James Caple’s Adventure Rowing Blog

I was at the Wooden Boat Show in Mystic, CT last weekend.  I wanted to see as many wooden boat builds as I could to hopefully give me a clearer mental image of how I wanted to fix-up my dory.  I saw many great wooden boat examples, but I was very distracted by the beauty of Mystic Seaport - the water, all of the boats in motion, the old buildings and stone, not to mention plenty of sunshine.  I bought some white oak with which to fashion frame replacements for the bits I cut out due to rot.  I also found some cool 12 foot whale boat oars which I snapped-up.  I figure I can cut them down to 9 or 8 feet and they should be perfectly fine after a good sanding and lots of varnish.  I got all this for $14!!  I was ecstatic.  Of course when you factor in the cost of the trip, it was not all that cheap, but it felt like a real bargain in any event.

Here are some pictures I took at the Wooden Boat Show:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33047380@N00/sets/72157620608196663/

I have not sanded this much since trying to remove paint from my in-law’s beach house, which had not been painted in like a thousand years.  I’m trying to remove as much paint from the interior of the Dory as possible, although I am not entirely sure why, nor am I sure if all this work will make much difference in the end, as far as overall appearance is concerned.  What I do know is that the site and feel of bare wood is rather pleasing to the eye and hand, and that’s one thing that keeps me sanding.

Another motivator is thinking about how this Dory might one day look.  Don Chapin, the guy I bought my Dory from in Cape Cod, is a boat builder.  He built a custom Whaler he hopes to row on a 100nm trip up in New Foundland this year or the next.  He also built the Wherry shown in the pictures below.  These are beautiful boats, which help feed the imagination.  I also recently started receiving my issues of Wooden Boat Magazine, which is just a tremendous resource for wooden boat enthusiasts.

I found some wood rot near the bow of my boat beneath the 2nd frame.  In addition, I had rot in parts of the white oak frame that I cut away to fully expose the rot in the hull.  I was surprised to find rot here; I totally expect to find more in the stern near the drain plug, but not here.

Rotted Okoume!

Here’s a picture of most of the soft wood scraped out of the hull exposing one of the layers seemingly untouched by rot in the original okoume plywood hull.

Here’s a link to a slide show prepared by an iRower showing their row from Old Orchard Beach, Maine, out to a local island inhabited by seals.  Looks like fun!

http://irow.org/events/09_10/seal_row/index.html

My son and I drove to Annapolis, MD, this afternoon to pick up two sheets of 6mm 4′x8′ okoume plywood from Chesapeake Light Craft.  This type of wood should resist rot and stand-up to salt water better than the plywood from Home Depot.  I figured if I was going to put the time, money and effort into restoring this boat, that I might as well do it as well as I am able.

While at CLC Boats, I got to see some of the boat models in the shop, in person, and boy are they beautiful!  The Skerry and the Noreaster Dory are my favorites.  I got some good boat renovation tips from a guy that works there, so that helped make the trip - that and I got to spend some quality time with my son.

One of my rowing teammates, ‘RowingBeast’, emailed me about these two guys from Cleveland who are converting an old sailboat into a rowing craft so they can row it from Cleveland down to KeyWest, Fla, while working for Habitat for Humanity along the way.  Sweet.

http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2009/05/28/news/nh921696.txt

http://www.habitatcrew.com/Habitat-Crew-Home.php

I had so much to do today.  I bought a half pallet of stone to build a stone wall around a tree in my front yard, from a nearby nursery, Friday evening; I unloaded the stone Friday as well, when I got home.  My back was sore this morning, but I still made it to rowing practice Saturday morning at 0530.  We practiced starts and transitions in our 4+ this morning.  When I got home, I had to pull out all the brick previously ‘placed’ around my front yard tree (by the previous owner), and replace it with the cool looking stone I bought.  Once that was done, I transplanted some hastas in the bed created by the new stone wall, and I planted some dwarf pampas grass at the head of my driveway.  Then, and only then, could i begin work on my boat!

Finally, with other family, ok, yard, matters taken care of, I continued the work of removing the motor well from my Dory.  It took maybe an hour to use the Japanese Saw to cut the motor well free.  I have grown to rather appreciate my new Japanese Saw.  What a handy tool!  My wrists kind of hurt now, however, from sawing so much today, but it’s still a great tool to have.  I was watching a woodworking show on PBS this morning for a bit, and a guy was using a Japanese Saw to help him build a guitar.  Essential woodworking tool, that Japanese Saw, I’d say.  Anyway, with my eldest daughter’s help, I was able to finally cut the motor well free.

Next, I made sure the original plywood template I cut to fit the motor well hole, would fit.  I re-traced the new hole opening on my template, which was still a little big, and cut it to size (with my Japanese Saw).  I then traced the template again on my big sheet of plywood and cut out a copy.  Then, the fun began!

I cut out a piece of fiberglass cloth to fit over the plywood template face.  I mixed 7 squirts of resin and hardner in a plastic cookie container (I ate the remainder of the cookies contained therein for lunch today), mixed some white powder thickener, and spread some of the epoxy resin on the face of one of the template boards.  Next, I spread the fiberglass cloth on top of the resin-coated template face and spread more epoxy resin using a plastic spreader, making sure to keep the cloth smooth, clear, and sufficiently epoxy resin coated.  Then, I coated one face of the other template cut-out, and placed it on top of the first one.  I put two cans of paint on top of the wood-fiberglass sandwhich to help keep some pressure on it while the epoxy resin cures.  I’ll check on it in the morning to see if it sticks together or not :-).  This will serve as my plug for the hole left by the removal of the motor well.

Next steps are to fix some cleats to the inside of the boat over the motor well hole so I can afix my template over/inside the motor well hole.  I’ll cover the cleats with wax paper or plastic, place the template over and inside the hole where it will be held by the cleats, and fill the cracks between the template and the hull with thickened epoxy resin.  I’ll sand, once cured, then cover the seams with fiberglass tape, cover with epoxy, sand and then prime.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

My gunning dory is approximately 12 years old.  Her hull is okoume plywood and her ribs are white oak.  She’s 18 feet long tip-to-tip; the flat part of her hull is about 12 feet long.  At her widest part, her beam is about 58 inches.

After 3 to 4 hours of work on the boat thus far, I’ve hit the entire hull with the palm sander.  I started out using 150 grit sandpaper on her port side with the intent of just roughing and smoothing the paint up a bit.  On the starboard side, however, I tried 100 grit sandpaper and realized I could easily take the top layer of paint off revealing the white primer below, so I made that my new sanding goal for the hull.  I need to go back over the port side with 100 grit sandpaper to take the top layer of paint off there as well.

I started working on taking the motor well out in earnest tonight.  I first traced the top of the motor well onto a piece of cardboard.  I cut the cardboard out and traced that onto a piece of $8 1/4″ 2×4 plywood I bought at Home Depot.  I cut the plywood template out using the Japanese hand-saw I just bought from Chesapeake Light Craft.  I then taped the plywood template to the hull of the boat, covering the motor well hole, and traced the inside of the motor well onto the plywood template.  This should give me a fairly close approximation of the original motor well hole size.

Unfortunately, while beginning to cut out the motor well using the Japanese saw, I discovered the wood turned from yellow to black, which may indicate that the hull near the stern of the boat is rotten.  If it is, I’m not sure what I will do about it.  I guess I will need to try to replace a large section of the hull with okoume plywood - that will add a week or month or two to my non-existent schedule…

I picked up up a copy of ‘Building Classic Small Craft’, by John Gardner, at the library this afternoon.  I’ve flipped through the book and read a few of the introductory pages, and am finding I am quite intrigued by the character that was John Gardner.  Apparently, Mr. Gardner did not like the Capitalist excesses of the 20’s and 30’s and became a Marxist and union organizer, only to become disenchanted with the Marxist school of thought also, sometime later.  I love the epithet of calling rowing oars ‘Poverty Sticks’ or ‘Agony Sticks’, as mentioned in Greg Foster’s piece on page xi of the In Memoriam section of Gardner’s ‘Building Classic Small Craft’.  Whether you are training for the Olympic Sculling Team or building wooden row boats for a living, the art of rowing can indeed lead to a life of poverty.  But there seems to be a sense of peace and satisfaction in the pursuit.  I wonder if I have the right stuff to pursue the life of a rowing monk?

Two weekends ago I drove up to Cape Cod, MA to buy a Gunning Dory from a boat builder up there.  By the way, the tolls up and back (between Northern Virginia and Cape Cod, MA) pulling a single axle trailer were absolutely outrageous ($23.50 after the Tappan Zee Bridge, for example)!  If you are planning on making a trip up that way pulling a trailer, beware.

I now have my Dory out in the shed and have begun the process of getting to know her a bit, as it were, sanding some of the rough spots over whilst I ponder a renovation plan.  When it comes to boats and wood and fiberglass and epoxy I really am quite clueless.  It should be a wonderful learning experience.