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.