Cole
Harbour Messaboat
WWW or
World Wide Woodheads
SWBANS
at the Boat Show
February 17th-20th, 2005
This year during the Halifax International Boat Show at Exibition Park, our association will be building a Windsprint sailboat over a three and a half day period. This boat is funded by Greg Little of Mahone Bay and will be built by our members to promote SWBANS at this very public event.
A bit on the boat. It is a Phil Bolger design, 16 feet long with a beam of 4 feet 6 inches. It is a double ender type that carries a hugh sail of 113 sq. ft.. Construction is mostly marine mahogany ply glued with epoxy. This is one of the racing classes SWBANS supports at the Mahone Bay Wooden Boat Festival Small Craft Races, the other being the Bolger Light Schooner (as well as a general open class).
This is a fun boat to put together and we are now looking for members to commit to times to help build or promote SWBANS and interpet the project to the public as they walk by our booth. Ryerson and Annie will organize the people as well as help Ken Lamb the weekend before pre-cut the pieces. Any volunteers for marking, measuring and pre-cutting (there could be beer) in Ken's new heated shop?
Watch your emails
for updates as the event draws nearer.
To get your name down to help, please email Ryerson at: ryerson@mac.com
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Membership
List Update
It is once again that time of the year where I must update the membership email
list. Those of you who have rejoined our fun and active association, thank you
and we hope to give you another year of enjoyable Newsletters and enjoyable,
interesting events.
Those that have choosen to not stay with us, I wish you luck and safe boating
wherever you should be. The email you recieve that this Newsletter is ready
for download (if you haven't re-joined SWBANS) will be your last. We don't want
to keep bothering past members with updates etc., but please feel free to stay
in touch and join in our fun when you can.
Thanks to all once again.
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Deconstructing
M.V. Pappy
By Greg Silver
Since we moved to D'Escousse about 7 years ago, we've had lots of room, and
more much time, for the boats in our lives. In that period a few have come and
gone, latterly including our dearest Queen Celeste, a 21'6" Cape Cod Catboat
which is now with a new owner in New Jersey. Our 17' Wittholz cats were also
sold, one to my brother in Ontario, and another to a new owner at the RNSYS
in Halifax (we are clearly out of the charter business now!). Although we replaced
all these cute little cats with one larger fiberglass cat (more suitable for
our longer summer cruises) we're still invested in wood, with a pair of VK's,
and an Elegant Punt adding character to the remainder of the fleet, which is
mainly rubber and plastic.
This past summer Denise left me alone for a week or so, while she went off to the Congres mondial, and I found myself looking at a boat for sale down at the local wharf. As it turns out, we now own her. ‘Pappy' is a 24' cape-style fishing boat built about 20 years ago, we think, in Sherbrooke. She is plank on frame, made largely from juniper and was fished until about 5 years ago, when she changed hands and the new owner added a plywood and polyester house on top, for recreational use in his retirement. Not pretty work, but she is an indigenous craft and there is some inner beauty to the way she carries herself.
I found the hull to be in pretty good shape, all considered, and most of the topsides were strong, albeit a bit rough around the edges. I did find some movement in a plywood floor panel in the aft stbd cockpit. After an enjoyable summer afloat, we hauled her and got her into my shed, and I wanted to take a closer look at the whole structure. What I found is shown pretty well in the pictures: in removing the floor I found some sloppy framing, which had been adapted after removal of the stern-drive engine (she now has an outboard). Nothing serious, my plan is to reframe this so as to allow installation of a strong floor with good size hatches – formerly there was no way to really get at most of the bilge.
I was a bit concerned about some soft wood on the gunwale, so I started removing the covering boards, enough to see some black rot at the top of a couple of ribs. I sawed off the gunwale covering boards and removed the cover over the big knee in the aft stbd quarter. Here I found a good demonstration of what happens when rainwater gets under the cover and sits around too long. The damage isn't too bad at this point, and I think I can sister some short sections along the ribs; and use an epoxy saturation and build-up to stabilize the knee.
The floor framing and rib sisters will be milled from local juniper, hopefully this week, and I'll dry them in the basement for a month or two, or hopefully this will give me enough time to get it all done by spring. I've got all new plywood to replace the cockpit floor deck, as the former panels are soft and black on their undersides and starting to get squishy. The new plywood will be thoroughly coated in epoxy, and the top surface will be glassed as well. I was pleased to see the whole inner bilge in good shape, cleaned it up, and have started to soak Pentox on the inner plank faces, ribs and frames.
Once we get this structural
rebuilding done, I hope to replace all the wiring, put some basic electronics
on board, and gussy her up a bit, to make it nicer for visiting yuppies and
our moms.
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Hello Ryerson and Annie
The end of the year was pretty exciting with Maren being very busy and the
blizzard after Christmas.
I had build a bow frame
cover for our boat in November and that December hurricane was a test for its
strength. I know now a bit better how to build them. I had 2 frames broken plus
5 others fractured only on the north side of the 40'x16'x16' building. The wind
was just so strong and put so much pressure on the plastic that the frames broke.
I am almost done with the repairs. I put more diagonals, sistered the fractured
frames and replaced the 2 broken frames. I still have to go up to the ridge
and repair the gashes in the plastic so it's air and watertight again. Not so
easy on a curved building with a straight ladder but I'll figure something to
get there. I had put a little fan to blow the 2 layers of plastic and it was
working beautifully...
I'd like to organize sometime an outing on the South Cove in the western part of the Lunenburg Bay behind Corkum Island but I have never sailed there. I know that there are quite a lot of narrows and currents and I should go at least once myself before. I usually sail in the Lunenburg Bay with my Teal. The boats are still on the water's edge in a long and shallow cove outside of Corkum Island not far from home. I was still sailing on sunny and calm days before Xmas and I am hoping to have more sails in the winter. Last time I was out with Yari (4) for an hour and he enjoyed it although the temperature was below zero. I would very much like to come to the boat show in February to help build the Wind Sprint, hopefully with Joshua and Esther, but that will depend on "Maren the midwife" and the car availability.
Cheers
Thierry
Hello to everyone from Boston! It has been too cold and snowy here for sailing
or water activities. So Captain Larry and I headed off to the Southwest to spend
a week in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Not much water there, but beautiful mountains,
mesas, and buttes.
We did drink a lot of water when we hiked around Chaco Canyon, where the ancient Puebloans built their ceremonial and trade center. Captain Larry ate buffalo burgers while we listened to a Native American flute player at our hotel in Santa Fe. We also participated in a special ceremony in my friend's kiva, which is an underground chamber traditionally used by Native Americans.
We had dinner one night
with my friends and business colleagues. One of them sailed in the Pacific out
of San
Francisco. We all had a good time comparing sea stories. We invited him and
his partner to join us in Mahone Bay this year...so we may have a welcome addition
to the club!
Stay warm,
Laura
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Cole
Harbour Messaboat
By Ryerson Clark
Annie and I were delighted once again to show off one of our favorite boating
areas, the Cole Harbour Salt Marsh. This area is full of wildlife and birds.
It is right on the cities edge, yet you feel like you are far removed from the
hussle and bussle. You can go out towards the sea and enjoy a beautiful sandy
beach (Rainbow Haven) or go inland to marsh grass, mud flats and small craggy
islands. Dinner can be dug from the clam flats if you are at the correct time
of the year and the tide is low (don't forget your pot).
The day the association
was there we had to fight the tide (because of timing) but with careful planning
you can make it work for you. The day was sunny and warm with a good crowd,
including a few teal saiboats to compliment the kayaks.
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The first is a "Mouse
Boat". Now, I did some research on these, the plans are free and varied
to size needed!
There are variations called "flying mouse, hotrat, flattie mouse and micro
mouse to name a few."
Here is Shaun Payment of the SCUZBUMS sailing downwind in his. This boat comes
from one sheet of plywood and looks fun and easy to build. Maybe next year at
the winter boat show we should build two or three. More Mouse Boats and free
plans:
http://home.clara.net/gmatkin/photoalbum.htm
Rob from an Australian club sent me these pictures (below) and says "The child is one of my grandsons, Spencer. I was minding him and wanted to work on my boat. The boat is 14' adaption of a 1930's flat bottom, wineglass transom punt I saw in a museum. I tried another method of preventing the hull buckling by two flat sections and a curved centre. I also added a keel for tracking
We are not alone out
there, so if you are traveling to far shores, contact me to see if we have sister
clubs to look in on.
Ryerson
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The
Boat Shed
What our members are making
An Eun Mara Update.
Progress on our as-yet unnamed Eun Mara is proceeding, albeit at a slower pace due to weather issues. If you can imagine, it's not all that easy to work with the wind blowing 50 knots all around, and no power!
The structure of the boat is basically complete and we're now working on trim, hatches, fairing, etc. The spars are the biggest job left, but I haven't decided whether to make them solid as the plans specify, or hollow as other SWBANS members have suggested. Seems like a good enough excuse to me to not get going on them!
In order to continue making progress and not be held back by the winter weather (for those few days when Nova Scotia Power is actually able to supply us with electricity), we've started a new job. Now, in addition to being amateurs doing the job of a boatbuilder, we're amateurs doing the job of a sailmaker!
We ordered sail kits from Sailrite, along with a sewing machine and are busy making sails for the boat. So far we're very impressed with the quality of the kits and service from Sailrite. We simply sent the sail measurements to Sailrite along with our specific requirements (reef points, luff attachment, etc) and they computer designed and cut the panels for the sails. They sent a complete kit which included not only the panels, but also grommets, luff wire, reinforcing patches and webbing, even a needle and thread, along with comprehensive instructions.
The biggest problem we have is finding enough space in our small house to handle the sails, even though they are relatively small. Because the panels are all cut and marked for stitching, there is no need to lay them out on a gymnasium sized floor. Rather, you can keep the sail rolled up from either end exposing only the seam to be sewn (Dead Sea scroll-like). Even so, you have to have enough room for the full foot of the sail to run through the machine, which means you need a clear space the length of the foot both in front and behind the machine (similar to needing 12' either side of a table saw in order to rip a 12' long board).
The recommended solution is to put the machine on the floor in a hallway or some other spot with lots of room, but with two dogs as helpers, we didn't think that would work very well. Instead we use our dining room table as a work surface and shift it and the machine around the house to line up the necessary space.
So far, it's working out
nicely and we are quite enjoying building the sails. Having said that, I don't
think that any of the sailmakers reading this need to fear for their jobs! Still
looking forward to a spring launch!