Long story short, I bought it.
Turns out he built it himself a couple years ago, but they used it only a few times. They sold their boat because he got a new job and they're moving to Roanoke, which is pretty far from the water.
Here it is in my garage:
He did a pretty nice job building it - the brightwork is all mahogany. He never got around to painting the plywood interior, which I will do. The oarlocks are nice bronze units.
He enclosed the seats and included flotation, which is really nice; and he fully glassed the entire bottom as well as the floor inside.
He also included a nice set of "folding" wooden oars, a very nice floating painter and a little 2-wheeled cart to make it easy to move it about on land.
The construction overall seems quite well done. The paint job, not so much. He also threw in a couple cans of paint left over, so I can touch it up. He used Petit Easypoxy.
I plan on sanding the whole thing and going over the exterior paint, and also painting the interior, since it's just epoxy right now. I will of course leave the nice mahogany bright. It looks pretty sharp, I think!
The only thing I'm not thrilled with is the hunk of plastic hose on the bow:
I assume that's to protect the dinghy and the boat deck when the dinghy is stowed on deck. I'm thinking there's got to be a neater, prettier solution, like a big hunk of fat rope or something.
Best part is I got all of that for $550. It would cost me at least that, if not more, just to buy all the materials and hardware, the oars and painter - let alone the amount of work to build it!
The guys over at the Wooden Boat Forum identified it as a D4 dinghy - plans available from
http://www.bateau.com.
Bill T.
Richmond, VA
"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." - T E Lawrence