Thursday 24 November
Yesterday we had a record three sessions rowing St John on the Denmark River and Inlet.
Today Lesley was already in the shed when I arrived. She had brought a box full of goodies for morning tea. We discussed how the twilight row had gone and how there should be a written check list for taking the boats out and putting them away. The twilight row had been beautiful and they had ended up at the Riverside Club having a celebratory drink.
Lesley started by resin coating the stroke’s footrest and we covered a little ding on the keel of St John caused by the trailer. John I joined us and had the job of cutting out the pieces for an identical footrest for boat 2.
I cut the bronze keel band down to length and shaped its bow and stern ends.
Lesley had left the chocolate and caramel slice and walnut meringues with us for morning tea and with the help of Harry, and a later snack with my lunch we demolished the lot as they were amazingly good and moreish.
After tea break John and I tackled fixing the bronze strips to the keel. I borrowed one of Harry’s drills so we had three drills for the repetitive job involving a long pilot hole, a short reamed top section, clean out with the vacuum cleaner, a drop of varnish primer and finally screwing in the brass screw. The second hole we drilled unluckily went straight into one to the bronze screws we had used to fix the keel on with. We plugged the two holes with glue and meat skewers and shifted the strips by 10mm. Luckily none of the other drill holes hit a keel screw and it all went according to plan.
John Hammond dropped in to see how we were getting along and apologised profusely for being absent for the launch and other activities because he has been caring for his ailing brother in Perth, which is totally understandable.
John I left at 1pm to get lunch before his trip back to Albany. I had a quick bite and then opened up the yellow paint to re-coat the yellow stripe. I used a foam brush which was very effective and much smoother finish than the brush. I ended up going around the boat 3 times making 5 coats of yellow to cover up the blue.
We are now ready to roll the boat over again to paint the inside and attach the rowlocks. Talking of which, JD has kindly volunteered to do the metal work necessary to create vertical rowlock pins.
Cheers Dave