As I mentioned in a previous post, Dan is building a boat. This will be his third. The first washed away in a storm in North Carolina. The second is in the backyard. It’s rather heavy (four strong people are required to lift it but only three can fit in it – awkward) and was last taken out on the Neponset in 2009. No disrespect to my husband but it’s a very impressive floating box. This new boat, however, is a whole new can of worms.
He spent weeks agonizing over the design and grumpily stalking the aisles at Home Depot. But now he’s hit his stride. After buying and cutting the wood, he jerry-rigged a steamer out of a tea kettle and insulating foam and has been steaming pieces of cedar, white oak, and spruce and then bending them around a frame. Now he’s on to assembling everything while using kevlar twine to reinforce the ribs. Then, I think he’s doing something with the prow, adding a few more ribs, doing something to the back (I know, not the appropriate nautical term), buying nylon to create a skin, and then doing something to the skin to make it water resistant. And then there will be oarlocks and a deck and some seats and a sail.
That’s about all I’ve got figured out for the moment but I think I’ve been doing a really good job of paying attention in spite of my deficits. (I’ve probably read one pirate book to Dan’s ~500. Also, as an indication of how much I don’t know about this topic, I thought “prow” was “prowl” until I googled it and discovered hardly any reasonable returns when searching “prowl” and “boat”.)
Here are a few pics to give you a sense of the awesomeness:
Dan built a frame so that he could bend the wood ribs after steaming them
Starting to put the pieces together
A few days later and a lot of progress
Clamps, boat, frame, Dan
Another view of the boat as of last weekend
Tags: Boat, Hobbies, North Carolina, Pictures, Pirates
