Look! A Boat Post!

It's been some time since I've posted anything "boaty" on here. Certainly not with much regularity. Anyway, I've finally gotten back to doing more boat related things. Not being able to ride a bicycle lately has certainly helped turn my attention back to the water.

My wife's mother, my mother-in-law, passed away from early onset dementia last Monday. It was a long and painful process to watch, stretched out over several years. The last six months being the hardest. We took the entire week off to come to terms with it and make what arrangements for the celebration of life service next month. We also spent a lot of time making sure my father-in-law was doing OK. Whenever I wasn't needed, I spent some time finishing up the refurb of my standup paddle board.

Before

After

It had been leaking heavily, so I decided, rather than re-canvas the thing, that I'd sand it lightly, then prime and paint it over. I'm hoping this works out. It's not been tested yet, but I might one evening this week.

When I got done with the SUP, I started to mess with my skin-on-frame rowing peapod model/idea. It's a conversion of a John Gardner lapstrake design from one of his books. I managed to get all of the ribs in and pop it off the molds. I have just begun lashing on the inwales, and I have exactly 200 lashing points done. What I have found out in doing this, that it is quite possible to build one of these boats this way and that I really don't want to, in spite of how light it would be. The work is just too damn tedious. I plan to finish out the model with breasthooks and thwarts to just shy of skinning it and then I plan to hang it on my office wall as art.

Lastly, I started anew on the skin-on-frame sailing canoe project. It's an 11' 6" conversion from a lapstrake design, as well, with some slight adjustments in the stems due to fuzzy source material there. This I'm doing fuselage frame instead of steamed ribs. It's so much easier. My father-in-law and I ran several boards through his table saw on Saturday, making some smaller boards and sawdust. I now have a nice stack of 16' stringers and gunwales in my garage, next to the strongback with frames clamped on (not shown). I've also attached temporary thwarts to the three middle frames to aid in resisting the stress of bending the gunwales and inwales around them.

I'm working out a sail plan with the aid of a these books. I'm also planning to use a lanyard type leeboard and paddle steer.