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Displaying items by tag: Kara Third

#ClassicBoats - An art conservationist is turning his hand to a restoration of a different kind - in the form of a vintage boat.

Simone Mancini, head of conservation at the National Gallery of Ireland, began work on restoring the hull of an old boat named Kara Third a couple of years ago.

And as the Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company website reports, he's now working on topsides for the hull that's now complete and looking as good as if not better than new.

"It has been a long enduring and rewarding process which required specific knowledge (here in big trouble) as much as passion (I was fine with it)," writes Mancini about his project.

"Talking to people who know a lot about this matter, necessarily becomes part of the process. Always told: it is a true labour of love, isn’t it?"

Though the Kara Third is a "work still in progress", it's remarkable to behold what an amateur in the boat restoration world has achieved thus far.

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago