After cruising in 2005, I happened to find in Salem, NJ the ideal place to start a necessary refit plan for Pájaro. Andrea Jones, the Barber's Basin Marina owner, kindly gave me total freedom and an "out of the way" spot for me to perform the tasks needed on Pájaro. Also, given my low budget, she made me a generous discount so I could better afford to pay for the many months I needed, and authorized me to build a shed for the boat. Like many boats of its age, Pájaro suffered from deck delamination on both deck sides. And although not critical, I decided to get rid of the problem right away, and so go sailing without conditions. Also, without much consideration, I chose to get rid of the venerable, but troublesome, Universal Atomic 4. Like few other Triton owners, I opted for the outboard engine instead. That not only has offered me a smoke-, oil-, and noise-free cabin but a significant increase in alternate storage, always a plus on a small cruiser like this. Because of the repairs, I went ahead and refinished the exterior as well as the interior with new coats of paint and brightwork. Right after this structural and re-finishing works I re-rigged Pájaro, with the addition of two extra stays and 6 custom-made stainless steel external chainplates. (The chainplates were designed and fabricated by my best friend in this part of the planet, the "maestro" Mr.Teddy Simpkins. (An article about him, his geniality and his custom made schooner, "Magic", to come soon.) I also equipped Pájaro with a necessary windvane, a less necessary but helpful manual windlass winch, and other pieces of equipment that I'll be showing and commenting soon. Here goes a short gallery selection of some of the repairs and re-constructions that I overtook between 2006 and 2007 over the course of 7 months. And, fortunately, the good news is that all this work was done once in life. That's it. After much plywood, gallons of epoxy resin, trillions of sand paper and so on, Pájaro is now a very strong "brand new" 44 year old boat, and ready for some real bluewater cruising in the years to come.

First I needed a shed to keep the boat dry. My original shed construction wich took two full weeks of work, was seriously damaged by a outrageous winter gale. My friend Ted Simpkins came to my rescue with the shed below,that he designed and constructed using the parts of the old one.	Some of my tools and a nice morning view of Salem River, a Walden Pond by its own right.	The re-coring can be seen here in its final stages when I was placing cloth fabric wetted in epoxy so to build up new outer layers.	This is the only spot forward where delamination was found, and the wet core was replaced also with plywood and epoxy,plus the original deck cutout.
I cut 1/4" exterior plywood into 2"x 2" squares and sealed them on thickened epoxy. This picture also shows the build up I did on the windows between the "dog house" and the inner liner,where lots of thickened epoxy was used.	The new deck layout process started by laying several medium cloth saturated with epoxy resin until leveled with rest of deck (4 layers were used).	I completely re-constructed a new V-berth and made it's 3 lockers watertight, using 3/4" exterior plywood (and tossed the original bulky water tank) adding a chain-locker draining isolated bilge.	Forward "big" watertight locker
New high watertight side lockers were built in the main cabin.	Cutting out frames for the side locker doors.	Pájaro interior transformation taking place.	A new 3/4" oak plywood floor is being installed.
I constructed a full size navigation table (and locker) where the ice box once existed.Where the engine used to be I placed a leveled platform to support the new 50 gallon flexible water tank.	The paint job finally started (after much scraping and sanding) with primer and two coats of marine enamel.	Port side midship after being painted.	Also extra bookshelves were added in the main cabin right before being painted.
Pájaro interior being painted.	Pájaro being re-rigged with six custom made exterior chainplates.	A closer view of the chainplates and the paint job.	The crane in action!!.
After priming with Primekote, I tipped and rolled the deck and topsides with gloss white one-part polyurethane. Two layers plus two more layers of non-skid (Interdeck) were then applied.
		The prop space on the hull was refilled with plywood and thickened epoxy.