Progress to date:

• Haul and block Rune
• Install bridge to main deck

Attempt to get original plans

I spoke with George Schwartz of the Peabody Essex Museum; he promised me copies of the following plans:

• Construction Plan
• Detail of Masthead
• Detail of Binnacle
• Detail of Centerboard trunk
• Detail of Rudder

Note: RUNE was designed by the well-known Danish naval architect, K. Aage Nielsen. His papers, including the originals of many of his designs were given by his heirs to the PEM. They control the use of the construction drawings , and so one is in the strange position of owning the boat and trying to repair it without access to the plans. For reasons of their own, PEM refuses to part with the files into which the plans have been scanned with very high resolution, and forces the outsider to work with inferior, pseudo-photographic reproductions. The authors of the recent book on Nielsen are the only ones I know to have been given access to the high-resolution scans.
Because I can't get access to the art work, I won't be able to do a good job of updating it to the current configuration.

Initial Situation

I started this repair based on the least significant of symptoms. RUNE has a bronze liner inside its wooden centerboard trunk, and there was a small leak between the liner and the trunk which wouldn't stop. In 1995, I looked at the liner with a video borescope and injected pine tar into the space around it, but the leak persisted.
I ignored it for ten years, but in the spring of 2006, I was vacuuming the bilges, and the upper nut and the top inch of one of the keel bolts broke off in my hand.
The significance of this corrosion cannot be overstated. There are only 11 3/4-inch bolts to carry the three-ton ballast keel, and one had just disintegrated. I checked the others; they did not fail with the 300 foot-pounds (approximately) I could apply. I had a local boatwright install a specially constructed lag bolt through the plank keel into the ballast, as a temporary measure, but I knew that a careful inspection would be needed when the season was over.
To remove the centerboard trunk liner, the ballast keel and a false keel below the plank keel must be removed. The job clearly required a major refit.
I contacted several boatyards with expertise in wooden boat construction, and finally selected Taylor and Snediker Woodworking in Pawcatuck, CT to serve as the lead contractor. They have been maintaining this and several other boats of similar design, and, because I live close to their shop, I would be able to review their progress easily.