My older brother Matt bought a 16-foot Zip sailboat in the early 1980's and brought it to our yard in Glastonbury, CT, where he did a lot of work. The wooden boat had been coated with fiberglass before he got it, and it was suffering the usual ailments of that bandaid -- rotting frames and planks that worked when they swelled. He shaped a new keel and bolted it into some new frames, using the original iron ballast. He also designed a dodger so he could overnight, and rigged the halyards and new jiffy reefing lines for easy access under the dodger. He sailed her for a few summers up and down the New England coast, then laid her up in the yard while he began building his own designs.
I put her in the water for a summer after college, in 1986, and didn't sail her as much as I'd hoped. The most memorable cruise was the end-of-year sail from New London, up the Connecticut River, to Wethersfield Cove, where we hauled her out and stored her again. The deck was in rough shape, so I pulled it off, replaced all the deck frames, and my younger brother Steve finished the job some years later.
Steve took her with him to Maryland, where he sailed her for several years. He built a new rudder.
In 2009, Steve and I packed her up and drove her to northwest Ohio, where my sons and I have been sailing her on the Maumee River out of Mary Jane Thurston State Park. The fresh water and minimal seas seem to agree with her old bones.