Month: August 2019

Another Granville Island Wooden Boat Festival weekend has passed, and it was a good one!  Great weather all weekend, good crowds showing lots of interest in our boat and club (of COURSE!), including a number of locals, who were encouraged to come by on a Saturday to take a look and learn more.

The rowing races had two enthusiastic participants from the festival who joined at the last minute, their attention captured by our flotilla of boats towed from Heritage Harbour by Bourton and his tugboat Ella McKenzie!   We had OLAS’s Vogler, Ragna, and Enke, as well as Stephen and his crew with their dinghy, all tied to the Ella McKenzie and  serenaded by a couple of classical flutists standing on the deck of the tug.  Georgina brought signs for everyone to hold, enticing observers and rowers to come over to Alder Bay for the races – and it worked!

The racing was fun, with a few bumps and bruises thrown in.  There were a few close encounters between oars and heads, and at least one direct hit on a rock – thankfully all without lasting damage.  I think all of us who rowed slept well that night – Dale, who regularly goes for long steady rows found the sprint racing was a lot more exhausting!

The weekend before the festival, Button Swan was pulled out onto the dock for a thorough and much-needed cleaning. It felt great to get all the growth scrubbed off the keel, and get the interior clean again.

After that, she was taken into the shed for a couple of fresh coats of varnish on all bright-work (including the mast), repainting of the interior white, and some touch-ups of the turquoise paint – a huge thank-you to Dale and Ingrid who came in during the week for that – she was looking fine on display at the festival!  This coming weekend we plan to pull her out on the dock again and give her a new coat of bottom paint – we didn’t want to do that when she was going to be out of the water for a few days.  And then she should be good and ready for the upcoming Heritage Harbour Classic (see below)!

Getting the Button Swan to the plaza was made MUCH easier this year with the great little dolly that Nick made!  He had crafted the framework, glued up a block of wood for a roller, and turned the roller on a lathe.  This was its first outing, and it held up great, making the boat very easy to roll and steer on its journey across the island!  Thanks for that, Nick!

At the shed, last weekend saw some more progress on the Davidson dinghy, scarfing in a section on the keel that had cracked, further filling in of the patch of the hole, and a fillet of epoxy along the keel to reinforce and seal it.  The mast for Ragna is mostly shaped, with some more sanding to do to get it smooth and round.  We should be able to get it done in another week or two.

Mark your calendar for the 3rd annual Heritage Harbour Classic sailing race, coming up Saturday September 21st starting around 2pm, and followed by a BBQ on the dock.  We hope to have all three of our sailboats in the race, and so we will need crew – up to 3 people on Button Swan, and 2 each on Ragna and Enke – so please let us know where you’d like to take part.  Last year was a great success, and we’re looking forward to another great time!

The Granville Island Wooden Boat Festival is coming up next weekend, August 22nd to 25th.  We’ll be hosting the dinghy races there, on Saturday the 24th at 11am at Alder Bay.  Georgina and the festival committee have done a great job in organizing and promoting the event, and we should have better participation than last year – and hopefully the weather will be more cooperative!  Please get in touch with Georgina if you’re interested in helping out at the races or our booth (although now that I think of it, she’s off on the west coast of Vancouver Island for a bit – just show up if you can!).

We’ll be moving the Button Swan over on Thursday, and then on Saturday morning a flotilla of boats is getting towed from Heritage Harbour to Granville Island for the races – should be fun!

Despite the slower pace of summer, we’ve made good progress on the Davidson dinghy repair – new ash rub strips have been installed, a bit bigger and more durable than the original, and the hole in the bottom is pretty much finished getting patched, and looking good!  Some creative ‘spring board’ clamping was used while gluing in the layers.

With all the use and enjoyment our boats are getting these days, some repairs have become necessary, the most extreme of which is a new mast for Ragna!  A severe jolt from the wake of a large boat crossing too close in front of her caused the mast to snap at deck level.  Arnt glued up and milled the replacement, and shaping has begun – we should have her ready to sail again in a week or two.

Other work at the shed and on the dock – a tiller extension for Button Swan is nearly finished, with 6 coats of varnish (thanks Ingrid!), and over at North Star, Bruce has been busy carving the name in the new transom planks, which involved him making a chisel from an old file.

Through some serendipity, we’ve learned of Enke’s origin – she was built by David Philips in south Vancouver, from a design by Charles Mower.  David recognized her here on our site, and provided some information – we’ll be getting in touch with him for more info, including some photos from when he was building her!