Thursday 19 May
After all the excitement of turnover day, today was a quiet day in the shed. A day that started with me having a good tidy up of the tools and stowing the new tubs of glue that had arrived from BoatCraft in Queensland. I also returned Harry’s jigsaw of beautiful wooden rowing boats on Lake Braie in the Italian Alps which I had started last weekend when it was cold and wet. Adrian came in with his own heat gun and jumped into boat 1 to remove the excess glue lumps and worked steadily all day until his back gave out. Dr John and Archie tackled the scarfing of the meranti planks we have bought to make up the keelson/hog which is the inner keel of the boat which the first plank is glued to. He started with the electric plane and went on to hand plane to finish it and got a great result.
I moved on to sanding the frames for boat 2 and later Paul joined in.
At morning tea with both Harry and Kay, we tucked into a beautifully moist chocolate cake my wife JB had made. Kay let Dr John know in a very friendly way that Archie had disgraced himself by pooping on her lawn which she only discovered when her mower ran over it. Archie also had to have a severe telling off for chasing the postie. Three strikes rule, Archie – your on thin ice at Harry’s shed!
I got home to find that thanks to Andrew and Pat, Turnover Day had made it into this week’s Denmark Bulletin.
In other news, Niall Weatherstone of the Riverside Club who is holidaying in Scotland, came across a St Ayles Skiff on the West Coast and chatted to the crew who were in training for the World Championships in Holland next month. He was told that St Ayles Skiffs are “incredibly popular” in Scotland.
In other Scottish news, Ian Waddell who I met when Peter Kovesi and Jim Black and I borrowed his wooden Drascombe Lugger to row and sail across Scotland in the raid known as Sail Caledonia in 2019, sent me a photo of their St Ayles Skiffs. They were one of the first communities to build St Ayles Skiffs in 2010 in the east coast town of Eyemouth. The club is still going strong and there are lots of regulars who row out into the North Sea.
We have already been invited to our first regatta by the Augusta Rowers. It will be in Augusta on the next year’s Australia Day weekend. The Perth boats should be there again as they were this year.
Have a good weekend.
Cheers Dave