Tuesday 22 February
A quiet start to the morning with only Adrian and I turning out initially to prepare for the Year 11 Denmark Senior High School boatbuilding class turning up with their teacher’s Cam and Patrick to level up the building frame with their laser leveller. I’d bought some biscuits and cake and so we thought we were prepared and the shed looked tidy and efficient for its purpose.
Adrian and I had a cup of tea and pored over the plans and tightened up a few screws in the moulds and then turned our attention to “Off Center Harbor” videos on building a Caledonia Yawl. The Caledonia Yawl is another Iain Oughtred design plywood and epoxy clinker built boat with pretty much the same construction techniques as our St Ayles Skiffs. In the video Geoff Kerr, a professional boatbuilder in the USA, takes us through the process in a step by step fashion using techniques he has perfected through building over 20 of these types of boats. Now that I know that there is enough bandwidth to show videos by hot-spotting off my phone I might start many of our building sessions with the appropriate video for the job at hand. There are a couple of these videos uploaded for free in YouTube but most are available by subscription only to OffCenterHarbor.com.
Ian O turned up just before the school bus and after signing in and brief speeches by myself and Cam the students assembled the Laser levelling device components. Meanwhile a couple of students helped unscrewing the central legs which were turned upside down and reattached with clamps for adjustment. The four corner posts were variously chocked with thin MDF pieces while the irritating beep on the measuring tool let us know when it was at the same height as the last measurement. It took a bit of trial and error to go around and sort out whether a corner needed to go up or down and by how much and then we worked out how much the middle was sagging and reset the clamps on the middle legs a few times to level them up. A few students by this time had had a go on the measuring stick and we all got the gist of what was required. Strangely nobody thought about the cake and biscuits which are still there for our next session.
Cam thanked us and the kids piled back into their bus and left the shed quiet again except for the rustling of that skink somewhere in Harry’s wood stacks. Adrian and I tidied up the chocks and I had another check with the leveller which Cam had kindly left behind and got the whole thing to be within 2mm of level. Then we nailed the angle brackets on the four corners to the floor so that it won’t go anywhere and screwed the middle legs back into place.
One of our keenest members is several steps ahead of us in this boat building game. Mark H has been quietly working away in his shed in Ocean Beach building another Iain Oughtred design, a Tammie Norrie. He has worked out his own methods of planking and laminating stems and is nearly ready to turn his boat over. Here are a couple of pictures he sent me of his impressive work so far.
I have it on good authority that our kits will be arriving in Denmark tomorrow morning (Thursday 24th Feb) so it will be an exciting day in the shed.
Cheers Dave