Day 11, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Spent the better part of the morning massacring otherwise innocent lumber in my indecisiveness about how I wanted to make the spars. I ultimately decided that Doug Fir was going to be too heavy, (after cutting it) so I took a deep breath and turned an absolutely...
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Day 10, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 10, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 8 hrs Well, today was f-ing frustrating. I banged out the floorboards set the risers and removable seats, planning for spars and foils tomorrow and then on target to barely catch a window of weather warm and dry enough to varnish. Then I got in the boat for...
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Day 9: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 9, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 4 hrs. It always seems like the finished hull should be more than half the battle but whenever you get strings and sails and metal bits and oars involved, it’s actually only about 1/3rd of the overall cost and work. Even if you’re a hard core minimalist like...
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I was a salvage savage in the years before I got sick
I was a salvage savage in the years before I got sick. Winter storms on the bay, 50 mph winds, my kayak, 400 feet of old crabbing rope, a 20 oz framing hammer, and a PFD stuffed full of log dogs was my happy place. I’ve waged epic battles scratching furiously for the shore,...
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Day 8: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 8, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 3 hrs. Pleased to see the dip in my keel disappeared overnight. Boat has settled at about 43 inches wide which works for me. Put the goop on today. There’s lots of things you can coat a skin boat with but I’ve never found anything even half as...
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Day 7: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 7, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 4 hrs. Put a skin on the boat today, pretty uneventful, fast and easy. I’ve decided not to build any permanent crossmembers into the canoe for now. I think I’m going to set it up with the same system that I use for the pack canoes so I...
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Today my friends Tom and Kyle of The Weight We Carry arrived at the Mount Everest base camp with their canoes
Today my friends Tom and Kyle of The Weight We Carry arrived at the Mount Everest base camp at 17,598 feet. For the last 20 days they’ve been trekking with 50 lb packs and 30 lb canoes on their heads, completing this astonishing journey to raise money to build a new women’s shelter in...
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Richard’s tandem canoe
While I wait for the oil on the row-canoe to dry, I wanted to share the first full-size double canoe frame to be built with the new canoe building system. This frame was built by Richard in Maryland. It’s 16 feet long 32 inches wide, 12.5 inches deep. This was intended as a fast...
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Day 6: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 6, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Started the day by removing the spreaders and then playing with the shape of the frame by adjusting the width. 44 inches was as far as I could go before it started making unsettling noises. At that width it was 13 inches deep which looks nice. I...
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Day 5: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 5, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Spent the morning making new stems and briefly reconsidered changing my whole stringer strategy and even cut a fair amount of wood before coming to my senses. In the afternoon Liz and I worked together tying on stringers which took about three hours to finish the whole...
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Day 4: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 4, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7 hrs. 15’6 x 40.5”x 15” Late last night I realized that my canoe formula probably still works at this size, I just hadn’t scaled the central ratio up quite far enough. So today I gave it another go with fresh oak and a new base number, and...
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Day 3: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 3, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Decided to back up and rework the boat today. A little narrower a little shallower. 40.5/15 It looks nicer and now I can get all of the ribs out of an 8 foot plank, with the shortest ribs being just below the length of the falloff for...
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Day 2: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 2, Skin on frame rower-sailer. Build time: 6hrs. Made stems, set up the keel, milled ribs, built a new steam box. The hardest part about prototyping new boats is the gnawing uncertainty that is constantly begging me to stop mid-build and change course. Like right now, I’m damn near certain that I’d be...
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Day 1: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
This week I’m taking a wild stab at putting together a little rowing/sailing canoe using the fast easy system that I developed last year for building pack canoes. My hope is to eventually develop a nice little rower that is a lot easier to build than my beloved skin-on-frame Adirondack Guide boats. This boat...
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All the ribs that didn’t become boats last year…
All the ribs that didn’t become boats last year......