Saturday, July 23, 2022
A Project Named Clancy - Finale
Saturday, May 7, 2022
Edensaw Boat Building Challenge 2019: Building A CLC Jimmy Skiff 2
It took about a week following the 2019 Wooden Boat Festival before I felt fully recovered from it. As our team learned in our 2018 attempt, it can be tiring to build a high-quality boat over the course of two and a half days. Yet in 2019, we took up our tools again to participate in the Edensaw Boat Building Challenge at the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend.
In selecting a boat to build, a few key
factors figured in:
·
We wanted to build the
most boat we could to the highest state of completion possible within the
allotted time. Our goal wasn’t to be sure of finishing with a mediocre
boat, but stand a chance of finishing with a robust, useful, complete product.
·
We wanted a boat that
would be fun to have after the competition. The boat had to sail well, and also be versatile enough to be used for fishing in Puget Sound, exploring
up rivers, or short expeditions poking around the San Juan Islands.
·
We wanted a boat that
was attractive.
· We wanted to go with stitch and glue construction. The was partly because you get a strong, tough, light boat in the end. It was also partly showmanship—it is flashy and crowd-pleasing to have a boat-shaped object within a few hours of starting.
The Jimmy Skiff 2 design from Chesapeake Light Craft turned out to be a no-brainer, as the design really seemed to nail all of these attributes.
Headed to Port Towsend with a Jimmy Skiff mast on the roof, a PocketShip in tow, and a CLC Teardrop camper in the background. |
The competition requires that you start from pile of raw materials, so we built our Jimmy Skiff from plans. We were allowed to pre-scarf the plywood and lay out the parts ahead of time, so when the starting whistle sounded, we fired up our saws and started transforming plywood into boat parts. Time really flies at an alarming pace during the competition, but I think we had the boat stitched together a little after noon on the first day. After lunch, we did our tack welds with superglue, pulled the stitches and launched into a flurry of filleting and fiberglassing – on the interior of the boat, we pressed the 3-in glass tape that into the wet fillets and then laid up the fiberglass cloth that lines the interior over the wet tape. Due to compressed timetable we were on, we were working with “Fast” epoxy hardener, which, as you can imagine, made this a terrifying race against time.
Plywood parts, cut out and ready. |
Preparing to stitch the bulkheads to the bottom |
Just over an hour later, a boat appears |
Fiberglassing late in the evening after stitching and filleting. |
When you are working full-bore for 14 hours
each day, you have to fight some exhaustion. Day 2 was very slow. We
didn’t have much to do—install the flotation, carlins, seat tops, quarter
knees, and rub rails – but everything we did seemed to take forever. On
the bright side, there’s no time for the typical “sit down and think” problems
that often bog down an amateur boat build. When our seat bottoms didn’t
fit quite right (probably a misaligned bulkhead), we did not have time to
debate what the best solution was, we just had to commit to a course of action
and hope for the best.
Day 2 -- Seats are in and rubrails are glued on and drying. |
Day 3 -- The boat emerges from the tent for a rigging session |
One thing that we were generally blissfully unaware of (i.e. too busy to take notice) were the crowds gathering around the Boat Building Challenge tent. Every now and then, an inquisitive bystander would get our attention. We did occasionally catch a glimpse of the always-heartening sight of some our friends from CLC coming over to check on us. The crowds became unavoidable, however, on the last day on the competition, when the hull was done and we had to pull her out from under the tent (and the protection of the ropes that had kept the crowds at bay) to rig her. The manual suggests a leisurely driveway rigging session. We had a pressure-cooker rigging session, with Festival-goers wandering through and trying to get an up-close look at the boat. It turns out that Festival-goers are hilariously unaware of their surroundings, and more than one nearly got beaned by our boom, slapped by our sail, or skewered by our mast as we worked.
The crowds gather as the sail goes up. |
Our competition was tough. To one side were four soon-to-be graduates from the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building. On the other side was a well-practiced team (they apparently had done practice runs on their boat already), led by a professional shipwright. The guys on those teams were real pros and true craftsmen who ended up building truly beautiful boats. In the end, we finished the boat* about an hour before “tools down”. While we broke for lunch, our Jimmy Skiff 2 sat proudly in front of the Boat Building Challenge tent, sail raised and trimmed in the gentle breeze. Even on the hard, she was a smart little boat. When the other teams finished and the whistle sounded, we all lugged our boats across the festival grounds for a trial-by-water.
The launch |
Two of us took our Jimmy Skiff 2 out on her maiden voyage. She cut a fine form on the water and rowed well. We raised sail, but the wind would not cooperate. We rowed around a little bit and had fun, enjoying being on the water. The other teams, though, really pulled out the stops when it came to showmanship. One team brought along a girl in Victorian garb to be rowed about in their lovely clincker-built rowboat. The Wooden Boat School team went even farther, loading all four team members, a cooler, and some fishing rods into their drift boat – those guys knew how to have fun! We all had a brief, but successful tour of the harbor, before returning to be judged.
Jimmy Skiff |
*There is still a ton of sanding, varnishing,
and painting to do.
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Edensaw Boat Building Challenge 2018: Building A Glen-L Tubby Tug
Whhhrrrrrrrruppp! The sickening sound of thickened epoxy pulling
away from plywood came as I watched the bow of our Tubby Tug split open,
relieving the great stresses that had turn flat plywood into a pugnacious,
three-dimensional shape. In my hands was
a pair of side cutters and the remains final wire that had previously held the
bow together. Building a boat in two and
a half days requires some aggressive moves. Trusting that beads of superglue would hold the bow together so that we could remove the wires before the structural
epoxy fillets could set was one of the boldest we had to make. Now that it had failed, we had to
recover.
Saving the bow (credit: The Peninsula Daily News) |
As I recall, it was my dad who first became enthused about the idea of participating in the boat building challenge. The challenge has taken place annually for several years at the Wooden Boat Festival, is and sponsored by Edensaw Woods, Ltd. of Port Townsend, Washington. Teams of four have two and a half days to turn a pile of raw lumber into a finished wooden boat. Each team chooses their own model of boat, and there can be a great diversity in the finished products. The final boats are judged on a wide range of (highly subjective) criteria, from workmanship, to fulfillment of intended function, to the teamwork of the individuals.
Our team consistent of a bunch of rank amateurs: my dad and
myself, Chris, and Ron on the first and third days. Ron had built a Pygmy kayak before. Neither my dad nor Chris had ever built a
boat from scratch before. Due to prior
commitments, Ron was unavailable on the second day, and another total novice,
Ian, stepped in for him. We selected the
9-ft Tubby Tug design from Glen-L. A
review of the study plans had convinced us that the scope of Tubby Tug was such
that, if nothing went wrong, we could achieve a nearly complete boat, less any
sanding or finishing, within the allotted time.
The boat also has a ton of character, and our reckoning was that the
charming looks of the boat would go a long way toward the winning the
prize.
Glen-L Tubby Tug |
Each step of the build was carefully planned out in sequence. Much of the plan was built around keeping the work going while working around epoxy drying times. As a result, the choreography often differed from the Glen-L instructions. To be successful we had to have a completed hull, with fiberglass on the exterior by the end of day 1. Day two would be focused on building the pilot house and making incremental progress on the hull, adding items like rubrails. Day 3, hopefully, would revolve around bringing it all together and adding finishing touches. While no wood could be cut prior to the starting gun, a large amount of prep work is allowed. We pre-marked all of the plywood parts on 10-ft long sheets of okoume. Knowing that there would be no time for painting the boat, we chose to apply stain to many of the parts, so that in the end we would have a doughty little green and red, and yellow tug. The surfaces of the plywood that would not later receive fiberglass were presealed in two coats of epoxy. The timber that would later form the rubrails and trim were also premilled.
We were allowed to set up our work area the day before the
competition. A total of five teams were
competing, and Edensaw allocated each team a 10’x20’ work area under a large
tent. The front 10’ span faced the
festival crowd, and was roped off to prevent lookie-loos from wandering into
the work areas. We were wedged between
team from the Wooden Boat School and their plywood pram, and a team of semi-pro
boat builders and their carvel-planked rowboat.
We set up a tool box and epoxy-mixing table at the back of our work area
and laid the first piece of plywood that we would cut on sawhorses in the
middle of our area. Edensaw provided
communal bandsaws and waste bins.
Set up and ready to build |
The starting whistle sounded at 9am sharp on Friday morning. Our saws plunged into the plywood, liberating part after part of Tubby Tug. At times we had four saws running at once: two circular saws working on the long, sweeping curves, and two jig saws cutting the tighter radiuses. Once the bottom and side panels were free, I grabbed a drill and began drilling stitching holes. The bottom was set up on a folding table and parts straight from the saws were delivered to the table and stitched in, first the bulkheads and seat sides, then the transom and hull sides. By lunch, the lower hull was stitched together.
The bottom of the hull is visible in the center |
Stitching the hull |
Fiberglass. The tumblehome was a particular pain to wet out. |
Saturday dawned, and we were all dragging out feet from the
efforts the day before. We decided to
split our efforts, with my dad and Chris working on the pilothouse build, while
Ian (feeling fresh since it was his first day) and I tackling getting the hull
ready for fiberglass. It turned out that
there was more prep work than we anticipated to get the hull ready for
fiberglass. We used our sanders to
round over the edges of the plywood joints. Some of the seams were not properly
filled, meaning we had to apply more epoxy and wait for it to cure. After this, we spread out the fiberglass and
set to work wetting it out. For such a
little boat, the hull has a lot of surface area, meaning the wet out took a
long time. It was additionally
complicated by the tumblehome of the bulwarks.
Ideally, the topsides would be ‘glassed separately once the hull was
upright, but we had no time for that.
Still, it was terribly vexing and very time consuming to get the epoxy
on and the fiberglass to lay against those upside-down surfaces.
The pilothouse slowly takes form. |
If the hull was a challenge, things were no better on the pilothouse. The pilothouse requires a good bit of fiddly carpentry, and the instructions and plans provided by Glen-L failed to give enough detail to readily sort it all out easily, particularly in the heat of the battle and when you are tired. By the time the hull had its coat of fiberglass, the side of the pilothouse had barely come together. It was 2pm and clearly time to break for lunch. Exhausted, lunch took longer than usual.
The rain started shortly after we resumed working. Historically, the weekend of the Wooden Boat
is not particularly rainy, but this particular rainstorm was historically
intense. To make room for building the
pilothouse at the back of the tent, we had pushed the still-drying hull to the
forward edge of the tent, and the rain began pelting against the wet epoxy on
the hull. Epoxy does not like to get wet
when it is drying; it has a tendency to bloom (turn white), get splotchy and
gummy. We had to spring into action fast
to get the hull to safety. The area aft
of the hull was quickly cleared, pilothouse parts and all. I moved to the bow as we prepared to slide
the hull back to safety. At that moment,
the wind gusts, flapping the roof on the tent, and unleashing the tens of
gallons of water that had been pooling directly over my head. I was wetter than a St. Bernhard in a
swimming pool, and the forward third of the hull hand standing water on
it. My teammates hooted at the hilarity
of it. I joined in, but remained focused
on rescuing the hull from further peril.
We swiftly repositioned the hull and set to work with paper towels (not
fun on the tacky surface) and a heat gun to try to remove as much moisture as
possible. It took a good chunk of time –
me dripping through all of it – but eventually we mostly recovered, getting
away with just a few splotches of bloom.
I do not remember if I ever got dry. I do remember most of the rest of the day
being demoralizing. Fatigue had set in
hard, and everything was a struggle. At
one point we tried a dry run of assembling the pilothouse, only to discover
that the roof of the cabin substantially underhung the sides. We fought with a few more things, trimmed
back the overhanging fiberglass on the hull, rolled on another coat of epoxy,
and called it a night.
Close to the end |
Tools down! |
Around thirty minutes before the end of the competition, we had finished everything we could think to do. We put down our tools and started to clean up. The Wooden Boat School team was slopping latex house paint on their hull and hitting it with a hairdryer to speed things up. The carvel planked team had given up the night before, when a few unplanned hiccups made it impossible for them to complete their boat on time. The two other teams, an amateur-built 20’ catamaran, and a collapsible rowing pram built by a team of two, were also wrapping thins up quickly.
At 2pm sharp, the whistle blew, and the “building” part of
the Boat Building Challenge was over.
That only left the “Boat” part – seeing how well the various small craft
performed on the water. Since Edensaw tent
was positioned at the opposite side of the Point Hudson boat basin from the
boat launch, this meant that reaching the water necessitated holding an
impromptu parade of new boats through the Festival grounds. Our little tugboat was clearly a crowd favorite,
its cute little form garnering many looks, comments, and photographs as we
carried it around.
The Boat Building Challenge is not just a competition, but
also a form of entertainment at the festival.
The ropes across the front of the tent help keep onlookers at bay,
though it is incredible just how far some people lean over. Some really want to ask questions, something
that can be a major distraction when you are working fully steam ahead. Mercifully, the Edensaw staff would swoop in
to rescue us if the questioning became intense.
On all three days, however, a bystander in a loud Hawaiian shirt slipped
through the guards and the barriers, and stood in our work area, asking us
questions and inspecting our work up close.
Not wanting to be rude, we did not throw him out, but were certainly
short in our responses to him. On
reaching the water, we learned this interloper’s secret: he was none other than
“Kiwi” Ferris, owner of Edensaw and chief judge of the competition. That would have been handy to know earlier.
Stroke! Stroke! |
One by one, the boats entered the water. The Boat School guys had rigged theirs with a sail, furled since it was blowing half a gale at the time. My dad and I clambered aboard our Tubby Tug. Tubby Tug is designed to be powered with a small outboard, but the Challenge rules prohibit using anything other than human or sail power, so we seized up our canoe paddles and started paddling furiously. We were paddling away from a rock-lined lee shore, and Tubby Tug has a huge amount of windage for such a tiny boat. Our departure from shore was far from graceful. We careened this way and that, first toward the rocks, then towards a pier, then towards the festival boats. Meanwhile, the catamaran had taken off out of the harbor like greased lightning, and the guy in the folding pram was gleefully, and literally, rowing circles around us. We struggled our way out maybe 50’ from shore, before letting the wind rocket us back from whence we came.
Sharing the water with a competitor |
Sunday, March 20, 2022
A Project Named Clancy - XII. Spars and Rigging
Next, the edges were eased with the router, using a big roundover bit.