Oarlock & Sail Wooden Boat Club

We had a great turnout on the dock for the first annual Heritage Harbour Swap’n’Shop – lots of fascinating things to look through, and though we didn’t get a whole lot of shoppers, there was a steady flow of money changing hands.  Oarlock and Sail sold some books and magazines, as well as a sweet looking vintage soda siphon which was donated (thanks Marty!).  Some vendors bought more than they sold, but hey, some of that may be resold next year – hopefully we’ll get more buyers!

At the end of the sale, one of our dock neighbors donated a sweet pair of oars to the club!

After the sale, some more prep work was done on rigging the Button Swan.  Here, the bowsprit is being tested for flexing – looks strong enough to lift the boat out of the water!

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!