Boat restoration advice sought.

[Trevor57]

I bought this boat last month and intend to get her back into good sailing condition over the winter.
She's 14'8" overall about 12'1" waterline and 5' beam. GRP simulated clinker construction with a heavy steel centreplate and a couple of glassed in ballast weights each side of the centreplate case. She is unusual in being a double ender but with truncated (wine-glass) ends with small transoms fore and aft.
Name Cygnet.
I've asked around in various forums, but so far no one has been able to give me any information about her or her type.

Apart from general tidying there are a couple of areas I need to address.
I'd value any advice on these.

Buoyancy: Cygnet has two small tanks under the side benches. These look small, maybe just sufficent to keep her afloat if swamped, but recovery would probably be impossible.
The current plan is to build a watertight false floor around an inch or so above the normal waterline. This should provide sufficent basic buoyancy and not be too intrusive. I estimate the floor level will only raise about 1 to 2 inches above its current position. I'll glass in bearers on top of the existing frames and a flange around the edge so I can screw down epoxy sheathed ply boards onto rubber or mastic seals. I'll add some insection hatches so I can keep an eye on any leaks and give it an airing from time to time.

I've seen a neat idea that I'll incorperate if I can. This is to put an inspetion hatch between the cockpit and the outboard well, that can be removed to clear the bulk of any flooding quickly.

The next consideration is stability when swamped. There's little point having enough buoyancy if the boat is so unstable she's taking in water with each roll. The plan here is to keep the existing tanks under each side bench and also to glass a ply bulkhead into the bow and make the stern locker watertight. Together with the steel plate and the internal ballast may even give me a degeree of self righting. How much I won't know until the work is done and I can make some trials, unless someone can show me an easy method to calculate this.

Rig: She came to me with a most unsuitable gaff rig, but I saw an old photo of her with a single standing lug which looked right. I could design a sail from scratch but don't really have the skills to get this right, so I looked around to see if I could find a sail design I could 'borrow'. I’ve looked around at various options for a replacement rig and so far a Drascombe Dabber mainsail is favourite.
Measurements are 42 ½” from the centre of the mast heel to the centre of the plate. I've yet to find a Dabber to measure but scaling off a line drawing suggest that this measurement is within about an inch or so. Dabbers are reputed to sail ok under main alone. I made some drawings of what looked right to me, and encouragingly when I scaled the Dabber sail to my drawing it was a near perferct fit. Serendipity? I havent any information on the CLR of either hull so I hope the mast heel - centreboard measurement is a reasonable estimate and I can find enough adjustment by varying mast rake and centreplate position to get a balanced helm. My mast height is 14’6” compared with 13' 10 1/2" for the Dabber so I've got a bit of vertical adjustment too.

So, what does the forum think.
Am I going along the right lines, or completely barking?

Trevor.

[gonzo]

Nice looking boat. The floatation can be easily accomplished with a couple of foam blocks strapped under the deck. What's wrong with the rig? It looks like a lug in the photo

[Trevor57]

That isn't a photo of the rig, it's my sketch of the proposed rig over a photo.
Thanks for the unintended compliment to my artistic skill though.
T.