After a weekend, much lovely food, a desperately moving funeral, surprising cheer, heartfelt warm friendship, a bit of sawing, planing, gluing and ‘stitching’ and assembly…we have a canoe like collection of wood.
Huzzah!
We went sailing:
Monday the 16th August it arrives.
After months of anticipation a courier truck backs up the driveway bearing 900kgs of gaboon plywood. Most of the sheets have tiny slices made by a computer controlled laser, which makes it a treat to unload.
As you lift up a sheet much of it is left behind as intricate shapes, recognizable to a few of is as “boat bits”.
Robert Ayliffe and Hector the truck driver help move the pile sheet by sheet into the shed. Foolishly we neglect to order our stack and spend the rest of the afternoon shuffling these giant jigsaw puzzles to a useful order.
I don’t sleep much that first night.
So I have just turned 40, I have fulfilled by 39th birthday present (the plans) from my lovely wife Kate and purchased the timber to build my next boat, an 8m trailer sailer “Norwalk Island Sharpie”.
How I will have time to build this extremely serious boat…..? We will see. The plan is to trade TV time in the evenings. I love the wood work, I love the challenge, I will love the result. What can go wrong?
Keep watching this space.