Another Busy Weekend

With little progress to show for it.

Thursday and Friday I was back in Sydney, got home late Friday night. Saturday we went to the fair at Monte Cecilia school. The weather was perfect and we had a blast.  After that we went to Devonport and Mums exhibition opening Unfortunately that meant by the time we finally got home it was close to dark. I managed to squeeze in a hour of sanding on the leeboard, iakos, rudder and boom but that was it for the day.

Sunday was another family outing, with the Beca family Christmas party. It was a great event with a bouncy castle, face painting, petting animals and of course presents from Santa Clause! We finished the day at 2:00 and I decided that given the heat and how tired we all were it would be best to skip the Santa Parade in town.

Once home I put up the shade tent, filled the paddle pool and put the children in it and got to work on the canoe. I sanded the inside of the hull and removed the bow and stern cleats before giving it all a wash down. Because of the heat and a towel down the hull was dry in a very short time allowing me to apply the first coat of varnish.

Today I got the second coat done and hopefully tomorrow the last one. Then I’ll pain the top of the bulkheads in time to turn the hull over on the weekend. Well that’s the plan… and we know what happens to my plans!

So at the end of week forty two; no photo, its difficult to show the progress in photos.

Once Again I Under Estimated

The size of a job!

Here was I thinking that I’m a week or so from launching the canoe. But this weekend saw the beginning of painting and varnishing the hull. And this is going to be a job and a half given the demands on my time and number of free days I have!

To top matters off Saturday got off to a bad start with a down pour which ment that I was unable to get any sanding done. Luckily I got the her in the garage in time so instead I gave the gunwales a coat of epoxy to give it a bit more scratch resistance. The epoxy soaked into the wood nicely and brought out the rich colour of the ash.

I also got the boom jaws glued on and gave the boom a coat of epoxy. Cedar is lovely wood, but it is soft and damages easily!

The boom is made from two lengths of cedar while the jaws are oak.

Sunday I sanded the leeboard, iakos and rudder then gave them their first (of ten) coat of varnish.

I have them hanging in the garage so that I could do both sides at the same time.

One piece of bad news I discovered was that the thread on the bung in the aft bulkhead has been stripped. So I’m going to see if I can use an expanding rubber one instead. If not I’ll probably just glue it in place.

So at the end of week forty one I’ve started varnishing. Of course the elephant in the room is the ama, it’s easy to focus on the hull and forget that there’s another that needs to be done too.

When out on a Canoe…

Allow for the possibility of getting wet!

Saturday started off with another trip to Bunnings to get varnish and paint supplies, followed by a trip to the kayak and canoe shop on Sandringham Rd where I was hoping to get a roof rack for my car. Because I wanted a rack that used the existing anchor points on the car they didn’t know what was needed, they took my number with a promise to call back when they’d done some research.

Back home it was back to sanding, the boom followed by the leeboard and the rudder. I also improved the fit of the boom jaws.

Sunday I noticed that there was a voice message on my mobile. The shop had called back saying that they had found what I was after and that they were in stock. So after calling mum to tell her we’d be over for lunch, the family was bundled into the car and we set off. After fitting the roof rack it was back home to fit the bow and stern cleats and mount the canoe on to the roof.

Driving was interesting, it was a quite windy and the canoe had a noticeable affect driving over the bridge. At mum’s with the help of a neighbour I got the canoe off the car roof and next to Mum’s pool. Using cargo ties I quickly set her up and then into the pool she went:

She floats! (Not that there ever was any doubt… was there?)

So Nico and I got dressed up in our life jackets (good habits start early) and went for a paddle in the pool.

First impressions were of how stable it is and how light it was to paddle. Granted in the pool you’re not up against a tide or chop, but still it glided along smoothly.

As you can see in the photo, I should have gotten in from the stern and positioned Nico in front of me. With my confidence growing by the minute I decided that it would be a good idea to swap positions. And within a flash I was brought down to earth with a reminder of why you wear a life jacket. I’m not really sure what happened, but I lost my balance and felt the canoe start to go over. So rather than risking capsizing and giving Nico a un-welcome dunking, I let myself fall in the pool.

Lessons learned from that:

• The water was warm and it was a nice day for a swim.
• While the canoe is stable, it can still be capsized on starboard side.
• Getting back in was easy. Although I did deliberately tip out a couple more times, I didn’t allow a full capsize so I wasn’t able to practice righting it again.
• The ama has enough buoyancy to support me.
• A wet person drags a fair amount of water back into the boat with them.
• The plug in the aft bulk head isn’t sealing properly and water got in.

The plug isn’t a big surprise, I ran into a bit of trouble when fitting it. But it will need to be fixed before we go to sea because once there was water in the hull it quickly transferred to the bulkhead.

So at the end of week forty we have the roof rack installed and tested plus a boat that floats!

Treasure Chests & Tank Engines but…

No ulua.

Saturday was Nicolas’ birthday party, with lots of guests and a bouncy castle to keep the birthday boy and friends entertained. Thanks to Margo we had a fantastic treasure chest birthday cake that was quickly demolished by the kids. Even though the party only went on till four; we were pretty shattered afterwards so no time for boat building.

Sunday morning was a write off, everyone slept in; followed by a bit of a clean up (and playing with the new presents) before it was off to the Glenbrook Vintage Railway where they had a Thomas the Tank Engine day. All the vintage steam engines had faces on them identical to the Thomas series of books. There was even a train that was an almost identical model to Thomas.

We took the 50 minute train ride to the back of Waiuku and it was like going back in time, even the scenery was different from how you see it when driving. On the return journey there was a stop where you could get off to look at the workshop with more steam engines. First Nico and I got off then Cecile hopped off and forgot to hop back on before the train left! So she was stuck there for half an hour while she waited for the next one!

When we got home I managed to squeeze in a little bit of work, fitting the boom jaws and mocking the whole rig up to test for fit.

Also the matter of paint over varnish has been decided with good advice from Gary; if you don’t like the varnish you can always paint over it but you can’t varnish over paint. What I will do though is paint the decks and part of the gunwhales.

So at the end of week thirty nine we hit a small speed bump called “family takes precedence”.

So Close….

And I’m procrastinating again. Although to be fair it was Nicos’ birthday on Friday so  we had a family day on Saturday which started with present opening, followed by present playing and then Oma, Thys, Helen and Leo came to visit. We ended the day with a fantastic trip to Butterfly Creek.

Still I did find time to set the canoe up on the deck to check the fit of the ama and iakos.

I’m pretty happy with the fit. Nico loves the canoe; he and Leo jumped in with fishing rods for a dry run. Eloise got into the swing of it as well helping me with the paddling.

As for the procrastination; I still can’t decide between paint or varnish! Everyone says varnish, but I quite like the look of a painted hull.

Sunday it was back to making saw dust and those planks I showed you last week became this board:

and over the course of the day became the rudder and boom jaws with the help of my belt sander, jigsaw and drill press:

So at the end of week thirty eight the only big job left to do is the elephant in the room; I need to paint her up. However before I do that, I’m going to put her in the water to make sure there are no nasty surprises like leaks.