Sailing Canoe "Swift"

First sail of the season

First sail (and swim!) of the season. It's a long time since the canoe was in the build stage in the workshop (see earlier posts) so fitting in a first sail in March has got 2010 boating off to a good start. It also made a nice change from the current maintenance work and stripping down antifouling in the boatyard. It is a great deal more picturesque and better for the lungs).

New crew

Making Paddles

Time for a pair of single paddles for Swift


The excellent book by Warren and Gidmark provides some good tips and offsets to mark out various designs. I choose the 'Sugar Island' design and glue up blanks in Ash, with some mahogany decorative stripes and protective strip glued accross the end grain.

The blanks are marked out from a centre line, measuring out to each offset dimension and then joining up the points with a clean curve.

The next job was to cut out the profile in plan.

I will revert to imperial measurements as that's what provided in the design book. So the blanks were glued up to an even thickness of 1 1/4" (being the maximum thickness of the stocks). As the paddles will only be 3/8" at most there is plenty of waste. I choose to router the worst of this off before hand planing.

There is still plenty to go at with a smoothing plane, block plane and spokeshave. Once I have my 3/8" thickness (9 mm) in the centre and paddle endges which are shaped down to 3/32" ('say' 2.5mm) I move onto the opposite end and start to shape the grip.

The candle on the bench was left over from a wedding reception and keeps the bottom of the planes moving well over the timber!

Most of the shaping on the stock and grip is completed with a sharp spokesave and the Ash works relatively easily.

The finished grip.

And the finished product! The double paddle made at the same time as Swift last year was varnished, so I will try oiling these ones and see which proves to be the most practical finish.

Completion

Sails Up!

An almost invisible repair complete, so back in business for some winter sailing on a very flooded welsh lake.

Passes inspection from wife - declared seaworthy.

Launch Day

Launch day finally arrives

Weather and launch went perfectly, the sails for the Gunter rig set the Iain Oughtred designed MacGegor canoe off perfectly. I remained the right way up and out of the water for the duration and 'Swift' lived up to her name.

Nothing of course ever quite ends as planned in boatbuilding and my reluctance to risk damaging the varnished deck by over strapping the canoe down to the trailer was to have disastrous results. 'Swift' I noticed (after the launch) had damage to her hull, where she had lifted and must have slammed down onto a point load on the trailer rollers. I have now learnt a difficult lesson in this respect and boat building has now instantly moved to boat repair.

On a more positive note, she is a fine little boat and once over this frustration and what we intend to be an invisable repair, I'm now up for some winter sailing.

How could I let this happen.

Sails Up