Month: May 2018

Two events to tell you about – one was last week, and one is coming up next week.

Last Thursday, Oarlock and Sail presented a slide show of the Button Swan build, gave a demo of a few boat-building tools, and hosted a tour of our shop and the dock.  We had been approached by the organizers of a new festival, Crafted Vancouver, which includes tours and demonstrations of a number of craft related things.

We had a good turnout of about 15 guests, in addition to 8 or so of our members.  Rob gave an excellent talk on the building of our boat, keeping the audience interested and involved.  That presentation took place in the Maritime Museum.

Down at the dock, Daniel showed 3 types of planking, including trying a bit of caulking in a sample of carvel planking, and also a brief demo of the drawknife.

Arnt gave a tour of the shop and descriptions of our boats.  It was great to see the interest and enthusiasm of the visitors – lots of questions were asked and answered!

Coming up on the first Saturday in June (June 2nd), Bruce and Sheila are working on putting together the first Heritage Harbour Marine Swap’n’Shop.  The hope is to get a bunch of the Heritage Harbour ‘residents’ to gather some interesting boating bits and pieces that they have laying around, and have a swap and sale on the dock.  OLAS has a few items, mostly old magazines, and we are open to whatever any of our members might contribute.  We hope this can be an interesting new activity on the dock!

We tested Button Swan’s mainsail on Saturday, and considered it a great success!  We did some temporary fastening, tying the sail to our spars, and rigging some control lines.  The sail shape worked perfectly, and the boat was fast enough to pull away from Ragna quite easily most of the time – we’re very pleased with her performance!  This was in a nice light wind, perfect for a first sail.

With Ragna giving chase, we got some video of her underway.  Ragna was able to pull away on one leg, but after a bit more tuning, Button Swan took off again.

This boat is continuing to satisfy and delight us!

We had a most excellent day for the launch party for the Providence River Boat “Button Swan”, and a celebration of the 90th anniversary of the launching of the Vancouver Maritime Museum’s “St. Roch”.  We had a full dock of guests, members, and staff!

 

The celebration began with a short talk by our club president, Rob O’Dea, thanking all who have participated in the building of this fine boat, including those who contributed in our fundraising and the Vancouver Maritime Museum for the greatly appreciated place in which to build.  After a celebratory taste and splash of spirits, the boat went in the water, and went for a number of rowing excursions – the sails are still being completed, and we’ll have another celebration to come!

Before the launch could happen though, there was a frenzy of work in the preceding month.  A lot of work was achieved in a short time, thanks to many extra hours during the week by a handful of our members, much of it done by Arnt, either at the boat shed or in his own shop.  Thanks to all the others who contributed!

Sail-making is nearly completed, at least the main-sail, so we’re looking forward to adding it – thanks to Bob, Nick, and Louise for their work on that!

After the launch of the boat, a number of boats from Heritage Harbour went out for a sail-past, led by Bruce & Sheila and guests on North Star, looking splendid!  Sheila & Bruce had been busy gathering flags to outfit all the participants, adding wonderfully festive colour to the fleet.

It was an exciting day, finished off with a bbq on the dock, and continued enjoyment and admiring of the Button Swan!  Thanks to all who made the day a great success!