Yesterday and today I had the first half of my beginner's sailing class: three hours each day on the water, pretty much left to ourselves to figure out how the sailboat, a Vanguard 15, works. It's sure a lot easier than tall ship sailing: where the Lady has 168 lines, these have three. Two sails versus eleven. And me at the helm instead of a real sailor.

There wasn't much wind yesterday, so we puttered back and forth, caught the breezes as they showed up, and even had a chance to practice "kinetics", where you rock the boat back and forth to scull the sail through the still air, moving the boat very slowly forward. As calm as it was, we did manage to capsize once when both of us forgot to cross the boat on a tack. Today, though, we had a strong, steady wind, and a lot more frantic sailing. My brain is still buzzing from all the speed, and my body thinks it's still on the boat—the couch is heeling hard, about to throw me off. It's not very comfortable. Two more capsizes (capsizings?) today: on the first, I held on until the mast hit the water, then I fell on the boom and got a nice long scrape up my leg from the boom vang block. Also, someone who'd never seen people learning to sail saw us turn over and called 911, prompting a visit from the Fire Department and Coast Guard. They were very friendly, and asked our instructor to give them a warning next time we go out. On the second, we "turtled", got the boat turned all the way upside down, but I managed to right it by standing on the rail.

Four hours in the sun learning to sail, and I'm exhausted. But between the temperature (currently 89 in the house, and feels about the same outside) and the body memory of falling off the boat looping over and over in my head, I wonder if I'll get any sleep..

I spent monday sanding and painting and painting and sanding, and I dare say I have most of the canoe work behind me.

	Ground down all the edges of the breasthooks/decks; everything's nice and bevelly now.
I'm not sure if I'll leave it angular like this, or smooth everything round. I'll cut handles into the breasthooks, giving me an excuse to buy a jigsaw.
	Just add seats and paddles, and it's ready for the water!

With the rubrails and breasthooks on, all of the structural components are done. It feels like I'm just a day or two from finished, but there's plenty of small things to keep me busy: epoxy on all the new bits, plus fiberglass tape reinforcement, seats, paddles (got the grips on and they look quite smart—just need to figure out what to do for the blades), sanding, sanding, no end of sanding, then some paint if I'm ever done sanding: green (viz. "lush veranda") on the outside, white on the in. Rubrails and breasthooks bright. Oh, and I have to figure out what to do about grab handles and painters. And a thwart in the middle? Yes, perhaps a thwart.

Here's a recap of the hot canoe building action (it's been poking into the 90s for the last week) so far:

	After ripping the panels, I realized I cut the bottom at six feet each half instead of six plus change so I scaled everything else down to fit. Note the new cut lines on the side panels. And the cup of coffee to help me pay better attention.
With the dimensions set right, the panels are bent into shape and stitched together with baling wire. Once everything is in place, fillets—thick runs of epoxy mixed with milled wood fiber—are laid down on the inside seams, then topped with fiberglass tape and more epoxy. (I missed a photo of that step.)
		When the fillets have cured, in around 24 hours, I turn the canoe over and fill in the gaps with more thickened epoxy. That's a respirator there: epoxy is not so good for the breathing in.
The butt joint on the bottom was very uneven, so I've filled it the best I can. I have to remind myself that this is just the trainer canoe, and I'm learning by my mistakes. Looks like I've learned plenty, then!
		Lots of sanding makes everything smooth. Yay. Sanding.
After I decide I'm polishing a turd, I lay fiberglass tape on the outside seams and lots of epoxy to make everything watertight.
	...and shiny! Sadly, though, I'll sand the shiny off and cover it with paint. One, it's plenty shiny but not very smooth, with lots of little bumps from air bubbles. Two, epoxy degrades easily in UV light, so it has to be covered with something. If the wood looked really great, I'd go for a transparent UV coat, but, Three, the outside face of the plywood is covered with those football-shaped knot patches. Bleh.
Home Depot only had 10 foot runs of 1"x2", so I had to scarf (shave out long diagonal joints and glue together) the rubrails yesterday. It saved me the trouble of figuring out how to get a 14 foot stick of wood home and it gave me a chance to try scarfing, so I'm not complaining. The scarf seems to hold, so this morning I glued the scarfed rubrails to the boat. The circles are cheapo clamps: PVC pipe cut into Cs. Oh, and it looks like I primed the inside at some point. You know what that means: more sanding! Woo!
		I'll be grinding off the end of the rubrail anyway, so I might as well poke holes in it and stitch it up—then I can take off the clamps and glue on the breasthooks. I think fancy canoes have the breasthooks set in, flush with the gunnels or maybe set under inwales, but I this works for me.