Construction Journal

This morning Maggie let me know that she was upset with me by licking my foot while I was asleep, which, when incorporated into a waking dream makes for some extremely disturbing mental imagery. Looking back over the web site, I realize how remiss I've been in not giving Maggie her due. This photo shows Maggie after I told her I was cancelling my American Express Sign & Travel (tm) account. She was upset, but hell, it made no sense whatsoever to pay for the extra service when I'm not even using it! I'm sure she'll get over it, but she's positively passionate when it comes to personal finances.

This morning was a Monday morning, and like most Mondays, it was very hard to face another day of work. When I'm feeling this way it helps to wander into the garage and take a look at the boat, whatever state it's in, and imagine how it will look on the bay with sails full and water splashing, and me with a huge grin on my sun burned face, nimbly tacking back and forth between the jet skis and the aircraft carriers. I then head back to the dock where, after a series of very tricky, enormously skilled maneuvers, I bring her in for a perfect downwind landing. The many onlookers are momentarily stunned into silent awe at this exraordinary display of seamanship and chutzpah, but they quickly recover and applause descends upon me as I tie her painter to the cleat. I graciously accept my due and saunter to the bar for a well-earned cool one.

After I've pondered that scenario for a few moments, it becomes remarkably easy to climb into the pickup truck and head off to another day at work. Perhaps you need a short visit to the garage to commune with my boat too? I understand. Here she is.

First, an apology is due to those of you following my progress. I have been terribly remiss in updating my web site, even though work has gone on apace, in fits and starts, mostly. I've been sucked in to work recently, so I have had to choose between updating the site or working on the boat, and the site lost.

I'm finally doing something to the interior of the boat besides scrape-scrape-scraping, which will no doubt result in some more scraping. I'm gluing the inwales into place. These members will add some stability to the hull while providing a place for the seats (or thwarts) to rest upon. I'm using mahogany, but not by plan. I'm only using it because I happen to have a plank of sufficient length to rip out the inwale from. This is typical of how I've proceeded on this boat, and it's coming out pretty okay so far, so I don't guess I'll change my approach.

Here I've fashioned the breasthook from a single piece of wood. Iain's book says that I should use two pieces of wood fastened together, but that just seemed too hard. In most cases, when I'm faced with a choice of trying to jiggle two pieces of wood together with a decent joint, I'll come up with some way to eliminate the joint. This is because I'm genetically incapable of fine joinery. This piece is kind of interesting in that I made the whole thing much thicker than the space for it, then after gluing it in place, I shaped it to have a nice crown. I like the way it looks.