Wellington Harbour

(Taken on a mobile phone with no filters or photoshopping)

Uphill All the Way

It's December, which means another 11 months have slipped by. There is progress to report, but...

The large gazebo that I put up (in January) to cover the boat kept the sun off, but got demolished by the storms of winter. The boat sat for several months without cover and collected soggy leaves, bird droppings and families of spiders and insects.

This week, we had the tree fellers in (but, of course, there were only two of them). Since the boat was positioned in the drop zone for the large branches they were going to trim, we had to move it and the hardback up onto the lawn (that's what we call the collection of moss, dandelions and other weeds that we carefully nurture).

On turning the boat over, I was dismayed to see that every surface of the interior was covered by a nasty black mould. I envisaged having, at best, to sand back the 8 or 9 layers of varnish and redoing it all.

I was relieved to find that hot water and dilute sugar soap brought it all back to pristine condition. The outer hull was actually better to start with, since it had been regularly washed by the rain, but that, too, came up luverly. I'll still have to lightly sand before adding a couple of fresh layers of varnish.

Before

After

In the meantime, I bit the bullet and tackled the oars. My lack of knowledge and confidence around the fitting of the sleeves and constructing the buttons has been the real roadblock to progress. Spurred on by great advice and insight from my chum Boysie, who has just moved in next door to the Dittons Skiff Club, I took advantage of a few dry, sunny days to sand the oars and to apply a couple of fresh coats of varnish. They look great:

Next came fitting the sleeves: I forgot to take photos of each step, but the process involved wrapping a rectangle of leather, which had been thoroughly soaked in warm water to soften it, around the shaft of the oar. I nailed one edge, using copper tacks*, then carefully sliced through the overlapping leather to ensure a perfect fit. It sounds easy, but there was a lot of clamping, grunting and pulling to get them tight and matched. As the leather dries out, it should shrink to give it the final snug fit.

*I really wanted to use brass tacks, but the right sort don't seem to be readily available.

 In the next few days, I shall make the buttons, which are supposed to look something like this:

In the meantime, the boat sits in its new home:

Noah's Ark

 It's 2021 and I daren't calculate how long it is since we last did anything to the boat, let alone how long it has been since we started (yes, I know I could just look on the blog history to the right).

We hit a new phase in the project last weekend: Joe has sold his house, which created something of a challenge in the boat storage department, not to mention the need to house some old friends such as Edward the Compressor, the famous spokeshave, the band saw and numerous chisels, clamps (you can never have too many) and planes.

The short term solution was to shift everything to my house. I'd like to think that that might then lead to me doing the last few bits of the build: we now have a deadline, which is Joe's possible departure to England. We must row the Waikato, soon. Thank goodness for Covid, which means he isn't going for a while...

The boat in its new home

Once I got it to my place, I bought a mammoth gazebo to keep the sun off: a good thing, because we had a huge storm that night.

Wellington Harbour

Good Lord, is that the time?

I fear that both our readers have found something else to entertain them. It's coming to the end of August and the only thing to touch the boat this year is dust.

Rather than making up excuses, here's some of what we've been doing in the meantime:

Training at Karapiro

Winning at Karapiro

Collecting medals at Karapiro

Joe and I both went to England: a brief visit for me, a couple of months for Joe. We met up at Henley, where we were able to show off the new Wellington RC blazers, which look very nice:

The Jones Boys

Joe, Chris and Blaino, avidly following the races.

                                                                                             Different day, different gear:

The catalyst for my own trip was the reunion of the London Rowing Club crew and coaching team (of which I was part), which won the Thames Cup 20 years ago:

LRC 1998

LRC 2018

I caught up with the usual suspects from the skiffing world: Hobs, Colin, Boysie and others. One of the highlights of the trip was rowing 'Dingleberry' from Henley to Windsor with Boysie: about 8 hours of paddling. It was hot, but the Thames was as beautiful as ever

Dingleberry

Marlow.

Waiting for the lock.

The Old Boys in the Boat.

And now, we are back in Wellington, building on the great work our squads did over the winter and developing crews for the coming season. 

The boat?......the boat.....

Home stretch

 The final stages for the boat: everything is varnished and I have finally fixed the seats in place.
I admit to a bit of nervousness because of the finality of this step and, although I know it should work, the idea of a boat held together by epoxy still doesn't feel right. On Harry's advice, I drilled extra pegs under each seat to ensure a good bond.

I keep thinking how little progress has been made since some very early pictures were taken, showing seats and knees in place, but the big difference is the deep shine from the many layers of varnish.

One of the remaining steps for the interior is to fix the mahogany strips that will support the foot stretchers. I have epoxied these in readiness. Ensuring they fit well was important, as they need to provide a snug slot for the foot stretcher boards, which  sit across the boat, but also slope back towards the stern. At the same time, the hull also flares outwards. All this added up to mean that every one of the strips had to be shaped individually.

Luckily, Joe took the precaution of numbering them once they were right, so they should fit without any further work...I just don't know whether he numbered them from the stern or the bows. 

I'll guess. 

Wellington Harbour