Swinging the paintbrush

The big day has come.  Well, a slightly bigger day than some!  Its been a bit warmer of late, about 17 deg C here this afernoon and with primer paint on and sanded it seemed like a good idea to paint the outside of SEI’s hull.

Resene make really good paint,  the staff at their open 7 days a week branches are better informed and usually more helpful than those in the big box hardware stores paint dept, and I often use their paints.

This time I felt that I’d like a change from the usual high gloss enamel, I’d tried their water based enamel on the kayak and while its easy to slap on, and durable in terms of its ability to survive the elements it does scratch easily so I was looking to see what other alternatives there might be.

Sure enough they’ve got a semi gloss satin finish solvent based enamel called “Lusta-Glo”  ( Who thinks these names up?) . The spec sheet said all the right things, and within the limited range of colours in this paint type there were a couple that were close so,

Dark green hull, I bought a can of white which will have a few dribbles of the green added to paint the interior with, and a rich russet red for the gunwales and maybe a boot stripe along the waterline.

I put the first coat on today, brush coated, stroke lengthwise diagonal one way then the other then tip off lengthwise. 

It brishes nicely as long as the brush is kept fairly full, looks ok.  I like the idea of the satin finish, its more workboaty in its look plus I have to admit that one of the things that I like is that it tends not to show the defects in my building quite as badly as high gloss.

Its a little darker than this in reality, not quite Hunting Green or British Racing Green but about as close as the limited palette for this paint could get.  Looks good, but the data sheet says that it wont have its natural finish for a day or two after application.

I have to say it goes on well, no trouble keeping a wet edge and feathering the new paint in as you go.

Just as a by the way, Im trying to reorganise my shop, thats why its all untidy.

It’s a bit of a landmark in the build,  I’ll give her another coat on Sunday then flip her back over a couple of days later and get on with gluing the seats in and tidying up before doing the tinting trick with the green and white before painting the interior.

Soon.  The end is in sight, in this case it’s a double end.

Roll on summertime.

SEI afloat

Left to right. Blair, Paul and I about to pick her up and drop her in the water.  The designer is always a bit nervous on launching day. Float would be good, up the right way even better. 

It was a cool, grey and windy day, but the estuary is sheltered so there was not much in the way of waves when Blair, Paul and I walked the little boat down the ramp and into the water. She’s quite light at 76 kg, I can lift her on my own,  there would need to be a darn good reason for me to do that though but it does mean that handling her on the ground is easy, to pick one end up and drag her, or lift her around is easy.

I name this ship SEI.  May good luck  go with her and all who sail in her.

There are strong tidal currents here so we’d chosen to launch at slack water. We slid her into the water just before high tide, I shipped the oars climbed aboard and away.  She’s stable, steady enough to stand up and move about in, rows very easily leaving a particularly flat wake, and seems well balanced in a cross wind.

Ill get more pics when there is some light to show her off. In the meantime, check out the video on the link below.

I’d chosen 2.4m oars (8 footers) rather than the theoretical best length at 2.65m (8 ft 10in) so they’d stow easily out of the way of all the activity when sailing, SEI is after all primarily a sailing boat and when sailing the oars at this length will be stowed blade forward into the bow, with the handles out at the ends of the center thwart.  Out of the way, easy to access, and secure.

She is wider than most pure rowing boats, even with the oarlocks fitted inboard as far as possible on the gunwales, shes wide, that’s where the stability for sailing comes from, that and the fact that she’s wider in the bottom aft at the crew position than is usual in a double ender.  This is a “sailing” shape rather than a “rowing” shape.

Shes also workboat style, slightly chunky rather than graceful although she looks very nice from most angles.  I wanted her to have much more stability than other double enders of this general configuration,  that will help her sailing ability plus the seat and gunwale height is right for rowing.

She’s nice to handle under oars, tracks well, turns easily and is not sensitive to trim.  Even with a passenger aft she does not drag a wake behind, Denny and I want for a row up the river the following morning, she’d not been up there before and we covered about 4 miles out and back within an hour (the tide was helping, I was not out to break records).  Watched the sun come up, marvelled over the birdlife and the scenery up there.

Success, now I have to rig her for sail, that’s no big deal but I just couldn’t wait to get her afloat.

Thanks Emma, Blair,  Paul and Denny for the support at her launching.

Paul Mullings has kindly put together a video on YouTube that shows the action, Thanks Paul.

https://youtu.be/_PqePEjXHTc

 Now Im having an acute attack of "empty workshop syndrome". Ah well, there is only one cure for that.