All endeavors have a beauty…
…and…
…a disappointment
Our canoe is no different.
We admire the beauty of the canoe every morning. The cedar strips form lines from the bow to the stern, pulling the eye along the shape of the boat. Isn’t admiring the beauty of a boat the best part of a boat? Why would anyone create a canoe that didn’t have beauty?
This morning, we dread looking inside the canoe. Last night was an epoxy disaster, and we did our best to remove the bubbles and air pockets before leaving for the evening. Our concern is justified–there are myriad tiny bubbles rising from the epoxy and some of them have collected as air pockets under the fiberglass. If we can fix it, we will have to do considerable sanding and discover why the air pockets formed so we don’t repeat our faulty technique.
It’s Saturday, March 16th, 2024 and Janell wants to sleep in late. The rest of us want to get rolling so we decide to send the first wave in Matthew’s rental car, allowing Janell to follow when she is ready. Nice plan, but the rental car won’t start and none of us carry jumper cables, so Matthew has to call the rental company for a jump. That will take one hour, so we leave Janell and Matthew at the house.
Today, we plan to attach gunnels and finish thwarts, seats, yokes, and handles. But first, we must deal with the epoxy bubbles. Rich takes a small drill, punctures the air pockets and squirts epoxy into the pocket with a glue injector. Hope that works!
While Rich struggles with the bubbles, I return to the problem of building the seats. The idea is simple: a front and rear board span from gunnel to gunnel. Two seven-inch spacers run parallel to the canoe. This forms a box which Janell will use to weave a caned cushion at a later time. We have decided to use dowels to attach the crosspieces to the spacers. This requires precisely drilled holes, which I failed at the previous evening.
Today, I have practiced drilling holes and have set up a jig which is much more successful. If my son (a carpenter) is reading this, he will roll his eyes and ask why didn’t I just use a dowling jig in the first place. I even have one I inherited from my father.
However, I’m in Port Townsend and don’t have access to any of these fancy tools, so I make do. I discover that measuring and marking is really important. I also discover the laser pointer feature of the drill press. I place dowels in the correct position with about a 1/64th inch variance – good enough to fix with 80 grit sandpaper.
While I am congratulating myself, Janell reminds me the width of the seat was to be thirteen inches—not the ten inches I have drilled holes for. dammit. I am frustrated and don’t want to fix the error. But she is right, and thirteen inches does look better than ten. I can still use the outside hole, but will have to drill eight additional holes and plug eight unneeded holes. It’s that disappointment thing we’ve been discussing. In the end, I’m happy to make the correction. It was easy to do with the right tools and the right attitude.
Joel recommends adding screws to back up the dowels. Matthew takes this task on, which involves drilling a hole (in the right place) countersinking the head of the screw, then gluing in a plug to cover up the unsightly screw. When the glue is dry, we’ll sand off the excess plug and you’ll never know it’s there; unless you are told where to look. We know it’s there and we allow it to bug us. You won’t see it, so you’ll see the beauty.
Redfish Kayak
Janell and I bought a stereo system almost forty years ago. We planned to buy a good music system, but not the most expensive. I remember our stereo sales person being helpful and explaining the knobs and TLAs (TLA = Three Letter Acronym) and then calling our attention to the special woo-woos available from different manufacturers. We had a system all picked out, but noticed there was another listening room. I asked what was in there?
“That’s the high-end systems,” our salesperson told us. (That’s not for you) he implied.
Darn if I was going to be thought of as an audio plebian!
“Let’s take a listen,” I say to Janell.
She agrees so we walk in and the stereo guy fires up a system costing four times the system we had chosen. It sounds great. Crap. If we hadn’t gone in here, we would have been happy with the original system. Now we either have to spend 4x$ or be happy with shitty sound. When you visit, I’ll show you the choice we made. (Note: we chose 4x$)
Why tell you this anecdote? Because this afternoon we visited Redfish Kayak. Joe is legendary for his custom comfortable kayak seats and his hand-built kayaks. His shop is wall-to-wall strip kayaks (literally! Kayaks hang from the walls).
Distressingly, his fiberglass is flawless. No bubbles. We compare his work to ours and wallow in our disappointment. We forget to remind ourselves that Joe can lay the strips for a complete kayak in a week and has been laying fiberglass for, um, about as long as we have owned our fancy stereo.
Gunnels. Finally!
A boat isn’t a boat until it has gunnels. Janell and Rich work for hours to line up the skuppers routed into the inner gunnels, the deckplates, and the outer gunnels. I wasn’t part of this phase, so I didn’t hear the discussion and deep consideration required. In the end, the boat has gunnels, there are flaws, and it is beautiful.
We’re exhausted, our feet are tired, and we have just enough energy to walk over to Tommyknockers for pasties and beer. Tonight is Matthew’s final evening before flying back to NYC, and he wins three games of backgammon against Janell. He leaves happy. I don’t think Janell is disappointed to have a worthy opponent.