Theresa is definitely a showoff. No one around here draws a crowd like T, as I call her. Peg, a friend of my wife’s asks: “What’s in the big barn?” and magickly a ticket for a shop tour appears.
“Oh, Is this a boat?”
“Well, no, It’s just the shape of a boat.”
It’s always fun to show off Theresa. She seems to enjoy her visitors also, even though she is fairly undressed at the moment and looking a bit transparent. I’m always surprised when they inevitably remark on how beautiful she looks even though they may know nothing about boats whatsoever. It’s hard not to admire these curves. Fine art, someone once said. A more technical analysis by one of her admirers might describe how each riband* around her unfinished hull represents a ribbon of water as it glides along her form, gently parted by her cutwater, slipping around her graceful belly, past her after bilges, kissed by her rudder and in the most graceful, efficient manner, departs her canoe stern returning to the sea with scarcely a ripple left behind, almost as if she was never there. What they are looking at, though they don’t realize it, is an absolute brilliance that occurred 110 years ago and carried through time, as sheer concept and deposited on my shop floor, present day. An extraordinary feat. I always feel quite detached from this and even a twinge of guilt about having anything to do with it at all. It is easy to exact oohs and aahs about such a beautiful form. It is a bit harder not to act like a fool.
Peg looked at me askance past the corner of a tightly squinted eye, begging an explanation.
“Yeah, what you see here is just the framework around which I will build a boat.” Still squinting. “These are just temporary forms and internal bracing. Then planks (ribands) are bent around this away and then frames are bent around counter to those and then planking is bent around counter to those. And there you have a boat.”
At some point her eyes start to glaze over and I stop explaining.
“And so, these (pointing to the forms) aren’t part of the boat?”
“Well, no, if I was to leave them in, I would have built a very ugly boat on the inside and then also, there would be no room inside for the hot tub!”
“You’re going to put a hot tub in it?”
“No, I was just kidding.”
Looking back at it but with one eye still skeptically pointing at me, “But why are you building it upside down?”
“Well, I am going to sail her down to New Zealand and when I get her there, she would be right side up.”
“Oh my, you have thought of everything, haven’t you,” with a chuckle.
“So how are you going to turn it over?”
“Well, I am thinking I won’t; when I finish her, I think I will just toss her in the water. If the ballast is all ok, she will just right herself and all will be good.”
At this point in our ‘boat tour’ I think she is on to me and is certain there is no way she is going to get a serious answer.
“And when do you think you will be finished and be ready to just toss her in the water?”
“Well…, I don’t exactly know. I never expected to get this far.”
“Then I think I understand the problem,” she says with a smile. “You are having too much fun.”
Yup, I think she nailed me there. And did I just see Theresa shaking her stem in agreement?
So, the next day I approached the shop with a very different state of mind. It is possible to get this done, I pronounced to myself, as I flipped on the lights and headed for the big door. It has been done before, more than a few times. It’s time to quit goofing off and get something intelligent accomplished. So, I promptly found my comfortable chair (always a mistake so early in the day) and set about making a schedule for the next year. Considering a rule of thirds: one third for the hull, one third for the inside and one third for the rig, it becomes apparent, after much thought, a page of calculations and a bit of head scratching, that I’ve already spent my two thirds. Oops, crap!…
Oh well, I tell myself, any idiot can make a schedule. It’s staying focused, one foot in front of another, and it’s shielding yourself from the 9,001 quadzillion things that will happen between now and next year. That is the only thing that will finish this boat. It is a beautiful design as anyone who comes into my shop can instantly see and the shape is yet barely there. There is not another one like her, still alive. Still needing a bit more to get pumped up, I tell myself, if not me, WHO? How many more years would it take for another to choose to build her. Another hundred, maybe never? And that person may not even have the skills I have, a sad and scary thought indeed.
As she sits now, all the ribands are in place and notched (let in) to the forms. The next step which I am focusing on are the tails of the ribands as they come around to the stem and the stern. As they get bent around the forms they show a very nice fair curve, the cause of all these oohs and aahs. But after station #12 and forward of #1 they flatten out and aren’t a true shape. Presently I am back to the lofting floor developing station #12.5 and #0.5. The ends of the ribands will more correctly take the shape once bent around these and tied into the stem and horn timber inside the rabbet. They will need to be bent with steam. This is pretty simple to do. It’s only about 6 ribands, front and back, each side. So about 24 locations in a steam bag for about an hour each. That, plus fiddling around making brackets to tie them all in at the right place. I may be over thinking this but at any rate I see no other way to be sure I have this nice curve all the way to the ends.
Once these are tied in and fair, I will be onto installing the sheer clamp/shelf, the upper most structural part of the hull onto which the frame ends are bolted and the deck beams are notched and bolted into. These pieces (there are two of them, of course) are quite interesting. They are about 27’ x 4.5” x 1.25” thick, tapered and bent in every way possible and impossible. They will have to be spiled to shape and scarfed together so as to create as little edge setting (vertical creeping when bent around) as possible. Then it will get steam bent into place. And it has to be a very nice piece of wood. Anything else? Yeah, well, maybe a nice little bead routed into the bottom edge and varnished. And also, maybe a nice little dragon head carved into it at the forward end. Ok, no, let’s not get too excited. And those little ripples that may appear here and there in her wake… She was never here.
Dave Ahrens
* Ribands are the horizontal and temporary, parallel framework that support the bent frames, perpendicular to and between the forms and the frames.
