Team Northern Atlantic 2011

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