Yesterday with a group of friends we continued a tradition of meeting down at the Jericho Sailing Centre, donning our wetsuits or drysuits and heading out into Burrard Inlet for a stand up paddle. This year we waited a day after our usual boxing day outing to match up our paddle with the highest high tide of the year, which was a 5m tide. Fortunately their was little wind or waves and the tide did not bring with it any flooding or damage to the coastline. But after the last king tide earlier in the month where the wind came up, the Sailing Centre was prepared with sandbags.
Dominique brought a his medium format film camera to capture the moment which was fun. We needed to flag down a runner to actually trip the shutter.
Here is my picture panorama of the set up for this.
We had a 6-8 knot breeze from the SE for our paddle. As we made it close to the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club docks it started to rain, so unlike the year before where we managed to go hang around the freighters in complete calm and sunshine, our excursion this year was a little closer to shore but just as memorable.
After nearly a month of rotating colds, strep throat and mor colds affecting my family as well as a couple weekends with cross country running races at Jericho I finally found myself with a day in the boat shed to work on my Caledonia yawl project. As Patrice has some wood in the shed from the house renovation in the way I spent half my time building shelving for the wood and for my glued strakes once they are done.
My plan then is to use the Strongback as a platform to glue up all the strake scarfs. Then i will tackle the bow and stern stem laminations.
Once I’ve completed those two jobs I’ll be ready to put up the station Molds.
This weekend I only found time Sunday afternoon to work on the shed. Fortunately I was able to work on my own and progress well putting up the rest of the galvanized roofing.
Today my friend Dom asked me to help him take his boat RedFive, a J30 back from the boat yard in Steveston where it had bee hauled out and sanded down, to the RVYC marina at Jericho. We set off at 14h00 in a light drizzle and a rising tide.
All was quiet on the south arm of the Fraser as we motored out
By the time we got to the Fraser lightship station at the mouth of the south arm where we would be able to turn north, the wind had freshness up to 12 knots out of the northwest. As we moved towards Point Grey the wind rose steadily and peaked at about 20 knots with a solid set of waves hitting us on the nose.
The combination of the shallow shelf and the long fetch made for short steep waves.
We finally saw the bell buoy Q62 at sunset.
And turned east into the darkness as the wind started to freshen up behind us.
Dominique at the helm
We tied up the boat in the dark and were quite happy to stop in the club for a bite to eat, warm up and watch the final game of the regular season for the Whitecaps on the television in the corner.
Today was a nice warm front ahead of an ominous rain system barrelling down on Vancouver. I felt the pressure of getting the roof up today. Working alone I managed to finish the walls and clear out the extra wood and off cuts that were against the fence.
All the trusses were ready and the trick was to put it all up on my own.
With a few braces I managed fairly well, but I was quite happy to see Patrice arrive at four and in the last hour we got all the trusses and. Strapping down. Just as it started to rain I got three of the corrugated roof sheets up. So I’m one quarter of the way towards having a dry boat shed.
Now the only thing I’m missing is a couple gutters to keep the people passing by dry.
With my front yard only 25″ wide and my neighbour’s house surrounded in scaffolding; I was not able to set up shop in front of the house. Fortunately my friend Patrice ha been bitten by the same bug as me and has offered up the slab in his back yard to build a shed.
We live 5 blocks apart so it is close, but also far enough that when I’m working on the boat I won’t have the usual family distractions and I’ll be able hopefully to do several solid hours of work at a time.
Today it was a late start at three pm but I had bought all the lumber two weeks ago so progress was quick. In two hours I got all the trusses done as well as two of the four ten foot walls.
Originally i though about using a metal framed tarp shelter which would have been much faster but may not have fit well due to a few issues with the site and the tarp sheds are less flexible than building your own.
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.
This August we had the pleasure of spending two weeks aboard my friends Ranger 33 Sylvia. We set out from Victoria on August 15th to explore the Gulf Islands National Park reserve as well as a few other anchorages.
