CurlyShavings

There are now less than two weeks before my local Boy Scout council's Webelos Resident Camps (which I run) and so the rest of July will be spent completing preparations and then actually running the two four-day, three-night camps (7/21-24 & 7/26-29). So boat work is finished for the rest of July.

Current pictures:
Looking aft at rudder with gudgeons and pintles, tiller straps and tiller!
Looking at hull with deck in place.
Looking aft down centerline at deck with mast partner, then cockpit and then transom.

Here's where we stand:

Hull

complete and primed, shoe and skeg attached—needs paint

Hull inside

complete and painted—needs deck/hull glue scraped, touch-up and detail painting

Rudder

complete with all hardware—needs paint

Tiller

first coat of varnish drying—needs more

Centerboard

complete—needs paint and toggle and fid made

Deck

in place, screwed down and glued—needs mast hole cut, screw holes filled, fiberglassed and painted

Deck coamings

mahogany purchased, need completed after deck fiberglassed

Floorboards

need making

Mast

needs more rounding, dumb sheaves drilled and painted

Gaff and boom

cut to size and need finishing

Other stuff

need to make six blocks, Jonesport mooring cleat & three cleats, need to have hull inspected, receive hull number and registration numbers and need to christen her

In other words, our August launch date is in jeopardy.

Big news! I have a new deadline: 8am on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 (boat builders must use the year in all their dates, sometimes we're that far behind!) I will meet with Ranger Dan of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Watercraft Division and he will inspect my hull.

They requested:
- Photos of the construction process
- Plans
- Receipts (showing Ohio sales tax paid)
- the hull only (not interested in the sail or mast)
- ODNR's "Watercraft Affidavit of Ownership" (form DNR 8460)

I am also bringing a letter as a "Builder's Statement of Origin" and form CG-1261 ("Builder's Certification and First Transfer of Title") but Dan says that neither are needed.

Oh, and my driver's license and my checkbook. Yeah, can't forget the fees.

As far as the hull goes, all it really needs is the coamings, the deck hardware and paint now. Dan said not to worry about that. Just needs to see the hull.

I went to my local Woodcraft (for something else) and got to talking to the owner's wife about my problem. She said to take a clothes iron, a wet wash cloth (terry) and steam the ding out. My ding/gouge is a good 3/8" deep at one end, so I was skeptical.

After steaming it for almost half an hour, this is what it looks like.

My friend Greg accuses me of over-analyzing this and he is right.

The pictures are lousy (too close?) but the trick raised the 3/8" almost flush. My screwdriver helped it the rest of the way. Now it is sanded with a little bit of mahogany dust and putty rubbed in. Tomorrow I'll sand off the putty and see what some varnish will do to blend it in.

And please, no condolences on my predicament. I earned and deserved every scratch. The urge to take it out (we're three years behind schedule) for the first time overrules better judgment. My impatience got the better of me.

Why hubris? Well, it was this boat's maiden voyage, the wind was blowing directly into the launch ramps, it was cold and rainy, I chose not to have my trusted Able-Body son on board but instead, two passengers and I was distracted enough not to lower the centerboard. So I couldn't make any way into the wind and was blown into the neighboring launch ramp's dock. Hubris and stupidity. I was blessed that the lake let me go with just a bruised gunwale and damaged pride.

Ed, Joan and the Giffords were the hardy who turned out at LaDue Reservoir.

The weather was delightful: mid 50's, sunny with fast-moving clouds and near 15 MPH wind (forecasted).

We launched KrazyKat on her first sailing experience and that was marvelous.

Ed had his sailing dingy and Joan was there having a good time. KrazyKat spent nearly three hours on the water over three different trips and logged one spot at just over 7 MPH. Five MPH was more usual but there were times when we had trouble making any headway (lee of the islands there). Ed and his dingy zipped in and out around the islands. When the telephoto pictures are developed we'll post some more.

Many thanks to Ed (and the rest of the Gifford crew) who were very helpful in getting KrazyKat launched.

Last night we christened the KrazyKat with some Spanish Cava and about thirty friends. The mosquitos didn't end up being too bad, the light went early but it didn't rain and the wind stayed calm enough to allow us to hoist sail and show off Chloe's excellent job.

Then we sang "Happy Birthday" to Katie who turned one yesterday and had cake and ice cream. Some of the neighbors came over and I was able to show them the fruits of all the noise they'd been hearing for the past few months.

Some background on the name. Bill Watterson, the author of my favorite comic strip Calvin & Hobbes (comics), was heavily influenced by George Herriman, the author of another favorite, Krazy Kat (comics).

Well, my boat is a catboat, which means that its beam (width) is half as wide (6') as it is long (12') and has its mast way up in the eyes of the boat (really far forward). There are a couple of other characteristics of the cat, but this will suffice. I'm crazy. Crazy for building her, crazy for wanting to take her out onto Lake Erie, just crazy. So, Watterson to Herriman plus catboat plus insanity yields KrazyKat.

What's a three-snake day? One: a really cool-looking big water snake (probably a Northern Water Snake) in the Miles River (brackish) while we were visiting the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Two: a somewhat familiar (and smaller) water snake not too far from the first. Three: a little garter snake gorging herself (?) on crickets in our hosts' basement.

Yes, it was that good of a day. Boats, boat-building, snakes -- it sometimes doesn't get much better than that! (Oh, and they had a reasonably-priced Aubrey/Maturin that I was looking for!)

Two in a Boat: The True Story of a Marital Rite of Passage is an interesting read about a couple, oddly paired, who take on the adventure of cruising down to the Mediterranean from England. One of the things that makes it a good read is that the author (the wife in this pair) readily admits that she's fairly "messed up" (my term, not hers, she would be much more clinical about it). I bought the book 1) because it was at half-price books, 2) I usually like sea-going stories and 3) I'd like to go cruising with my wife someday and thought I'd learn something.

I did learn some things, both what to do and what not to do. The book ends tragically enough but before you get there, one realizes just what corporate America (or England, or anywhere) can do to a person's soul. You get a real glimpse into this couple's marriage and how things work and don't work. It's easy to empathize with both sides in this adventure and that helps make the book likable.

[11/27/2007 Update: Turns out the author's got a whole web site to herself and a page just for this book.]

Re-reading yesterday's posting, I was reminded of the true story of a friend who explained why he doesn't keep a gun on his boat, even when cruising in drug-runner-infested water. They had gone aground, for the 13^th time that day and the husband was employed (again) in swimming an anchor out a ways to bury in the sand, swim back and then attempt to winch themselves off. After multiple attempts at burying the anchor and all the back-and-forth swimming, the husband returned to the boat and the boarding ladder wasn't down for him. So he started swearing like a sailor at his wife who reached into the seat-locker, grabbed the handiest thing around and pointed it at him. Luckily for him, it was only an airhorn and not a loaded gun. Unlucky for him, it was still an airhorn.

When I was building my boat in the garage, I moved many of my tools out there. Not the stationary ones (drill press, router table, bandsaw, tablesaw) but the handtools. Some planes, hammers, sanders, etc. And you know what? Except in extreme, specialized cases, I didn't use them.

Here's what I used:

• 20 year-old nail apron with pencils, screws and tacks


• low-angle Lie-Nielsen block plane in a scabbard


• 16oz hammer


• 12' tape measure


• cordless drill/driver and bits

I'm not saying that I'm a master craftsman (I could tell you stories . . .). I'm only saying that one doesn't always need the latest and greatest tool. Just a couple of ones that work well for your craft.

Would Shakespeare have written more elegantly (or just more) with a 21st century MacBook? Or would he have gotten bogged down in Leopard vs Tiger and quit when his hard-drive crashed? We'll never know.

I started O'Brian's The Wine-Dark Sea a couple of days ago and expect I'll finish it this week. The edition I'm reading is a hardcover first that my wife picked up for a song at our local book-selling, empty-your-basement weekend event. I don't know if it's the hardcover or the words on the page that make this one a good read, but it is. Better than some of his preceding ones, perhaps he just got back into the groove.

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(If this map doesn't show a sailboat near Hawaii, view this entry by itself. The entry for The Truelove must still be showing on this page.)

I'm not finished with the book yet and doubtlessly will have more to say about it later on.

This past Christmas I received a Cricket pond sailor from Seaworthy Small Ships as a gift from my children. (They must have picked her up at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum when we were there in October; they have a store on your way out.)

After spending entirely too much time working on it, she's finished and I'm quite happy with her. I must add that the time spent on her was entirely my choice; I could have finished it ages ago except for the multiple coats of paint, the carefully crafted sails (and the dozen projects that interrupted us).

She's an eleven-inch sloop with an adjustable mainsail and jib. I've not taken her out for any maiden voyages (water around here gets sorta stiff this time of year) but she cuts a nice figure on my workbench (shown) and on my bedside table (not shown).

We thought that since she's a Cricket, she needed a cricket on her mainsail, so found some image on the `net that we traced with a fine-point Sharpie.

I have visions of taking her the twelve blocks from my place of employment in downtown Cleveland to Voinovich Bicentennial Park and letting her ply the waters alongside the Good Time III and the steamship William G. Mather during my lunch break. Alas, that will need to wait a while until the water warms up (or I get cabin fever badly enough).

Even as I was sailing KrazyKat last summer and fall I knew that I wasn't completely finished. I wanted a better seat (mahogany), completed floorboards (also mahogany), a birdsmouth mast (SYP), a tiller with some rise to it (laminated mahogany and maple) and some non-plastic belaying cleats.

The Jonesport mooring cleat on the stem is from a solid block of Texas Mesquite with a couple of coats of spar varnish on it, embedded in a thin layer of silicon caulk. I think it strikes a very nice figure way up there in the eyes of the boat. Black plastic cleats just can't compete with that, in my opinion. Then I remembered that I'd purchased them with the idea of getting the boat on the water quickly (in time to enjoy our region's shorter sailing season) and I relaxed. The Cleveland Boat Show was coming up so it was time to move quickly and get some replacements on her.

After doing some searches for the proper way (is there such a thing?) to make wooden cleats, I discovered that for each person making cleats, there are probably two or three ways to get it done, way too much to digest for me. I found a fairly coherent explanation of the process in a couple of places along with the words "block plane" and "rasp" and knew that I could not only use that guidance but add to it.

The plans are available in PDF and Visio formats.

From the nearby pictures, you can see a rough approximation of what was accomplished. From a 7/8'' plank of mesquite, I traced out a number of (six) cleats in almost a tessellation pattern. Nesting them this way minimizes the waste. Then I drilled out around each cleat's base using a bradpoint bit, to define the radius around the base. This was nice, but not necessary. It turns out that because they are finish-shaped by hand, there are slight variations to each and having precisely plotted reference points (the fore and aft endings of the bases) is almost frustrating.

Then I took the plank to my band saw, outfitted with a ¼ blade; you can use a coping saw if you'd like. I think if I were making just one cleat, a coping saw sounds nice. Because I was making half a dozen, I wanted this rough part done quickly. I cut slightly proud of the lines and managed to make fairly consistent copies of my ideal cleat.

From here, they went to my bench, to be shaped. You can see the tools employed. There's a radius rasp/file, a flat bastard file, a microplane shaper, my block plane and a sanding block (150 grit). Because the blanks matched my ideal cleat so closely, there wasn't much to take off. The shaper and radius rasp were employed giving the line a clear route around the base and the block plane and sanding block took off the edges, giving them a slight radius.

I bored the holes for two 3½'' stainless #12 machine screws. (Note that this is a variance from the plans.) The distance was carefully planned to match the plastic cleats' guidance. With hindsight, I'll be replacing them with through-bolts (same diameter and head, only longer, if possible) and fender washers.

I did countersink the heads slightly. I don't like seeing the hardware protrude above the cleat unless it's necessary for some reason. Each received several liberal coatings of tung oil, were allowed to dry/cure and then received the same treatment of being bedded down in a thin layer of silicon caulk.

My pictures from the boat show went AWOL this week; when the weather clears I'll take some more and you can see how they look on the deck!

The past 48 hours has been extremely busy for us. Here's what's been shaking.

Home Repair

Saturday morning found me up a ladder at a friend's house, cleaning a five-foot long section of downspout and tarping the resulting rotting shingle siding. The goal was to make it sufficiently functional that the water stops leaking into the foyer but sufficiently ugly that the homeowner wouldn't leave the tarp there indefinitely.

Sailing Lake Erie

Dinner at Cleveland's Saigon

After picking up and installing the baby-sitter, we headed to Cleveland's tasty East 4th Street for dinner at Cleveland's Saigon restaurant. Not far from my employer, I've eaten here three or four times and have developed a taste for BBQ Beef over Rice (C2). We have a rule in our house that you can't have the same dish twice in a row (unless Mom is serving leftovers) so I had to try something different: Salt-baked Scallop (T6). My wife had the Lemongrass Beef (E5). While I tasted hers and she enjoyed it thoroughly, I much preferred mine. Oh! Scallops were meant to be eaten! And whoever thought to lightly-salt and bake them?! The portion was a bit too big but that didn't stop me. Perhaps I could convince them to serve a lunch portion some day.

Cleveland Shakespeare Festival's Hamlet

Elsewhere on these pages I describe our evening watching Hamlet. Less than two miles from dinner, a quick jaunt down the freeway to West 14th street saw us to Tremont's Lincoln Park to see CSF's Saturday evening performance.

The weather (temperature, light and humidity) was perfect. The wind was a bit strong from the wrong quadrant, NNE, which, while blowing the actor's words away from us, also kept us from telling a hawk from a handsaw. Probably also kept the mosquitoes away, too.

All in all, a very good day and an excellent night.

Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church

Sunday mornings find us at church. While there are many, many Presbyterian churches in the area, there are few nearby that hold to their ancient roots as much as the former RPCGA and, to some extent, the PCA. So we drive a gazillion miles to Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church, part of the John Knox Presbytery. Why do we go there? It's complicated. Ask me some time.

Housekeeping

We're certainly not legalists. We (including the children) have kept the Sabbath on other days and therefore needed to break it this Sabbath. So we cleaned house on a Sunday because we rested some other day when we should have been working.

Cleveland's Zócalo

After picking up and installing the baby-sitter, we headed to Cleveland's tasty East 4th Street for dinner at Cleveland's Zócalo restaurant. Not far from my employer, I've eaten here three or four times and have developed a taste for Enchilada and/or Tamale Platos de Combinacion. We have a rule in our house that you can't have the same dish twice in a row (unless Mom is serving leftovers) so I had to try something different: Chile Relleno, one cheese and one beef.

I was under-impressed. My cheese Chile Relleno wasn't completely melted. I was surprised to find zucchini and asparagus in my beef Chile Relleno. Perhaps if I'd just gotten the one and not both? I don't know. The Queso Fundido was tasty though as were the chips, salsa and bean dip.

My wife may have had the best, though. She had the Sopa Tortilla Con Limón and it smelled and looked marvelous. She claimed to have liked it, too!

I think my fault with Zócalo is that having eaten extensively in Texas, Mexico and places further south (to the equator), there's a certain something that is hard to reproduce in northeast Ohio. It seems that only the fanciest restaurant or the humblest hole-in-the-wall can make good, authentic Mexican food.

Cleveland Shakespeare Festival's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Elsewhere on these pages I describe our evening watching Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Less than two miles from dinner, a quick jaunt down the freeway to West 14th street saw us to Tremont's Lincoln Park gazebo to see CSF's Saturday evening performance.

The weather (temperature, light and humidity) was again perfect. I have wanted to see this play since 1991 and finally got to see it.

The Tremont Scoops mint chocolate-chip ice cream sandwiches are awesome!

All in all, another very good day and an excellent night.

I will most definitely be watching Cleveland's Shakespeare Festival's website for next year's announcements. We will be back!

From the log of the Krazy Kat: Saturday, 10/18/2008.

Lake Erie, off Cleveland: Inner City Yacht Club

Left house at 1300, in water by 1345 with both batteries (for trolling motor) in parallel; one is not fully charged. Weather forecast is cloudy, wind NE to ENE at 12 and gusts to 18.

Little to no wind behind dike 17 and fairly calm until halfway to green buoy (G1) at eastern entrance to Cleveland. About 81°38' 30''.

Decided to head into the wind (ENE) and come close to the East Entrance Light (lighthouse) on the breakwater. Tacked through to avoid jibing and headed to Red buoy (N4).

Not sure the centerboard is fully down. Tacking is tricky. Now 1445 and heading back to Gordon Park (Inner City Yacht Club). With centerboard acting odd, difficult to head into wind (back to boat ramp).

Coast Guard shows up and asks if we require assistance. We have our hands full but they make it worse. Ohio Department of Watercraft shows up.

Got on the radio (16) and moved to 22. They are offering assistance which we didn't need until they arrived.

Mate relayed messages to them and we decided to divert to East 55th Marina.

Chart most handy is odd so we overshoot it onto harbor by condominiums (Nicholson Cleveland Terminal) and so motor-sail into slip A23 at East 55th street Marina (81°39'5'')

Both would-be rescuers follow in and proceed to scold me. To much wind, wrong quarter, small child, small boat, etc. Took my name and address and left.

Turns out an observer at the condominiums reported a sail boat in distress and when they (Coast Guard) saw the Mate, they got worried (and over-reacted).

Earlier in the afternoon, we had been overtaken by a 30+ foot sailboat—beautiful genoa, etc. When speaking to them later, they wanted to know what all the fuss was about. At the time that they'd passed us, they thought we were doing well and express disappointment that the Coast Guard and Ohio Department of Watercraft scolded us so.

Determined that there are no ramps here. Paid $18.50 for transient fee and stayed in Slip A23. We were short one line and so borrowed the peak halyard for a bowline. Found the middle, put a bowline around the mast and tied off through the mooring cleat to port and starboard and cleats on the dock. From the stern, we came through the tiller hole (again, a bowline) to a far cleat. (The forward lines kept it in the middle of the slip and the aft line kept her hind parts from touching her neighbor.

Took the gaff halyard to the boom's jaws and took up some slack. Cleated the main, removed most of the gear and took the batteries home for a charge.

Sunday, 10/19/2008.

Sunday dawned bright, clear and calm. We were underway by 1430 and motor-sailed from East 55th Street to the Inner City Yacht Club, over a minute in longitude.

Ramps were busy (last nice weekend of the year coupled with just before football kickoff) and so we waited our turn, eventually pulling out by 1700.

Centerboard appears off its pin.

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The oldest son and I have started work on a CABBS Optimist Pram. We figure it will take us about a month, hopefully less since we intend to show it at the Cleveland Mid-America Boat Show from January 16-25, 2009 at the International Exposition Center.

We're members of CABBS and selling plans to the backyard boat-builder is one of the group's fundraisers.

We are building this boat on speculation, with the hope that someone will decide to purchase it. If you're interested, please drop me a line or post a comment!

Tonight we took the pile of wood in our garage and turned some of it into a strongback for the boat. It took us longer to clean up the garage than it did to get the strongback assembled. So far, nothing fancy was used, just a chop-saw, a tape measure, a square and a pencil. Oh, and some #8x3.5" deck screws and a cordless drill.

The Optimist Pram is a small boat; ours will end up not meeting the exact specifications required by the Optimist organization but will be pretty close. I'm told they are excellent training boats; supposedly, "at the 2008 Olympics over 85% of the medal winning boat skippers were former Optimist sailors."

So maybe, there will be some interest in our little boat. We're hoping to raise enough capital that we can fund the purchase of materials for a kayak in 2009.

Here's the pile of wood we started with. We typically buy our lumber from Terry Lumber in Peninsula, Ohio.

Terry (and Jean) let me root around in their woodpiles; over the last six years I've kept their piles neat, taken some extra board feet when I didn't need to and generally behaved like a good lumber-yard citizen. They've got the straightest 2x4s, the best clear cedar and the nicest bunch of lumberyard employees a guy can ask for.

Oh, and they can get you anything. Marine plywood, stainless fasteners, you name it. And the hardwood they stock is incredible. If you ever need some teak or mahogany or walnut or chestnut, they're the place to go.

Back to boatbuilding: we started at 6:30 and finished just after 8pm. (Again, most of the time was spent clearing the garage!) Watch this space for further developments.

One of the simplest weather tools one can operate is a barometer. I became interested in predicting the weather as my sailing interest grew a few years ago. I won't go into all the details of what can be determined by watching a barometer, but here are a couple of observations.

This morning, for example, I noticed that it had dropped two-tenths of an inch from where it was last night. A modest drop and one that indicates a minor decrease in nice weather was on its way.

Sure enough, it clouded up and began to snow this afternoon. When I reached home, it had dropped a further seven-tenths of an inch, indicating some unsettled weather, probably rain and a good blow. Two hours later, it is still dropping and we are now having a bit of a storm.

The useful observations are the direction (dropping or rising) and its speed (quickly or gradually). A list of forecasting tools can be found in The Complete Sailor on page 168.

E.F. Knight trusted his barometer implicitly and more than once credits observing it to having saved his life.

We once used it on the Severn River in Maryland to understand how the high pressure system was going to move around us and how we could use it to our advantage and have the wind blow us to our destination and back!

A very simple and useful tool.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that The Cleveland Boat Show saw light attendance this year compared to the 2007 show. Actually the Cleveland Boat & Waterfront Lifestyle Expo, we call it the Cleveland Boat Show because it is in Cleveland and there are usually lots of boats being shown. A quick walk through the various vendors and booths shows that the "Lifestyle" portion may be gaining on the "Waterfront" and "Boat" portions. One can have their gutters kept clean, purchase sharp kitchen knives, get thirsty sponges, buy beef jerky, chocolate and numerous other non-boat and non-waterfront related things.

The CABBS booth lived up to both its own name and the show's name. We are the Cleveland Amateur Boatbuilding and Boating Society. We boat in and around Cleveland, we build boats in and around Cleveland and while there are some very high-quality boats and builders in our group, we are most certainly amateurs!

This year we had the incomplete Bailey Boat (pictured above, see "Bailey Boat" here), a cedar strip canoe (pictured below), a birch-bark canoe, Jim Batteiger's 12' Wee Rob and a lapstrake dingy model sized as a cradle.

The cedar strip canoe is a work of art as you can tell even from the lousy picture. The builder wrote his name in Morse Code as an inlay on the side. The whole boat practically glows.

The birch bark canoe is also a work of art. During the show, a gentleman and two companions came by to talk about it. He's a complete nut for these things and makes them as part of Cleveland-area school program he's affiliated with. Even goes up to Canada to harvest the birch bark and the cedar strips needed. Amazing.

Alas, my own contribution, an Optimist Pram didn't make it, partially due to transportation issues and partially due to project timeline and work-effort issues. I still intend to complete it and offer it for sailsale, so keep your eyes open for this announcement.

I was challenged to defend my comment from yesterday that the attendance at the Cleveland Boat Show was lagging prior years' attendance. Challenged in a friendly way, of course. (I'd have preferred 20 paces at dawn over at Wendy Park, but that's not to be these days.)

So here's my definition of "light attendance": OK, I don't actually have one. But a survey on both Monday (noon to 6pm) and Tuesday (6pm to 9pm) showed that fully one out of every two people stopping by were wearing exhibitor badges. And the place was empty. Not even Capt'n Willie was drawing them in.

When I would walk around looking at other booths, a third of the booths were un-peopled and their exhibitors were walking around looking at other booths. The people visiting booths were exhibitors, too.

While that doesn't provide proper numeric analysis, suffice it to say that it was very light while I was present. I'll dig around for some ticket sales numbers.

Phil Bolger (1927-2009) designed the "Tortoise", a sandbox-looking sailboat with a lot of room for passengers and a fairly-decent sailing ability.

So far

Ben and I took the lines off an existing Tortoise this past week and transferred the hull side shapes to a piece of ¼" BC exterior plywood. Then we took a long, straight piece of pine and turned it into gunwales. Two more long, straight pieces of clear pine made chine logs and the remaining plywood became bow and stern transoms.*

So far, we've probably spent 90 minutes on the project, cutting and gluing. That doesn't take into account waiting for the glue to dry; that's what beer (root and GLBC) is for.

What's next

Next we'll need to bevel the framing on the bow and stern transoms—should be quick work with a circular saw. Then we'll need some 3'-long stringers to keep the hull square while we install the bottom. It would be nice to get some of that started today, perhaps after dinner.

Why not start now? Well, I've got scones and breakfast to make for six, then church, then sailing KrazyKat at LaDue, then cleanup and dinner. I'll be lucky if there's any energy for beveling framing at 7pm!

Oh, and the children are insisting on a bike ride. Since summer started four hours ago (1:45 am EDT), we'll have more sunlight, just perhaps not more energy.

*Update 20090622: Payson calls both the forward end of this boat a "transom" as well as the aft end. Wikipedia says only the stern is a transom. Hmmmm.

Well, Sunday saw no activity on the Tortoise (although we did get KrazyKat out on LaDue Reservoir).

Since last time

Monday saw us build another transom and add some framing to both. We also traced out the hull bottom but didn't cut it yet.

Tuesday saw some action. We gang-clamped the two side panels together and got out the belt sander which made short work of the inconsistencies between the two panels. The table saw made short work of the two bevels we needed for the fore and aft transoms. (Bolger calls both transoms.)

We set up the saw horses in the back yard and extended them with 2x4s to be wider than the three feet beam of this boat. The longest Bessey K-body clamps in the shop had to be called upon for the clamping action. Got some Titebond III and some 1¼" stainless deck screws helped coax the side panels to stay attached to the bow stern transom.

We ran out of time before bedtime had to be respected. There are now three panels attached and it is starting to look like its predecessor.

What's next

We'll next add the stern bow transom to the mix and then add the bottom. We've decided to fiberglass the joints, partly to add to the waterproofing but also to add some wear resistance (this boat sees a lot of abuse). When that's done we'll flip her over (she's turtle now) and add an afterdeck (per plans) and a foredeck (per my heart's desire), both with coamings. Oh and a mast step, possible from the original Box.

No work on Wednesday (swim meet) and none likely on Thursday (Microsoft taking us to see Up). Perhaps more on Friday. We had planned a hull test at Shadow Lake on Saturday. I doubt she'll have paint by then.

Since last time

First thing this afternoon was to add the bow panel. The bottom edge of this panel had been beveled during our last work session and now the whole piece was to be added to the side panels and transom.

Since we took the side panel measurements off of the old Box, I knew that these side panels were at least ¼" too tall, maybe more. Cutting the bow and transom panels to size meant that they were at least ¼" too short, so those gunwales will need to be trimmed when this is over.

A couple of long Bessey K-body clamps, a handful of short, abused Bessey LM clamps, some Titebond III and some stainless deck screws took care of getting this panel in and keeping it in.

We next tackled the bottom panel to complete the hull. What was frustrating about this was that the panel we chose a few weeks ago had warped. That's usually fine since the hull shape is effectively a warped rocker, but this time it warped backwards to what I wanted. In this case, the convex side was the "C" side of this BC plywood (with lots of cracks) while the concave side (inside the boat) was smooth. That's why we have a backup sheet of plywood. This one seemed to have two "B" sides (smooth, no cracks) so we oriented the bulge on the right side of the hull, marked it up and used the circular saw to cut it out.

Here's where it got tricky. We got out all the clamps: big ones, small ones, good ones and decrepit ones. We dry fit the hull panel, got things aligned, slathered glue on the transom, sides and bow and got going.

Well we made it. I wish I had used a glue with a longer open time since the Titebond III only has a 20 minute open assembly time. Oh, well, too late now!

We removed the clamps as we added the stainless deck screws. I'm not sure how many are there, but we used quite a few to keep the curve fair.

A block plane cleaned up the side edges and the fore and aft parts will take something a bit stronger.

What's next

Tomorrow we hope to get those overlapping parts of the hull trimmed off. Then there's some epoxy on the chine logs (where the hull and sides meet) followed by some fiberglass tape. We'll check the basement for some primer and if we can't find anything external, we'll probably end up at Home Despot looking for some Kilz Exterior. I wonder what mis-mixed porch paint they have there today?

Not much to update except that last night we got the hull primed, inside and out. Ben has identified the color and we're off to purchase a gallon of Behr Porch Paint soon, probably tomorrow.

What's next

Once that's painted, we'll add the foredeck and the afterdeck and the mast step and the rudder hardware. Sounds like a lot, but not really.

Current plan is to launch on Monday, July 7th.

Since last time

The hull got two good coats of primer, some Bulls Eye 1-2-3^® and some left-over Behr Premium Plus^® Water-Based Primer & Sealer No. 436. We determined that a tinted primer would have been better.

Not for the last time did I remind myself that gloss paint is harder to apply than a flat paint. It doesn't seem to cover as well and when using a roller, you get the classic "orange peel" look no matter how short your nap. We used a foam roller and kept things fairly smooth but even so had a difficult time getting a dark, smooth finish. By the time we stopped, I'm fairly certain we had four coats of Behr Premium Plus^® Porch & Floor Paint on.

That reminds me of a quote I heard once upon a time from our CABBS group:

One never really finishes a boat, you just run out of time.

Launch Day

We launched on July 6th, 2009 over at Shadow Lake in the South Chagrin Reservation, part of Cleveland Metroparks. We hauled everything down to the southern end of the lake and got set up (see nearby picture).

The initial hull test (throwing it in and watching for leaks) showed that the seal between the side panels, the bottom and the forward and aft transoms was good.

Then we added the builder (Ben) and let him bob around at the end of a long painter.

He wanted to sail, however, so I climbed in and we sailed around a bit. There wasn't a whole lot of wind but we were able to get it to go in the direction we wanted without paddling. That counts as sailing in my book. I was reminded that the tiller was too long and the boat just isn't designed for a full-sized adult. Certainly it can handle the weight but there just isn't a comfortable spot for a grown-up to rest easy in a boat this size. Ben, though, was in heaven and he got to helm this little craft a few times as we even got up enough speed to get a bit of a bow wave going.

I'll look around for a picture of the raccoon we startled down by the south-east corner spit of land. Barb says it was missing a tail and we did watch it galump (the movement a raccoon makes while running) along the shore and into the woods.

All-in-all it was a great day and I am quite proud of the new boat-builder in our family. Ben, you should be proud of your accomplishment! This is quite a boat and I look forward to letting you mess around in it on Shadow Lake and even LaDue someday soon!

What's next

As I wrote above, you never really finish a boat, you just run out of time. There's currently plenty to accomplish still on this boat:

• We have a coaming to add to the afterdeck and a foredeck to add as well. There's a bit of a problem with the forward transom (aka "bow") that I'd like to address (it's not symmetrical) before adding the foredeck.
• We've considered adding a small skeg to help it track better.
• The current rudder is sufficient but a kick-up rudder (e.g., Irwin Schuster's POP-I Sharpie) would be welcomed.
• The sail is beginning to show its age and could use a bit of duct tape in a couple of spots.
• Oh, and we'd like to add a water line and stencil "Box II" on the stern transom. Ben's got a red paint all picked out for that!
• And of course, more sailing!!

About the design

The Tortoise is a Phil Bolger (1927-2009) design from his book Build the New Instant Boats.

The Hunting of the Snark (an Agony, in Eight Fits) is quite often classified as a nonsense poem.

Utter nonsense, I say. Just because we don't understand each line (or even each word) of Lewis Carroll's poem doesn't mean that it's nonsense.

Besides, much of the poem is quite lucid.

Take, for example, the following lines from The Bellman's Speech (Fit the Second):

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes :
   A thing, as the Bellman
   remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
   When a vessel is, so to
   speak, "snarked."

The author indicates in his preface that the first line in this stanza could be used as perhaps the best evidence of his having written nonsense. And since he is "incapable of such a deed", he goes on to spend the next paragraph "simply explaining how it happened."

Now the bowsprit is clearly depicted in the upper left corner of the nearby image by Henry Holiday taken from the book's frontispiece. It's a spar extending past the bow of the ship, in this case, above the figurehead.

The situation was really quite simple:

The Bellman . . . used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to.

Makes perfect sense to me.* Undoubtedly the stern of their ship is just as plumb as their bow and shaped just as lovely. Our new Box II (a Bolger Tortoise) has (according to the plans) two transoms—the bow differs from the stern only by a few degrees and an inch or so.

So despite the fact that our little boat has never had its non-existent bowsprit mixed up with its homemade rudder, it would be very easy to have happen.

And so I join my voice with the author's in protesting the "nonsense" label. "Uffish" aside, the bowsprit incident alone very clearly shows the serious nature of the poem.

*Except the part about varnishing it once or twice a week: no one is that "morbidly sensitive about appearances"! Especially on my boats.

I just might have to get the t-shirt from Chesapeake Light Craft.

Saturday was the CABBS event at the Sandusky Sailing Club.

The weather reports were calling for cool, cloudy and rain starting around 2pm and thunderstorms later on. Not necessarily a great day to be out on the water.

My helmsman BIG and I launched around 1245 (without getting wet!) and were out on the water by 1300.

The wind was blowing 12 knots from the SSE so we plotted our course to stay within a range (distance and heading) to return easily when the weather got dirty. That meant cruising a north-south line from the Sandusky Sailing Club to Cedar Point. And back. And forth. And back. And forth again.

It's about 1.5 miles from the SSC to the marina at Cedar Point, so we probably got 5 or more miles of water past our keel over the day.

During one of those times back to the SSC, we spotted a buoy near the entrance to their harbor (AKA "Sadler Sailing Basin").

Not wanting to miss anything, we sailed closer and there upon it, in teeny-tiny lettering, it pronounced that we were floating over a "ROCK".

Well, that's one way to advertise it.

At 1400, (since we'd been monitoring the weather reports by radio) we decided we'd used up just about all the good weather available, turned around, waved good-bye to Cedar Point and headed south again.

At 1410, the first rain squall hit us and we put on our foul-weather gear.

At the same time, the wind died. Out came the canoe paddle. BIG helmed and learned to steer small, countering the force of my paddling and adjusting for the bit of wind we did get on occasion.

At 1420, the chase boat arrived and offered a tow. We'd decided that since we had another 40 minutes before things got dirty, we'd continue to paddle and sail and see what would come. I checked in with the land crew on channel 72, let them know we were headed in and continued to paddle.

The wind picked up a bit, I quit paddling and we were at the dock by 1445. Since we the wind was weak and the rain was (apparently) over, we decided to leave Krazy Kat in the water until 1730 when we would pull out. In case the weather improved and we could go back out before then.

So we hung out at the marina/harbor, checking out our hosts' bigger boat and watching the kayaks paddle around. Then we hauled Krazy Kat out (Still managing to keep dry feet! A dry launch and retrieval, both in one day! A new record for us!!!) during one of the bigger rain showers and went in for dinner at 1800.

Krazy Kat is a Phil Bolger design, sometimes called a Tinycat or the Bobcat design. It's similar to a Beetle Cat. I built her from 2003 to 2007 out of marine grade plywood and mahogany porch flooring. And a whole bunch of stainless fasteners.

The cleats, blocks, mast, tiller, mooring cleat, rudder, heck everything is handmade. Well, I bought the anchor and all the sheets. Victorian Outfitters made the sail from a Sailrite kit.

She sails great and can be seen frequently (but not frequently enough) in her home waters of Lake Erie near the Intercity Yacht Club (East Entrance) and sometimes La Due Reservoir.

(Note: I won't be claiming these as Buckeye Trail miles although the path we paddled closely parallels the BT in this part of the Burton Section of the trail. But it is tempting.)

The Upper Cuyahoga is a slow-moving stream with beavers on either side, ducks, towering trees and lots of lilly pads.

Our boating group, CABBS, chose this past Saturday (10/16) as the date of our descent from Eldon Russell Park in Burton, to the 422 bridge (gpx). We would drop our boats at Eldon Russell, stage our vehicles at the restaurant on 422, then leisurely paddle down the river to collect our boats and find some lunch. (View Larger Map)

It was supposed to be a five or more mile trip, but I think it ended up being a little less than three and a half. Whatever the case, the day was just about perfect!

We had a great turnout, a stunningly-blue sky, leaves that were thinking about turning and a quiet paddle down the river.

OK, there was this one point where the duck hunters with the guns didn't take very kindly to us disturbing "their" river.

And the other time when the power boat streamed past with wakes that would wash away a good section of bank. (They actually had the nerve to say that it was a one-way river: their way!) But once we got past those elements, we just about had the river to ourselves.

The Scout Troop that had started before us was just fast enough that we didn't see them until we caught up with them at the 422 bridge where they were having lunch.

We saw evidence of beavers and loads of lily pads. I think it may have been too cool for turtles to get out, for we didn't see any.

Off in the distance, the turkey vultures soared and more than once my son said he saw hawks.

Mostly it was just the river.

We had a wide variety of watercraft on the river. We brought our royalex Mohawk canoe, there was a solo kevlar We-no-nah canoe, a canvas-over-cedar Chestnut (?) canoe, a pair of kayaks, a pink homemade canvas-over-ribs kayak, a homemade bateau canoe and a homemade kayak (CLC?). Maybe more.

It was quite a flotilla.

Did I mention that it was a glorious day?