the wood ones, just because it was so ugly when it came in,” he said, looking out at the new Andvari as she waited for her owners just outside his shop.