Busy Busy Busy

Hi all, been awhile, so here goes......

The Susan Skiff is coming along. Here she is with the bottom planking completed, the skeg, keel, and rubrails installed. You can see she is now off the mold. We've got a lot of the interior work done as well, but I don't have a picture yet.


Curtis and Dylan poured the keel for the Herreshof 12 1/2. Pretty cool process. All you really do is heat up some liquid, open a valve, and let it run into a mold. What makes it fun is that you are heating up 400 lbs of lead to 600 degrees. Here is a picture of the set up and the result (still in the mold).


Nicole came for a visit and we went kayaking in the big pond. We went to Muscongus bay, just south of Rockland. Camped on Hog island for 2 nights and got in about 25 miles of paddling. It is pretty nice, since you are "away from it all" since you're camping on an island, but during the day we stopped in a little seaside village for clams and ice cream. We had an exciting paddle back into a 20 - 30 knot headwind and a tide that was going in (opposite direction of the wind). The conditions were rough, and we were definately on the edge of our abilities, but we poached on some rich dudes pier for a little rest and were able to push thru the rough spot and into windward shore (that is... one that blocks the wind).


In other news, I went lobstering for a day, won the kayak division in the short ships regatta, went hiking with Nicole and Jessie in Franconia Notch, and sailed on some pretty boats. This one is Tremolino.

Kayaking and Lofting

Nicole came for a visit! We did another kayak camping trip. This time in Muscungus Bay, which is only a 30min drive south of Rockland. Lots of islands with campsites (look up the Maine Island Trail Association if you are interested) and fairly sheltered. That said, the water was salty and we had to deal with the tides. It was much fun. We camped on Hog Island both nights and paddled around the bay for a couple days. When I got back I traced our route on a map and calculated we did about 25 miles in 3 days. The last day was the most exciting by far. We had a 20 or 30 knot headwind with the tide going in. So lots of choppy water. We made it though. Here is Nicole relaxing at sunrise on Hog Island before the big paddle.

In the shop, I'm taking a break from the Susan Skiff to start the next project.... a pair of 28' open boats - outward bound style. The first step is to draw the boat full size. This picture probably isn't very good, but it is part of a 8 foot by 32 foot table we built on the shop and started plotting points. There are 3 views of the boat... side, top down, and cross section. The trick is to make them all look good. Each time you move a point in one view, it effects another view. Once all the views look good, we'll make molds based on the cross section views.