Team Northern Atlantic 2011

The more I move forward on my dory renovation project, the more apprehensive I get about making costly, irreversible mistakes.  I am reading as much as I can on the web about boat building and wooden boat restoration, but it is all taking a while to really set in.  Like this past week, I was doing my first bit of serious fiberglass repair whereby a fracture in the starboard strake needs a fixing.  Since the boat is currently resting on her bottom, I am only doing inside work at the moment, but this particular fix, I am told, requires dishing the wood out of the fracture some on both sides using a sander, then filling the dished-out region with epoxy-resin containing silica and wood powder for gluing and wood bonding properties.  I was then told to cover this with saran wrap to keep the mixture from running down the side of the boat and to help the mixture cure flat without runs or wrinkles.  That did not work at all, and in fact, the heat from the epoxy-resin caused bubbles to form in the saran wrap, which resulted in bubbles in the cured epoxy-resin.  Bummer!  Not an unrecoverable mistake, but still.  To fix this error, I sanded the cured epoxy-resin smooth.  I then tilted the boat on her side, and applied the epoxy-resin again, but this time without the saran wrap, hopefully letting gravity settle the mixture into a smooth surface.  I have not checked the result of this yet – hope it worked.

Another annoying mistake I have made is in the purchase of materials.  First, I needed some okoume ply to repair the hole left in my dory by the extraction of the existing motor well.  Since my hull is 1/2″ thick, I decided to buy 1/4″ ply and glue the pieces together to fix the hole.  I also wanted to use okoume to build end decks with so I went ahead and bought 2 x 4′ x 8′, 1/4″ plywood sheets.  Once I got the material home, I started looking at Gardner’s plan details a little better, which call for 3/8″ – 1/2″ plywood for the end decks; moreover, 3/8″ ply is also called for in the construction of the centerboard box.  In retrospect, I should have bought a smaller piece of 1/4″ inch ply, and I should have bought the 9mm, or 3/8″, ply for end decking and centerboard construction.  This was a pretty costly mistake.

Yet another material purchase mistake was made yesterday.  I went to Home Depot to buy some brass screws and to see if they carried in lumber stock I might be able to use for thwarts and such.  A 2′x1″ piece of Red Oak caught my fancy.  I thought: ‘Man, that would look pretty all sanded and varnished as breast hooks!’.  So I bought it.  This morning, while reading through Thorne’s Chamberlain Dory Renovation page again that Red Oak is not suitable for boat construction.  Further Googling revealed that Red Oak is prone to rot, not rot resistant like White Oak, and it’s strength to weight ratio is not very high.  Shoot!

Hopefully, I will learn enough, quickly enough, to get through this boat renovation in time to get her on the water while the weather is still warm this year, and without breaking the bank!  I am, however, enjoying working with my hands.  I am also getting a mental workout trying to spatially understand plans and arrange boat parts in my head, manage the project timeline and cost, etc.  I also feel a bit of an artisan emerging from within myself, if not in actual skill, at least in the appreciation for the art and craft of wooden boat building.

I’ve been reading Thorne’s Chamberlain Dory Skiff Renovation page over and over again, and each time I do, I glean another important tid-bit of information.  It’s a really interesting read for any wooden boat renovaters out there, especially if you’re working on a Chamberlain-style Dory.

When I got home from vacation this afternoon, I discovered, to my delight, that I had received a copy of John Gardner’s ‘The Dory Book’.  I ordered a used copy from Amazon.  In this book, Mr. Gardner discusses in detail how to build Dories in general and the gunning dory, specifically.  I wish there were more gunning dory pictures in this book, but some is better than none.  Also nice is the historical background on these fascinating boats.

As an aside, it looks like I am going to devote considerable energy to following Mr Gardner’s plans as carefully as possible, to include the installation of a center board box.  Some advice I received: “Any sea-going rowboat should have some way to get a grip on the water. For most beachable hull forms, that means a centerboard.”  I was just going to put a sliding seat in my boat and be done with it so I could be off and rowing as quickly as possible.  Now, however, I think I am going to stick with Mr. Gardner’s plans and make a fixed seat row boat out of her, with the ability to sail if so desired.  I plan to build a centerboard box with centerboard, install fixed-seat thwarts, make other arrangements to facilitate mast for sailing, then make necessary repairs and paint in order to get my Chesapeake row in this year – hopefully by September.  Then maybe next year, I’ll make the mast and things for sailing her.  See how it goes.

As the end of the Indian Ocean Rowing Race 2009 draws to an end, teams are already preparing for the Indian Ocean Race in 2011.  Near the end of June, I sent an email to the Ocean Row Girls to inquire about their Woodvale Pairs Boat kit and assembly, as I was a bit curious what it was like to build a Woodvale Challenge Pairs boat from kit.  The Woodvale pairs boat can be built by participants in a Woodvale sponsored ocean rowing race event.  The Ocean Row Girls are building their boat to row in the 2011 Indian Ocean Rowing Race held by Woodvale Challenge Events.  The Challenge Pairs Kit comes in plywood form as cutouts, which must be extracted from the Lloyds Register, marine grade plywood sheets.  The piece-parts are assembled and the boat is then glassed, sanded, primed, sanded some more, painted, sanded some more, sanded a little more, fitted-out with required kit, etc.  The Ocean Row Girls estimate the build process to well exceed 600 woman hours of work.

The Ocean Row Girls team is composed of Madeleine Steer and Christine Bunting.  They live in Salcombe, South Devon, in the United Kingdom.  Christine grew up, as I am told, with her Dad running the Lincombe Boat Yard in Salcombe.  So she is no stranger to the basic principles involved in boat building, even though she does not proclaim to be a boat builder herself.  In fact, the boat build began in the Lincombe Boat Yard.  Once the boat was built and glassed, however, they moved her to a barn in Bigbury where they continue to work on her – she still needs to be painted and kitted-out with electrics, electrical equipment, rowing positions, and other essential equipment ad naseum.

‘Madie’, as Madeleine is called, said the kit does require occasional consultation from a professional boat builder as some parts of the kit’s build process are not clear to novice builders.  Christine, as I understand it, did most of the work on the initial build; she worked full time assembling the kit and sheathing the hull in fiberglass, with Madie helping 1 to 2 days a week, from October of 2008 to February of 2009.  Says Madie, “We also spent a long time scratching our heads over the ‘kit that don’t fit’ but it was worth it as we know exactly what we have in terms of the boat we’re going to be rowing and we can customise it to our own needs. No heads (loo) though unfortunately!”.

Some pictures of the Ocean Row Girls boat build are below.  There are many pros and cons associated with building a Challenge Pairs Plywood Boat, versus buying a used boat, versus having a glass or kevlar boat built.  It’s up to each team to do their own analysis in determining the calculus for their optimal boat solution when entering a Woodvale Ocean Race.  The Ocean Row Girls have chosen a route, in building their boat from kit, which bestows a certain degree of boat building skills, allows them to become intimately familiar with the bones and inner workings of their boat, and undoubtedly provides an awesome sense of accomplished in simply having built her.  Best wishes to these two Indian Ocean Rowing aspirants!