Don to the rescue

 My friend Don went to boatbuilding school in Eastport, Maine, but these days prefers to loaf around in Florida in the winter, repairing his own boat, and come up to CT in the summer to help his brother do carpentry and help me extricate myself out of all the maritime messes I seem to get myself into. He also loves to fish and figured that maybe Tallulah could offer him an opportunity that the other boats in my yard could not.  He really wanted to “audition” by way of helping replace this plank, so he could prove to Paul and the waterfront gang that 2 years in Eastport Maine was not just one wild party (if you know Eastport, you will understand that I jest).  But we had a difference of opinion when it came to transferring measurements onto the pattern.  I preferred the white sticky-label method of my new idol Lou Sauzedde, but Don preferred the old compass-and-curve method, which I thought depended too much on guessing where the apex of the curve was, and relying on a measurement that is really taken on an angle instead of straight up and down.  But as Paul said, quoting Willets Ansel, there are a hundred ways to build a boat . . . and all of them are right. 

So first we tried to get all the black goo and 5200 out from all the crevices (I’d done most of it but Don was being a madman).   

 

Then we resined up all the ribs, one of which was cracked.  (I used office clips to glue back some of the planks that had gotten knocked off when we removed the old one) Oh well!  Moving along . . . .

Then we mixed up my favorite red filler, which holds Jeff Brown together, along with some silica powder, and put it in some of the rotted bits.

Don brought some very thin plywood and we cut that to match up with the plank hole as best as we could, and glued the pieces together.

 

Then we laid out the sucker on the piece of cedar that Paul gave us, which Don had planed down (he’s a handy lad). You can see Peanut in the background, which got winterized today (and started up! )

Then Don got out his spiling-compass and made the marks from the bottom and top edge of the adjacent planks.  We used a long piece of thin crown moulding for the batten to draw the curve.

 

I have forgotten to take a photo of the cut plank, which is now sitting on the boat in the rain and wind, “acclimating,” and waiting for next week when we smooth it down, steam it up a bit, and fasten it to .  That oughtta be a laugh riot.