Draft post from the 18th I forgot about:

Whoo, productive weekend. I bought me first sledgehammer and tore out some of the ugly cinderblock wall so we can replace it with a slightly less ugly cinderblock wall, one that's on our side of the property line. Busted up six feet of concrete path—now I've got a huge pile of cinderblock and concrete to get rid of. Of which to get rid. Of which rid of which to get. Anyway, busy, yes. I cut out the panels for canoe the first and glued the butt blocks on. My epoxy and fiberglass tape should get here on Friday, so I'll be close to finished by the end of the weekend. Most importantly, though, I bought an angle grinder, which is just about the coolest power tool ever. I have no idea why anyone would ever need a reciprocating saw.

It might be a good idea, though, to get a sanding wheel for the grinder (and maybe even a sanding grinder that runs at sanding speed instead of cutting speed). Trying to reshape my cuts with the metal cutting wheel has been kind of silly: it burns the wood, and makes ripples instead of smoothing out the lines. The sander isn't helping much, but that's probably because I'm cheap and don't replace the paper every minute. Anyway, I got the side panels cut, and instead of trying to loft out a twelve foot by one inch curve, I just plotted ten or so points on a parabola and drew straight lines between. It's more than likely within the half inch tolerance claimed on the plans.

I don't know quite how much I shaved off the edges of the sides and the bottom for symmetry's sake, but the edge of the bottom is around 4 inches shorter than the corresponding edges of the side panels, both fore and aft. Oh. Y'know, I just noticed the bottom half-panel on the plans is 6' 3 1/2" long—I bet I cut it at an even six foot. That would explain why the last bend in the loft was so much sharper than the rest. You're supposed to mark that, people! Hoo boy. Well, I guess I'll just go back and scale everything else down 5% to match and see how it all fits together. Keep doing that, and I'll be paddling down the river in a three foot long canoe. I'll save a bundle on epoxy!

Ten rolls shot on the boat trip, all the picks scanned, and here's the first print out the door:



I'll finish these up (it was overcast most of the trip, so the photos are generally pretty blah), then get back to the 15 or so rolls of China I have left. Also build a couple canoes and a sailboat. And so on..

So I'm building a canoe. Two, actually. I bought plywood for the first one last night, so I'm already about halfway done, right? I don't remember what made me think of it, must have been Googling about boatbuilding, and I found out about the "stitch and glue" method: basically, just take plywood sheets cut out in the right shapes, epoxy the surfaces, bend the panels and lash the edges together with wire or even duct tape, epoxy the seams, and you've got a watertight vessel. Add a fiberglass coat for extra points.

Being slightly obsessive about these kinds of things, I've spent all my free time this week sourcing materials and comparing plans. Instead of spending a lot of money surfacing the appropriately-named Cheap Canoe (PDF), I'll use that as a trainer, then build the nicer Chenoa and glass that. With fiberglass and epoxy from US Composites it looks like it'll cost around $200 to build:

2 sheets 1/4" fir plywood: $40
Gallon epoxy: $50
8 yd. Fiberglass cloth: $40
50 yd. Fiberglass tape: $26
Plans: $30

After that, I'll be a master wooden boat craftsman, and I'll start on my 100-foot square-rigger. Okay, maybe not, but I plan on building a little cruising sailboat to tool around the river.

Yes, I'm going through ship withdrawal.

Lukas flew back to Switzerland on Monday; the Lady left, too. I didn't get back to the ship in time to pick up my training manual, but I did get to the hospital just in time to see Lukas off.

Needless to say, my two weeks' sailing training was an amazing experience—fun, exhausting, overwhelming, exciting, and so on. There's better adjectives out there, but they're not coming to mind. I wish I could go right back for another haul, longer this time—a month sounds about right—but I do have to show up to work every once in a while to keep my job. I'm slowly getting used to life on land again. The biggest change isn't the excess of privacy or sleep, it's my metabolism which hasn't shifted gears from climbing-up-rigging to sitting-at-computer: I'm eating normal for land life but I'm still hungry pretty much all the time.

Best moment of the trip? Standing at salute on the fore t'gallant yard, 70 feet or so up, at the mouth of the Columbia on a sunny morning, cormerants flying in huge Vs out to sea while we fire a 21 gun salute to the Chinook Nation. A close second was watching the Rose Festival fireworks from the main t'gallant, halfway between the water and the deck of the I-5 bridge, river below me full of little boats bobbing in the reflections of the fireworks. After that, everything else—so many things I'd never seen or done before.