Month: June 2019

Our boat shed is looking spiffy again, thanks to a fresh coat of paint, including the signage above the door.

Thanks to all who worked on that, and especially Dale who did a lot (including climbing the ladder from a swaying dock to paint the top edge of the swaying shed!), and Bruce who painted the lettering on the sign.

The Davidson dinghy is coming along, with a good sanding, and a start on the patching job.

And we’ve come across some interesting info on derelict or wrecked boats, put out by Transport Canada – https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/abandoned-boats-wrecks-4454.html.  This will answer some of those questions about rights and responsibilities when it comes to salvaging boat parts.

One more thing – when tying up Ragna after your sail, please use 3 lines – one of them a spring line from the stern to the forward cleat on the dock: this will prevent the paint on the transom and the nameplate from wearing out too quickly.  It’s great to see the boats getting a lot of use!

Ok, just one more thing – the Granville Island Wooden Boat Festival is coming up quickly, as it tends to do – August 23-25.  If you’re around, we would love to have you help out in some way – taking the boats over (Thursday night and Saturday morning), talking to people at our booth (Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday), participating in the dinghy races (Saturday 11am), or taking the boats back on Sunday late afternoon.  Please get in touch with Georgina if you can help out!

 

We have a new project in the shed – a Davidson dinghy, which has seen some rough times, and we’ll be getting it back into service.  It belongs to the Maritime Museum director, and has been resting on the dock near our shed for a month or so.  We plan to do a minimally invasive repair of some delamination and hole in the bottom.

We’re not sure how it sustained the damage, but the very rough fiberglass repair was stripped away with the help of Bruce’s heat gun, and the hole was exposed.

The boat is made of 3 layers of veneer, formed and glued into the hull shape – there’s some delamination along the gunwales which we’ll be pouring thinned epoxy resin into, and then we’ll add a more substantial rub strip to reinforce it.  Because of the patching job we’ll need to do, we expect that we’ll end up painting it, to avoid a patch-work finish.

Also getting fresh paint is our shed, which was scraped and sanded, and received a nice new colour.  We ran out of our ready supply of paint, so we hope to get another coat this weekend, as long as it’s not raining!

And we got word from Kirby and his family, who are refurbishing the Sam Mc which they bought from the club – they’ve got her nearly ready to launch, and looking great!! Nice work!

Meanwhile, our boats are being enjoyed more and more – we’ve had a couple of boats out each Saturday, as well as some weekday sailing.   Last Saturday we got the Enke going, and she sails like a dream!  Last Wednesday I had her out in a very light wind, and with the gunter rig, she was able to catch the faintest of breezes, and I truly enjoyed ghosting along, getting where I wanted to go.  And last night Ingrid and I enjoyed (or should I say survived!) a wild ride in the Button Swan, in rising, gusty wind.  Made for an exciting evening, and reinforced the need to install a good reefing system!  It was great fun though!

There she is, ready for many more miles of rowing!  The Vogler turned out beautifully, with new seats in yellow cedar, and fresh varnish and paint.  We put her back in the water on Saturday.

Her bottom paint is now a nice blue, which goes very well with the bright white above water.

Dale promptly took her out for a quick row – the first of many!  It’s great to get the boat back in the water again and looking her best.

Last Wednesday we had Ragna and Button Swan out for a beautiful and peaceful evening of sailing – the wind seemed to die down just as we did a practice rigging, but came up again, so we went out for a couple of hours, and it was wonderful!

It’s always nice to see other small boats arriving at our dock – one of the owners with a larger boat also has this little beauty, built by Dave Bradford at Alder Bay Boat Company – nice to see one of his boats out on the water!  Also, Dale S. had his SCAMP Luna, a sweet little cruiser out for some sailing, and took a few people out in it.

Button Swan and Ragna, enjoying a gorgeous sunset!