Gluing gunwales spacers and BH2 side arms

Ahoy mateys!

Another bunch of small items taken care of over the past few days to share with you.

First up, I decided to bite the bullet and glue those gunwales on. Pretty much the whole show was waiting for this to happen. Ive also decided to delay gluing on the rear seat until I get the rudder hardware. Technically, the rear seat should be glued down along with the front seat, and then the gunwales, and then the spacers at BH4... However, everything fits really nice, and the boat is dialed in really sweet. Id rather just have the space to work with rather than screw around through an inspection port to get my rudder installed.

The gunwales, as you may remember, were already clamped into position and screwed in place to suck them in where need be. I carefully removed the gunwale, left the screws in position in the sides, and coated everything with epoxy. Then, I mixed up a bunch of glue, made it quite thick, and coated it on the gunwale. With the bow end propped up on a bench, I screwed in the stern, and worked my way forward. I then inspected the gunwale for gaps above and below the sheer. The gaps on the underside of the gunwale can only be corrected really with screws. Fortunately I had my can of ply-backed screws nearby, and added a few more per side depending on where they were needed. A line of packing tape kept things nice and clean.



Then, I decided to throw in the side arms for BH2 and 4. It had come to my attention through the Storer forum that the side arms for BH2 are oversized. I had cut mine like the others, and theres not enough gluing area for this high stress location. This was a bummer, because my sidearms were really nicely shaped with a good fit. I whipped out some cedar, traced the old BHs down, and in a few minutes had new sidearms. You can see the difference below.


Tonight, I glued up the starboard inwale spacers. They fit so nice, only a little bit of glue is needed. Some very gentle playing with the clamps and some thick glue and I got every spacer to sit where I wanted it. PHEW. It takes two hands per spacer but theres a definite feel how to get them to stay in position so they dont float.



Heres a nice picture of my boat with her gunwale glued on, and planed to match the ply. Shes looking good!



AND, heres a quintessential boatbuiling pic that I swear was not staged. Clamps, hand planes, shavings, inpsection port, this picture has got it all.

Getting small items done

Slowly but surely, carefully, things are coming along!

My second gunwale is scarfed and glued! As you can see, the epoxy will glue your bricks to the wood too! I had to chisel the brick off the wood, and it left brick behind which was further chiseled. This is my nicest, tightest scarf to date... on this side. Little more of a gap on the other side which is too bad, because the tight side will be glued to the boat due to a curvature in the wood that already nicely conforms to the hull.


My mast step and mast partner are glued up, in place, and ready to be cut open to fit the mast and then glued down. I doubled up the mast partner because the top of BH2 can be easily twisted by hand. By doubling it up, it stiffens it considerably. This makes me feel better after the chaotic gluing job around these bulkheads:


My bow knee came out well except for two things 1. I forgot that it was to be placed OVER the stem. My stem comes up to the edges of the ply, no room to slip it over. This means I will have to either slip it behind the stem or on top of it. I will ask Storer for recommendations. My bow was also considerably wider than the number provided by Storer for the knee. I would highly recommend tracing real world bow to your piece of lumber prior to cutting. Remember to keep the gunwales fastened. My stern knees, by comparison, came out great (I traced the real deal and did not go by the numbers provided by Storer). The great thing about my stern knees is that they are interchangeable, as in, both corners are the same! Yes! Precision building yes! Notice my mail. This is where I throw my bills. Then when I glue on the aft seat, they will be sealed in forever, and all my financial problems will disappear!

Because my workshop is a walk from my assembly point in the garage, my hull is becoming my new holding bin/workshop.


Its also dusty in there! My lonesome bike, covered in wood dust. Primarily this dust is from the wood cherry countertops being built by my brother in law right behind me, but the picture is cooler if everyone thinks its coming from my boat!


In addition,

1. my side arms for BH2 and 4 are cut and beveled to the sides (again, I waited until I got my boat assembled to match them to the actual hull)

2. inwale spacers are cut

I would like warmer temps in the garage before I start gluing things. As of right now, strictly hull, non-gluing, I need to do the following:

1. Cut out the mast holes in the partner and step

2. Scarf inwales

3. Finish fitting bow seat (waiting for gluing of seat cleats)

Other than that, rudder, daggerboard, mast and spars, centerboard trunk.

I am very close to having a totally completed hull.

Tour du Leman 2006 It cant be done

This 160km, non-stop race round Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) was the first big expedition rowing challenge I actually rowed (rather than coxed) in. 

Completing it changed my whole mindset, gave me a belief in what I could do on the water, and taught me the No.1 rule of long distance rowing, as far as Im concerned.

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Event: Tour du Léman à lAviron
Where: Geneva, Switzerland
Distance: 160km non-stop
Time: 16h 23 mins
Boat type: Touring coxed quads (known as "yolettes")
Number of crews in the event: 19
Event Organiser: Société Nautique de Genève

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Why we finished up doing it
A club mate at York City RC came across a poster for this event whilst visiting a gig club whilst on holiday in Cornwall. It obviously had to be done.

Why it happens 

The event started in 1972 when the Société Nautique de Genève (SNG) celebrated its centenary, and each part of this multi-watersport club was charged with coming up with a way of marking the occasion. The "rowing circle" suggested the audacious plan of rowing the whole way round Lac Léman, the lake on whose western end Geneva sits.

Before the race

We were the first crew to arrive in Geneva, and were impressed that, as promised, someone from the club picked us up at the airport. The race fee also promised free accommodation in "dormitories", which turned out to be in the local nuclear bunker. We should have realised: Switzerland provides a bed in a nuclear bunker for every one of its citizens, and in times when theres no immediate threat that the superpowers might press the button, these are made available as accommodation for community events.

See, it was turning out to be an unexpectedly socio-cultural tour already!

Being a mixed crew, we politely split up into girls and boys rooms for the night, and went to bed. We heard various other crews turn up during the night. In the morning, our socio-culural education was further extended, when we realised that continentals just arent aware of British niceties of male/female separation, and that all the rooms had become mixed. Well, no problem. 

On the other hand, we did find the tendency of German rowing gentlemen to wander around in the type of undergarment sometimes referred to as "budgie smugglers", rather more than we wanted first thing in the morning.

But on to the rowing...

We prepared the boat the day before the race by taping up the riggers in case of big waves, and stowing vast amounts of bottled water, jam sandwiches, and other snacks aboard. And then enjoyed the pre-race cocktail party, complete with canapes provided by the in-house restaurant, who were clearly experienced at quite how many nibbles 95 long-distance rowers could pack away.

Crews sprint off the start, en masse.

The race starts when a gun is fired, and the assembled mass of crews, sprint for about 600m past the famous Jet dEau, across the lake before turning through 90 degrees to head out along the Swiss (north) side of the lake. Within a few kilometers, we were past the iconic UN building and the field spread out. Some of the lakeside towns looked charming; many featured little chateaux typical of the region. At Lausanne, where the IOC is based, we said "Wow!" at the sight of  huge Olympic rings on show at the lakeside. 

Somewhere between Nyon ("Nylon without the "L") and Lausanne we finally got the hang of sculling yolettes, which involved rating at 24 and just tapping it along. If you rate lower than that, as we had for the first several hours, its like picking up a floating sack of potatoes every stroke.  You have been warned. 

Navigation
To ensure that all crews really do follow the perimeter of the lake, the organisers issue a number of waypoints round which all crews must pass. We had a borrowed an old hand-held GPS, and programmed the various waypoints into it. Bearing in mind that this was 2006, and the iPhone was yet to be released, we found this rather tremendous, and enjoyed the count downs to each point.

Practising swapping before the race.
We didnt get much better at it.

Swapping strategy
Most crews swap the cox every 30 minutes, so that each crew member rows for 2 hours, and then coxes for half an hour. The swapping procedure is rarely elegant. And most of the jam sandwiches met a sticky end under my foot during one of the changeovers.

And back to the rowing again

The day was hot, and we made sure we were drinking plenty, but even so, by the time we go to near the top of the lake, we realised we had over-catered rather in the drinks cabinet, and poured litres and litres of the bottled water wed bought, over the side. Given we were due to pass Evian in due course, this felt somewhat like the a watery equivalent of bringing coals to Newcastle.

Around 5pm - wed done a good days rowing, and rounded the top of the lake. Except we still had to row all the way back down the lake, albeit along the shorter, French side, to our bunker beds in Geneva. Hmm. As dusk fell, we turned on our navigation lights, which allowed us to see what we thought were the crews in front and behind. But frankly there were several little twinkly lights in the distance, and it was impossible to tell what was going on. To paraphrase The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Lac Leman - its big. Really big.

As we headed away from Evian, things were getting pretty grim, and here I learned one of the key things you MUST know when youre doing expedition rowing (or expedition anything else, pretty much). When you feel so tired that you cant imagine anything can possibly make you feel less tired, including eating, which would require more energy than you can muster anyway, eat. You WILL feel better. Yes, it sounds obvious, But youd be surprised how long it can take the bring to figure that one out, if it doesnt already know, and is having to come up with it for the first time when its tired and hungry.

And then the batteries in the GPS ran out. And in their case, not even the offer of jelly babies was going to persuade them to make any more contribution to the trip. And the problem with this part of the lake is that there are all sorts of bays you DONT need to go into, and one you do, and we frankly had no idea which was which, which got rather stressful. So we finished up "missing a mark" although only after a rather confused, shouted conversation in French with the safety cruiser that was shadowing us, in which they thought we were saying that we wanted to "abandon", when all we really wanted to know was where we were. Maybe "Nous sommes perdus" has connotations of "All is lost" - we never got to the bottom of that one!

On-board entertainment
Strangely, the black comedy of this situation rallied our spirits and soon someone reminded us all how, when we had announced what we were doing at the club, and answered questions like "How many days will that take you?", one of the elder statesmen had pronounced firmly "It cant be done." Actually, we were all fond of the gent in question - whose name was Colin Jones, and having reached the stage where you have either to laugh or cry, we chose the former, and launched into rousing choruses of "Colin Jones, Colin Jones, Colin Jones" to the tune of "Ere we go, ere we go, ere we go." Really, it helped at the time, and youll just have to believe me.

Despite our best efforts, attempts to play "Today I went rowing and I saw..." didnt last for more than a few letters as the boys hadnt grasped that youre meant to "see" things in alphabetical order, so we were mightily relieved when FINALLY we rounded the last corner and saw the lights of Geneva spread out ahead of us.

It gets better and better
After crossing the finish line, and paddling round the club landing stage, we were immensely relieved to find kind helpers to help us drag the boat out of the water (still with too many drinks on board), and we were served with a 3-course meal - SNG are just the best event organisers in the world. Two of us fell asleep after the soup, with our heads on the table, and were mercifully whisked up the hill to the dormitories, whilst the other three made the most of the situation and ate our mains and puddings as well as their own. No point in letting a good lasagne go to waste.

Rule No.2 of long distance rowing (Rule No.1 is EAT):
wear gloves (this was the AFTER photo).

If youre impressed so far with the airport pick ups, the idiosyncratic accommodation, the cocktail party, and boat-carrying help and pasta when you really need it - get this - there was also a Sunday lunch provided the next day after the prize giving. Honestly, if SNG made lager, it would be brilliant.

A couple of FAQ
Q: You were on the water for over 16 hours. Er, how did you go to the toilet?
A: We all agreed never to talk about that again. So were certainly not telling you.

Q: Will you do it again?
A: At the time, the other woman in the crew and I agreed that we were terribly proud to have done it, and there was no need to do it again. Do you think we stuck to that, though? Find out here!

Knees are fitted

Enough said! Big day mentally, for this build. This was a step I was really looking forward to finishing. I feel like the hull is basically complete, besides the millions of little things. Structurally, shes sound. I like that.




The bow knee/breasthook took two tries, but I am happy with it. The plans call for the stem to be basically 19mm below the top of the ply, and the breasthook will slip over the top of it. My stem comes right to the top (my mistake) so Im butting it up against the back end. The fit is not super tight, but close enough to be filled with a little epoxy. The rest of the fit is really nice.

The stern knees also took a few tries and were a little trickier, I thought, due to the cut-out for for the inwale and the bevels needed to accommodate the sides and the transom.


Heres what I wrote to my compatriot in Sacramento about making the stern knees.


1. First I traced the corner before I installed the inwale spacer or the inwale. If you didnt do this, dont despair, make something up.

2. Bevel the Transom-side FIRST before making any cuts to accomodate the inwale. This way, you will have it appropriately sized before you cut the space for the inwale. This is what I did not do my first time around, and when I beveled Transom-side the whole knee slid back, creating a gap aft of the inwale.

3. Measure the cut you need for the inwale

4. Cut space for inwale.

5. Bevel Side-side. Then, eyeball the inside of the cut, it will be the same bevel. I used my dremel drum sander, and chiselled out the corner, carefully.

Tight DF is a bitch to plane/bevel.

Good luck. Make sure you can make a few of them if need be, materials wise.

See better pictures here.