Initial inventory...

Spent the better part of today going over the Neptune 16.  Made a list two pages long of stuff I need to do to it.  Some need done before it goes in the water.  Some can wait a year or two or so.

Getting her home...

Of course it would have been too easy to just pick up the Neptune 16 on Wednesday and bring it home.  The trailer lights refused to work on my Tracker.  The worked just fine on the guys pickup, but all I could get were running lights.  I ended up taking it to a hitch and wiring place in Loveland, where I bought the boat.  After spending about 2 hours on it, they were at a loss to figure out why I didn't have trailer lights.  The trailer's wiring worked great.  The wiring I had installed in the tracker worked great.  They just didn't work great together.  I left it there so they could work on it again the next day, when I had to go to work.  I went back up again today and they spent another hour on it to no avail.  They gave up and didn't charge me anything for it. 

I had bought an LED trailer lighting kit at Mal-Wart and it worked just fine with my tracker.  So I pulled the rig down the street, parked under a shade tree, and proceeded to switch out the malfunctioning trailer lights with my new ones.  Worked just fine and I drove it all home without any problems.

A new project...

Today I broke down and bought a boat.  Not the materials for a boat.  An actual boat.  A Capitol Yachts Neptune 16 sailboat.

I had been eyeballing the boat on craigslist for about 6 weeks and the price just kept dropping.  I downloaded the 2004 issue of Small Craft Advisor with a review of the Neptune 16.  Progress on the Michalak toon2 that I had been building was painfully slow and I was already pouring over plans for my next boat, which would be bigger and more seaworthy.  Here was a boat that would be ready to go this summer.  The Neptune is 3 times heavier than the toon2 and, with a swing keel, would be much more stable and seaworthy for the adventures I want to take my boat on.  It also has the features that I was unsuccessfully trying to build into my toon2 and was planning on incorporating into my next boat, including:
-a cabin capable of sleeping 2 adults
-a cockpit capable of sleeping 2-3 children
-easily single-handed but
-capable of carrying 4 adults or the above mentioned family crew
-a private spot to use a bucket
-decent performance

The tradeoffs that I'm aware of for all of this:
-poor performance in light air (modifiable with the right sails, possible improvement of the swing keel shape)
-skimpy rigging (easily upgraded)

Sarah went with me while I looked at it last Sunday.  It was in a lot rougher shape than the guy advertised it as being.  The mast was broken but splinted.  The mains'l was soft, patched, and still had holes in it. The guy claimed that he had patched a leak, but the roughshod job suggested otherwise.  However, the fiberglass hull was solid, all the pieces seemed to be there (minus the hatch, but that's easily fabricated), and the trailer seemed functional.

I called Paul, a guy a met on the Michalak yahoo group who is sort of becoming my small boat mentor.  I filled him in and asked for his opinion. He thought that with the skills I have gained, I could fix what ails it and that it would be a steal at the price. Talking with Sarah, we agreed that I could get it if I tried to get the canoe back in the water this summer and  I called they guy up after a couple other people had looked at it and arranged to buy it.

Now I own a Neptune 16 sailboat!

Boat Building Leaves No Time For Blogging!

Josh, it has been awhile since you posted anything. I guess that means you are busy on your boat. I will be glad to go canoeing with you once it is finished. Go honey! Love, your wife

Close to the end....a few more strips of cedar to cut and paste. Nothing like kindergarten!

The boat has now been sanded and is ready for fiberglass and epoxy. My sister Steph came to helped sand the boat and give encouragement. Notice the floor from before and after sanding? That means the wood is smooth as butter!

Better be for a boat...not a funeral! Draping the fiberglass and wetting it with epoxy..

After the epoxy and fiberglass came the taping for the bottom to have graphite added to it. You can see the black line where the Josh and his friend Adam sharpied so the waterline would look more natural and the graphite would be hidden. Adam helped Josh work on the boat and then carry the boat in the house (gasp!) for its weigh-in. It came in at about 30 lbs! Thanks for your help, Adam. Bye, pretty wood! Hello, not-so-beautiful black protection.

The outside is done...epoxied, fiberglassed and sanded...ready for varnish after we finishing sanding the inside.

If you thought the outside was alot of work...the inside can be worse. Good thing we have God to clean out the inside...oh wait, talking about a boat. Josh cleaning out the dust with a vacuum. Notice the face wear? Now, it's onto epoxy and fiberglassing the inside.

The outside has been sanded and varnished several times. The inside now has been sanded, vacuumed, fiberglassed and epoxied, and the seats are being put in. Josh is testing out one for good measure. Almost ready to launch!

Unofficial launch...maybe tomorrow? Yay!

The stripper's art...

So, stripping the canoe is coming along. As you can tell, I had a few different color boards to use and I'm not sure I put them on in the best order. It's a little muddled near the top of the canoe (which would be the bottom in this picture, since I'm building upside down). Oh well, the point is it's a canoe. The light strips at the bottom will make a bit of a water line and will be nice to look at from the inside, since the outside below the waterline will be covered in a black epoxy/graphite mixture to give it rock hard abrasion resistance).

I was going to mention something else here, but I forgot what it was. If I remember later, I'll edit this post.

Accent strips...

are a pain in the rear! I'll post pics later, but to make a long story short, I glued up some strips earlier to make the boat look "pretty", tried to glue it on at the same time as another cedar strip, and couldn't make it work. So I tried to glue it alone. Barely made it work.

My advice for anyone trying to do an accent strip on their boat: Don't add ANY curve to the strips prior to the accent strip, keep them flat. OR don't pre-glue the accent strip. Make sure you've got an extra set of hands when you do it. And DON'T try to do ANYTHING other than the accent strip at the same time.

The first strip goes on... (aka: starting to look like a boat!)

I've been busy working on the canoe, but due partly to a problem with the batteries in the camera, and partly to a flair up of my depression, I haven't been posting in a while. So, for those of you who have been anxiously awaiting an update, here it is!

This last week has been spent setting up the forms for the canoe, which give the boat it's final shape. Now that the forms are up, I have started putting the 3/16" x 5/8" strips on the forms, glueing them together and clamping them over the forms. These strips will make up the core of a fiberglass - wood - fiberglass sandwich to keep the canoe watertight, light but strong, and mildly flexible. Since taking this picture, I've got a couple more inches of strips on either side, and will soon have some pretty accent strips on, too.

Before I could start putting the strips on the forms, I had to carve the inner stem on each end with the spokeshave that my lovely wife gave me for my birthday last year to match the angle of the strips as they came off the forms. I got the stems just a little to sharp, though. They should have an 1/8" between the two angled side, but this should work anyway.

All of the strips were cut from 16' long boards of cedar and then a bead was routered on one side and a cove the other side. More on this later. Thanks to my wife, Sarah for helping me to rip those boards into strips on my old table saw. I could see her watching to make sure I kept my thumbs away from the blade, since I managed to cut the tip of one off a couple months back. Thanks to my buddy Scott for giving up an afternoon to help me run all those strips through the router. Twice.

In addition to getting all the cedar strips prepared, I've also been working on a few other bench projects. I'm doing them now, rather than letting the boat sit in garage, almost complete, while I do all the final projects necessary to put it in the water. One of these projects was to carve the thwart out of a nice piece of cherry that I got on a tip from my second cousins in Colorado Springs (Thanks Don and Linda!). The thwart is the brace that goes across the center of the canoe, holding the two sides apart and adding some strength and stiffness to the boat. I used cherry for a couple of reasons: it's fairly light, fairly gouge resistant, and VERY beautiful! I carved this thwart with a yoke in it to allow me to flip the canoe upside down and carry it alone for short distances, from the car to the lake, for instance. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! Working with a nice, sharp spokeshave is an intensely gratifying experience!

Anyhoo, that's not all I've been doing, but that's all I have time to write about for now. Thanx for hanging in there until I could get back to posting here!