Button Swan refresh

Button Swan is sporting a fresh new creamy finish on her interior, and looking fantastic! We ran out of paint when we were nearly finished, and we were unable to find another can at the nearest marine paint supplier, but big thanks to our neighbour on the dock Eric for supplying a new can from his stash! That let us finish that part of the job, and get on to the varnishing. We’ve built up several coats of varnish, and then turned to painting the deck.

This coming Saturday (July 9) we’ll reassemble her interior, turn her over for a coat of bottom paint, and then GET HER BACK IN THE WATER!!!! It’s been much too long!

We had a rude surprise when we noticed that Vogler was sprouting some growth – when we pulled her out of the water for a cleaning, we found a couple of inches of unwelcome wildlife!! Not sure how the bottom paint failed so badly, but the boat has clearly not been taken out for a row nearly enough!! She should be a lot slipperier through the water now.

A recent story in the news was about a home-built boat that was stolen just before the family launched her – but thanks to some observant citizens (and stupid theives), the boat was spotted being rowed in False Creek! https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/stolen-homemade-boat-mcdonald-family-recovered-1.6493923

Summer sailing season is here for some of our members, with Anja and Ern and and crew heading up to the Broughtons for a while. We’ll look forward to their stories when they get back!

Bruce had the pleasant surprise of being sent photos and story from Steve Tomlinson in Kitimat who had built a scale model of North Star of Herschel Island! He did an amazing job on it, going from drawings and photos in two of Bruce’s books, North Star of Hershel Island and Sisters of the Ice. I hope Mr. Tomlinson doesn’t mind me sharing the story of how he built the model from scratch. It’s a beautiful recreation of the vessel as she appeared originally when in service in the Arctic, complete with fox furs hanging from the rigging!