New boat project

It appears a Romanian magazine has been issuing a supplement containing a model boat kit. My mom has been collecting the pieces over the past year and now I have over 60 booklets and boat pieces to put together.  It's turned out to be great project for Sebastien and I, though Sebastien gets easily bored.

Here's the kit (all in a box):

Here are the books (stories about boats):

And the instruction manuals:

And here's how far we've gotten:

Stay tuned for more boat pictures as we progress in our adventure!

BTW, the ship we're building is San Giovanni Battista, a 17th century galleon built in Toscana by the Medicis. 

Spring refit

It's time to bring the boat out on the water again, and this time I hope we'll be doing more boating and less working on the boat. I've put another coat of paint on the outside. It took > 1/2 a pint of paint, as well as a little more than 2 hours of work to wet-sand the whole thing, clean it with lacquer thinner, and apply the paint. Add another 1/2 hour of touch-ups to fix all the paint 'holidays' and add a bit more to the bow and skeg, and it's pretty much a 3 hour job. I also added a rudder lock to keep the rudder from popping up while sailing stern-heavy (the okume plywood is really light and both rudder and daggerboard keep popping out).

Now the big question is whether I should add more varnish to the boat. For starters I'll probably do the top side of the daggerboard, the rudder stock and the boat rails (and maybe the mast step and partner), i.e. the parts that take most punishment. The rest may have to wait, though I'm tempted to experiment with sand in varnish to make the bottom of the boat less slippery.

Winter storage

With long delay, here are some pictures of the winter storage arrangement.

First, however, a nifty sail/spar/oar bag made by my mother in law from Sunbrella fabric. It closes with snap buckles and the straps are aligned with the roof rack so I can attach the bag to the rack with small pieces of rope. Obviously, the whole bundle also gets cinched down with webbing straps.

The great news is that I no longer have to play around with various pieces of rope to try to get the spars bundled up before transportation

 

Here's the boat on saw horses (the same ones I've built and used throughout the construction). If you squint you can see the first snow of the season on Halloween day.

 

Here are vents I've made for the bow and stern compartments. Simply big tubs of yogurt with the bottom cut off and window screen put in to keep critters out. The tubs fit just right and quite snuggly within the access ports. This should keep the boat aerated and dry and critter free.

 

And here's a rack for the long spars that simply rests on battens screwed to the saw horse. The transverse pieces are dowels that can rotate to make it easier to slide the spars on and off. I've finished the rack with a bit of linseed oil to delay the inevitable effect of the weather.