The Launch

Launch day dawned cloudy but that made no difference to our spirits. Ben and John loaded Sea Nut into the bed of the pick-up and John made some support pieces so she would sit nicely while overturned on the float.

The christening was done with water bottles punctured on a nail driven into a piece of oak and clamped onto the bow transom.

Here she is waiting to see if she was seaworthy. Not a drop of water came in through any seam. So she was approved for sea trials.

Everyone got a chance to try her out and we were all amazed by how well she handled and how easy she was to row. Even the little girls had a great time and took several turns with her.

She finally was hauled up and put to rest on her new supports. Next weekend, hopefully Whitecap will follow Sea Nut into the New Meadows for the summer.

Painter ... Finished Pram

After touching up the paint yesterday, the only remaining job to do was splice on the painter, which John did today. Below you see the result of that effort.


Below you see the inside of the finished pram. She is ready for launch hopefully next weekend if it stops raining.

We will be sure and post photos of that event.

Seats and Name

Tonight we drilled the holes and fastened the seats onto the seat supports we had already fastened to the planks on the pram. It was really not a big deal just a matter of drilling the holes, countersinking them and screwing in the screws.
You do get kind of sick of screwing in screws, however.

After all that was done, or perhaps as a break from screwing in screws, we installed our purchased vinyl lettered name on the stern of the pram.
Now all that remains to be done is touching up the paint and splicing the painter on onto the hole in the fore keel. We also want to splice a loop in the shore end of the painter.

Fastening The Keel and Brass Rub Strip

In order to fasten the keel onto the boat, we had to place the keel that we had cut out and fitted to the bottom of the pram. I varnished the keel before we fastened it on. We marked a straight line on either side of the keel. Next we drilled a hole every seven inches along the center of those two lines using a drill that was the size of the screws we were going to use. It's hard to work so hard to make the boat water tight and then drill holes in the bottom, but we did it. Next, we turned the boat over and counter sunk the holes from the inside. At the bow end of the keel, the keel itself lands over the fore keel of the boat so those screws go in from the outside and are counter sunk into the keel. The stern end of the keel has a lag bolt that goes through the width of the keel and into the bottom of the boat. It is held in place by a washer and nut inside the boat. The outside end of the lag bolt is counter sunk into the keel. After all the screw holes were counter sunk, we turned the boat back over so it was bottom up. I placed the keel in position between our two guide lines and John drilled the screw holes into the keel from the inside of the boat. Next we put a bead of marine adhesive bedding between our two guide lines. Using the lag bolt as a guide, we placed the keel in position and tightened it from under the boat. From there, John put each of the screws into the keel from under the boat while I held it in position.

After the keel fastening operation, we went about placing the brass rub strip along the edge of the keel and along the bow. First, we bent the stern end of the strip so it fitted over the curve of the stern end of the keel. We set up our drill press and drilled all of the holes in the strip being careful not to make our holes so they were in the same spot as the fasteners holding the keel on the boat. Next we went through the same process to countersink the holes. Starting at the stern, we fastened the curved end of the strip onto the keel putting some silicone bedding adhesive on under the strip. We continued to fasten the strip onto the keel. We did our screw holes as we went along. This process went along quite rapidly and we liked the finished product.

Now we go on to plugging the holes on the inside, touching up the paint and fastening the seats. We also have to put the name on the stern and we will be ready for launch.

Finishing the Gunwale Guard

Last week odd free time was spent screwing the remaining gunwale guard to the remaining oak rail. Yesterday, the pieces were installed on the stern transom. So we spent today installing the leather corners on the stern. The pieces for the stern corners were more square than trapezoidal because the corner was closer to 90 degrees and that shape seemed to work better. Next we began figuring out how to install covers on the end pieces. After deciding what shape would work best, we cut out two of them. Below, John screws the outside part of the piece onto the boat.

This is what the finished stern gunwale guard looked like. The whole finished project looks very yachty and we like it.

Installing the Gunwale Guard

Since our last post, we have had a few things that have taken up our time but we have slowly been installing the gunwale guard around the gunwales of the pram. The gunwale guard we are using looks like the photo below. It is woven material glued to a 3/4 round piece of rubber. We have used 3/4" copper tacks to fasten one side of the material to the top of the gunwale.


Then the 3/4 round part is folded over the tacks and the right angle in the piece of oak gunwale and fastened on the outside with stainless steel screws and washers.


All of this worked pretty well and we were progressing nicely until we got to the corners. The gunwale guard just didn't want to install nicely around the corners. It looked terrible. We thought about what to do and asked some boat builders what they would suggest and the answer seemed to be to fashion some sort of leather covering for the corners. So, where to get the leather? We looked around in craft sites on the internet and finally bought a piece of cowhide on ebay. The piece was much bigger than we needed but we didn't know exactly how we were going to fashion the things so we had enough to experiment.

Today, we cut the gunwale guard that we had tried to put around the corners so we had two ends at almost right angles to each other. We cut a wedge shaped piece of the gunwale guard and fitted in into the space between the two ends and fastened it with our copper tacks. Next we cut a piece of leather shaped like a trapezoid, 3-1/2" at one end and 5" at the other and about 4-1/2" high. We worked the smaller end of the piece of leather until we could fasten it to the outside of the gunwale rail and the bow section of the boat. Next we cut a slit in the longer end of the piece about to the corner of the boat. By putting one end over the other, we fashioned a corner in the piece of leather. Next we trimmed off the pieces so they fit nicely into the inside of the gunwale and the bow piece. We fastened that with two of our screws with finish washers. "Cut to fit" is the way I would describe the process. The result looked something like this ...

Installing the Oarlocks

This afternoon we carried the pram back to the cellar so we could put the truck back in it's side of the garage. I have put three coats of paint on the inside and outside of the hull. We can work on finishing it up in the cellar. Since it was raining, John decided to install the oarlocks this afternoon. He ran into a little problem while drilling the very last hole in the last holder. He ran into one of the screws we used to fasten the gunwale rail onto the side of the boat. He managed to work out of the problem without need for any touch up work at all. Below, you see the two rowing stations and the seats lying in their places. They will not be fastened down until the keel has been installed on the bottom.

Last weekend, John cut out the keel piece and the rudder. I have been sanding and shaping the keel this week. I will put several coats of varnish on it before we install it on the bottom of the boat. We want to install the gunwale guard before we fasten on the keel because the boat will lie flat on the ladder frame now and it won't after the keel is installed.