This friday Tania and I went down to Port Townsend to pick up the sheets of marine plywood machined by Turn Point Designs. The boat plans I purchased were designed by hand by Ian Oughtred on a drafting table. But Jordan Boats in the UK went through the trouble of licensing the plans and digitizing them to develop a file of cuts that can be performed by a CNC cutting machine. The North American license is held by Hewes and Company in Maine who sold me the kit, but to cut down on shipping costs have subcontracted the cutting on the west coast to Turn Point Designs in Port Townsend.

To me this is an amazing example of the new world we live in where a design can be transferred and machined anywhere. Although this process was reductive, ie: cutting marine plywood sheets. The concept is the same as the advent of 3D printers. The ability of a design to be shared and produced simultaneously in very disparate geographies. At the same time it will be a very traditional design wood boat, the juxtaposition make the prospect of completing the project all the more exciting.

Seeing this pile of plywood was super exciting and at the same time I suddenly realized how daunting my goal was to turn this pile of two dimensional plywood into something three dimensional.

We did a little stop at Edison, a really nice town on the way back to the Chuckanut Drive to get back to Vancouver.