A Shipwright in Training

Here in Newport it’s sunny, warm, ever so slightly breezy.  It’s the kind of weather that’s been bringing people out all week to scrape and repaint their porches.  People are clambering all over their boats, touching up the varnish, putting on new bottom paint, getting to all those projects they could put off during the winter because it was too damn cold.  Or wet. Or far into the future.

Well, these past few days, the future is here, and everyone knows that the hordes of tourists will soon blanket the town.  Sure the streets will be a log jam, but they’re here to see and be seen, and they’ve got money to burn.  Shops are opening back up.  Everyone’s sprucing up their store windows, and Ben & Jerry’s is open again. 

But the best part of all this is the biking.  I headed down to the south of the island today

 

and spent some time reading Atwood Manley’s wonderful book on the canoe builder J. Henry Rushton.

It was a perfect day for doing nothing.  Some folks were paddling their surfboards around the coast,

others were flying kites over on Brenton Point

and the kite sellers were ready for them.

After a long ride, my mind was focused singly on the Del’s van. 

Best damn frozen lemonade on the island. 

The Canada geese stopped by on the way up north.  They were strangely undeterred by a dog silhouette stuck in the ground to scare them off.  

Guess they’re not as dim as they seem…

Most of the week, however, I’ve been working on the Aurora and Madcap.  We needed to finish putting in the quilting screws (more commonly called liner screws) that bind the inner to the outer planking where I’d replaced the 1st broad.  Looking down into the boat you can sort of tell the new little screws there on the left.

Here’s a closer shot.

They’re little 1/2″ long #6 screws.  Not big, but there’s approximately 250 of them on each side of the boat for just this one plank.  I figured it was better to get this out of the way now before we get the deck on.  It’s going to be dark and cramped down there in just a few days. 

Now for a little dinner out on the front porch before it cools down again.  No complaints today!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Classes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.