Progress Report

Just some pictures of the boat: we are just over halfway with the planking and it's getting easier (we're getting better at it and more confident). The biggest task will be, I suspect, removing all the excess epoxy on the inside after we turn the hull over.


(Clicking on any of our blog pictures will open a larger version)


The bows are a thing of great beauty - we've taken great care to ensure clean, smooth lines.



On the other hand, Joe is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a thing of beauty:

Waikato? Pah!

Jock Wishart is a friend of mine. I think he may be partly to blame for this project, along with others such as Hobbs, Colin Fellows, Malcolm Knight and Mike Hart, whose tendency to do extreme things in rowing boats has rubbed off on me in a small way. I should also apportion blame to Gill Fellows, who was my first coach in the noble art of skiffing.

Jock has turned up in my life with a spooky consistency: I first met him back in my university days, when he inspired our crew and gave us the belief to win our little event.

He isn’t always the best communicator: a product of his independence and focus, I suspect, but he always remembers people and kept in touch over the years. In the early 90’s, he rang me up to inform me that he had accepted the role of Head Coach for the Oxford University lightweights on condition that I join his team. For me, that was possibly the catalyst that has led to coaching, both rowing and business, becoming ‘my thing’. After turning around the fortunes of OULRC, Jock moved on to other things. A few years later, he cajoled me into rowing with him for a couple of seasons with a crew of veterans: I recall we won most of our races - it would be churlish to allow facts to interfere with that picture.

A spinoff from all this was his invitation to me to run the team selection and development processes for some of his wacky adventures: we started by building a team to walk to the Magnetic North Pole. Here’s the thing: although Jock dreamt up some fairly wild ideas, they tended to succeed because the
y were founded on careful preparation. Plus he was able to motivate experts in their field to contribute.

In one 18 month period in the 90s, he rowed across the Atlantic with a tough cookie called Duncan Nicholl (I helped select Duncan, without telling Jock that the key criterion was the ability to put up with…er, Jock), led the crew which established new speed records for powered circumnavigation in a trimaran and captained the team that broke the London-Paris rowing record in the CNA Maritime Challenge. The latter brought all of these mad rowing types together, along with the great Andy Ripley, who has the distinction of being the heaviest cox I have ever had to pull along, but also the funniest.

Along with all of this, Jock represented his country at rowing and yachting and is a veteran of the 1980 America’s Cup, as well as being a former European Dragon Boat Racing Champion. A British University championship medal winner in rowing, sprint canoeing and weight lifting, he was Project Leader of the team that broke the Round Britain powerboat record in 1989.

A lifetime interest in polar exploration led to him becoming a member of the first team to walk unsupported to the Geomagnetic North Pole in 1992. Four years later, in organising The Ultimate Challenge, the first ever televised trek to the Magnetic North Pole – an expedition comprising largely of novice explorers.

Now, he is off on another one: he is going to try to row to the Magnetic North Pole. This puts our trip down the Waikato into perspective!

The expedition to the Magnetic North Pole (as certified in 1996) will set off from Resolute Bay in July/August 2011, the crew plan to row for 450 miles before finally reaching the Magnetic North Pole at 78 degrees, 35.724 minutes North, 1

04 degrees, 11.915 minutes West.

The Ice Boat

For the full story, have a look at www.rowtothepole.com :

It's About the Boat, Lance...

Looking back, we've spent a lot of time talking about the preparation for the bit where we actually crack on and build something recognisable as a boat. Since Christmas, we have made considerable progress, so here, for the benefit of both the readers who give a stuff about the build, as opposed to Joe's therapy-by-blog, are some roughly sequential pictures of what's gone on since January.

You may recall that we spent a long time setting up the moulds on the strongback.







We then attached the stem and the inner keel, or hog, then the sternpost, which would later have the transom fixed to it...












At last, we got the first plank onto the keel. A very exciting moment, but despite appearances, we didn't have enough clamps!

The second garboard plank fitted perfectly alongside the first. Having made this start, each subsequent plank had to be carefully shaped, or 'faired', to receive the next. The tools of choice here were the plane and, now Joe knows what one is, the spokeshave.









Working from the bows to ensure a precise fit (the planks had useful pinholes to align with the moulds), the second plank on the Port side was shaped and fitted. Another milestone, since, in achieving this we had more or less encountered all the challenges that the planking would offer.



From this point forward, we should merely repeat a process until the hull is complete.


.
.Yesterday, we fitted the third plank to the starboard side, marking the halfway point in the great planking exercise. The transom has to be shaped to receive each plank as we go along, in case there is any deviation from the plan.

I am sure you will agree that it's beginning to look the biz....

Rowing Interlude - Twizel Sticks.

While I wait for some glue to dry, here's a quick interlude to talk about the 2011 Rowing National Championships in Twizel. Partly because it's the main reason we haven't made a lot of progress with the boat.

Chris and me both coach rowing crews. This season he was helping with the Wellington Rowing Club Women, and I was responsible for the WRC Novice Women. I could fill t'internet with the highs and lows of coaching a rowing squad.

The rowing champs this year were held in Twizel, which is in the heart of Mackenzie (Mc?) country in the middle of the south island of New Zealand. So, imagine you are in the most remote country in the world, then go to the emptier of the two islands. Then, drive as far as you can away from the biggest city on that island, into the remotest part, and there you are, in Twizel. Apparently its a real draw for the tourists. I didn't actually see any, but there was an Irish girl who worked in the bakery who was apparently "doing her OE". Not technically a tourist, but almost. Oh, and the Irish girl who works in the pub, that's the same one, so that doesn't count as a influx of foreigners.



Amazing scenery as the crew complete their budget parachute.



Anyway, there's amazing scenery, fantastic water, two Four Squares and a couple of pubs. Luckily we had a lot of rowing to do to pass the time.

Oh and we did go on a super cheap parachuting trip. 



I suppose you'll all want to know how we got on. We made two A finals, which is a great acheivement at national level. Unfortunately, the even greater achievement of getting a medal at nationals eluded us and we finished fourth in the eight. It was a tough event, made even tougher by the  Rowers to Rio crew. The criteria for getting in their crew was to be between the ages of 18 and 21 and be over 6 feet tall. We had a rower who qualified for their crew on height, but missed the age cut off by 28 years. We also had a rower who fit the age qualification, but missed the height qualification by a foot.

We all had a great time though, I'd like to think the girls learned something about opperating in a team, and a bit about themselves. And they also learned what it's like to come fourth... F*%king S^%t!!! That's how it feels. Here's the team, feeling a bit better.

WRC Novice Women 2011 (can you tell which one is me?)

So, that was the week that the boat was left to settle on the mold before the application of planks 3-12. Unfortunately, Chris couldn't make it down to Twizel due to work commitments. But he very kindly avoided doing any work on the boat, he clearly didn't want me to get jealous.

Plankety Plank - part II

Bloody hell, talk about a long time between drinks.

We have made good progress on the planking, but terrible progress on the blog. In Plankety Plank Part I, I think I left you on tenterhooks as I donned a pair of rubber gloves and mixed a pot of glue to "stiff peaks". I can only presume I explained the process of wetting out the inner hog and the underside of the garboard plank. (Hark at me, talking like a boat builder).

After this, there was some discussion between Chris and I as to whether we should apply the thickened glue to the hog, the plank, or both. We settled on both, and lots of it! Then its just a case of.

• Trying not to cover yourself if glue
• Lining up the forward alignment hole on station 1
• Clamping the plank to the hog
• Trying not to cover yourself in glue
• Working towards the stern and aft from the centre with more clamps
• Starting to get covered in glue
• Trying not to get glue all over the planks
• Screwing the plank to the stem and sternpost when the contours get a bit severe.
• Bollocks, there's glue everywhere now.

We learned a few important lessons during this process, and worked out for ourselves a couple of useful tips. The most important lesson is that you can never have too many clamps. Luckily at the garboard plank, you can use screws into the hog. We were determined to make more clamps.

See the natty ply washers in the foreground

We also learned how to make washers with left over ply - a really useful technique if you don't want to dent your boat. I could write a blog on that alone. But I won't, I promise.

So, the garboard plank, well one of them, is done. Look - there's a picture up there

Will I forever be in the shadow of my Father.

Quite possibly, he's about 4 inches taller than me for a start off.

When I was a kid, my dad used to buy me balsa wood and tissue model aeroplanes for Christmas, and we'd sit down on boxing day to build them. More precisely, I would watch as my dad built them and cover them in tissue and dope. We'd then go to a local park where we would turn them back into something like the original collection of balsa that came in the box.

As I got older, I would become more involved in the building and the models got bigger, rubber bands were replaced with cox .49 glow plug engines and I would fit radio controls to prevent the inevitable impact with mother earth. And then one year, I bought my dad a rubber powered balsa model for Christmas. We had come full circle.

Anyway, enough sentimental back story.

My sister in the UK had a bit of a whip round and we bought my dad a model boat for his birthday - January the 10th. It arrived about a month ago, and the bastard has done this. He's already miles ahead of us. What a git.

Ok, it's only a little one, but he's catching up.