Author: Oarlock and Sail Wooden Boat Club

We’ve been hard at work (play) on the Gannet project, getting the interior plank fillets done and sanded, and moving on to floors and bulkheads patterned, cut, and fitted, nearly ready to glue in. The centerboard trunk pattern is well on its way too. The thing that slows us down is thinking it all through!!

We still need to determine the height of the floors, so that the floorboards (sole) will sit on them nicely, and will leave enough legroom when we’re sitting in the boat. The centerboard trunk pattern needs to be trimmed down to the desired height.

It’s exciting to start to see the interior layout, and imagining ourselves sailing the boat!

Enke is getting some attention, with a fresh coat of paint. That work had started before our Heritage Harbour Classic, and was interrupted when we needed to get her back in the water for the race. It’s been picked up again, and she’s starting to look bright and fresh again.

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In September, our lovely Heritage Harbour was home to a pile-driver and barge for a few days, as they replaced most of the pilings, a very welcome and much-needed improvement!! We got a timelapse of the process:

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In other BIG news at the harbour, North Star of Herschel Island is undergoing a refit at Shelter Island boatyard! She was towed there last week and promptly hauled out to start the work. One of our members Morgan is part of the crew working on her, and Bernard was there to document the arrival and haul-out – look for his videos (and lots more boat-building photos) in our OLAS Photos album.

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A much smaller refit was our boat shed roof – we’ve been getting some leaks as the weather turns to rain, and so last week Dylan and Morgan got up there to investigate. They found that a couple of spots had rusted through, and so they patched it up and slathered it with roofing tar. We hope that will tide us over until we can find some funding for replacement material.

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This computer model is helping a lot to work out the details in the boat – come down and see the work for yourself!

We have a boat in the shop! The exterior sanding and sealing were completed, and the hull has been turned upright, ready for interior work. We’ve got a good start on the interior sanding, and will soon get started on floors, centerboard trunk, and bulkheads. It’s wonderful to get a look at the shape of the hull!

We had marked the locations of the molds before we flipped the boat, and we also marked the waterline before taking the hull off the molds. We’ve put some molds back in to hold the shape, and will also use them to mark the locations of interior elements such as thwarts and decks.

The work we did on the Vogler a while back was put to use right away, as it was rented for a photo shoot for a florist. They had a model in a wedding dress in the boat – their final result hasn’t been posted, but Ben snapped a shot after they’d decked out the boat in flowers.

We had a visitor at the harbour a few weeks ago – the Hōkūleʻa, a Hawaiian voyaging canoe which is making its way around the Pacific. It was great meeting the crew, hearing their stories, and getting a close-up look at this fascinating craft!

There have been a few boats in the harbour changing stewardship lately, but the biggest news by far is that North Star of Herschel Island has been sold, to one of our own OLAS members, no less!! We are delighted to hear this news, and that she will be staying in our harbour!!

A few of our members are doing the festival tour, last weekend at Victoria Classic Boat Festival, and this coming weekend at Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. They’ve collected some wonderful awards to go along with their stories – we look forward to hearing all about their experience in the coming weeks!!

Coming up in just over a week is the Heritage Harbour Classic, with boats from our harbour engaging in some friendly competition. The race will happen the afternoon of Sunday September 17th – please let us know if you’d like to take part – we expect to have all of our OLAS fleet involved, in the sailing race and the rowing race.

Hope to see you at the dock!