Projects on Hold at the Boat Shop

First we'll stop by the Teak Lady, Che Hon. This poor old boat is so dry! We soaked her in a local man made pond for three weeks. The teak planks take-up very slowly. So we've corked the garboard seam at the keel very lightly and will set up a sprinkler inside for a few days.

There is a danger that the wide open seams will close on too much packing cotton and split the planks or crack some frames.

I put a couple coats of varnish on her topsides two days ago and she perked right up!








Next is a double paddle for my good friend Jim Ballou. In the same style as the spooned oars I made last winter. This is the rough shape, which will have to wait until I get back for polish and pretty.













Not the least is the Gloucester Gull Light Dory we're building down at the Boathouse. Rick Johnson, shipwright extraordinaire, will no doubt finish this without me - he's a bit peeved that I get a vacation and he doesn't.




Tomorrow morning DoryMan leaves, and will be back next month.

The initial stop will be the Sucia Rendezvous - three days of camaraderie with other gunkholers, then probably a few days of sailing in company, followed by a couple weeks of solo sailing.

No electronics on this trip. No laptop. No SPOT tracker. In fact, no itinerary.

The San Juan Islands are truly beautiful and the Salish Sea only gets more scenic the further north you go.

Canadian waters are the destination. I'd like to visit friends who live on Savary Island.
Anacortes, Washington is the point of departure.

Hope to see you all when I get back.
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Summer Cruise

What is the most critical detail for a cruise in the Pacific Northwest?

Shelter.

In the northwestern rain forest you will find (surprise!) a lot of rain. Just because it's mid-summer means nothing. If you are cruising in an open boat, you will get wet.

Doryman is preparing for a month long cruise in the Salish Sea starting next Friday. All of the requisite gear is stacked in the boat-shed with charts and tide tables wrapped in plastic.




Saga is a completely open boat, which will afford little comfort if a Pacific storm sets in. So we've been working on converting an old boat cover into a cockpit tent for those rainy nights at anchor. The cover is made of tan canvas, which we cut in half then sewed in a wedge of sail cloth. The white sail cloth is opaque and lets in a lot of ambient light. The whole thing is supported by a frame of PVC water pipe.









A few more adjustments to the tie-downs and it will fit perfectly.

Eider, by Sam Devlin

I recently received a note from my friend "Captain Kirk" Gresham, owner of Eider, a Sam Devlin designed daysailer which Kirk has outfitted for single handed cruising. I'd heard rumors that Kirk had made some upgrades to improve the sailor's comfort on his Eider. Let's face it, a 16.5 foot boat is not capacious, though her sailing qualities are legion. When a small boat can take the weather, the question becomes "can the sailor?".

Anyone who has spent twelve hours in an open cockpit in driving rain knows what I mean.

The Salish Sea, home to Eider borders the coastal rain forest of the western North American continent, and yes, it rains a lot here. Cold rain. And wind.
When we were younger, these things mattered far less than they do now.





Kirk is proud of his accomplishments and wants to share them with you...



"I decided to finally build that pilot house I've been fantasizing about for sometime. A real pilot house would look too hefty on Eider and perhaps a bit difficult to get around, going forward on her tiny side decks, so I simply converted her companionway hatch. It still took a lot of eyeing and awing to create something that gave the headroom desired to be able to sit upright below beside the wood stove and steer from inside. Curving the windows to match the camber of a roof that parallels the sheer did the trick quite nicely. The Plexiglas was free from a window suppliers scrap pile, including an oval tinted skylight just forward so I can watch the sails from below."

"The whole thing slides fore and aft as a hatch and will slide right off the rails if I prefer to stow it below on a sunny day."




"There has been nothing but compliments about her new looks, even from the old salts and she's much brighter, cheerful and more comfortable below."







Also...

"I thought it'd be great fun to be able to allow Eider to run up on a beach or mud bank and let her dry out at low tide so I could walk around, watch the birds, maybe dig some clams. She draws only two feet but I didn't want to be lying on my ear, so a set of "legs" seemed to be the answer. This set is made of some 2x6 mahogany."




"Eider was beached for the first time at this year's Sucia Island Small Boat Rendezvous. It was a bit scary waiting to see if she'd be stable and secure enough for me to move around freely and to be able to get off and on once she was high and dry. The legs are bolted through the sheer with wing nuts that I can reach through her bronze ports. Guy lines run fore and aft to keep them from swinging around the bolt. They're padded to prevent chafe with some deerskin a friend gave me."








"She bumped once or twice as she settled down on the rock and sand flats in Fossil Bay. She has a 2x3 purple-heart shoe on the bottom of her full keel which can take the rocks."
"Her attached rudder is about two inches above the keel so there were no problems there. She managed to miss all the big rocks and an hour later was sitting pretty while we socialized with passers-by strolling with their dogs along the beach!"

"After tip-toeing for awhile, I've now confirmed that she is absolutely rock solid on her beach legs and I am free to move about without wiggle, creak or groan. Eider's deck ends up just about belt height which makes it easy to climb off to explore new surroundings."






"I tested the upgrades on a recent cruise to Queen Charlotte Strait, Blackfish Sound and the Broughton Islands". [Inland passage to Alaska, Vancouver Island, B.C. Canada].
"My cruising partners where Lynn Watson in his modified Drascomb Peterboat, Kate Mae and Jamie Orr with his Chebacco 20, Wayward Lass."




"Several afternoons were spent ghosting down long narrow channels, gliding on three knots of current with thick forests on both banks and no other sounds for hours but the occasional scream of an eagle, a mimicked voice from a raven or the sigh of a breaching whale. We saw porpoise, humpback whales, otters and Stellers Sea Lions. There was prodigious evidence of black bears at Mammalillaculla, an ancient aboriginal site with totem poles laying on their sides among high thickets of black berries. Fortunately the bears weren't interested in wrestling us for the berries."




Eider is a unique Sam Devlin design of limited manufacture. She measures 16.5ft. LOD, 6.5ft. beam, 2ft. draft, and 1400lbs "all up". She is rigged as a as an unstayed spritsail cutter with staysl and flying jib on a short bowsprit, approximately 150 square feet in sail area. She also carries a drifter of about 100 square feet. The main and stays'l are tanbark.
She is a hard chined skiff with a slight "V" bottom and a full keel and poured concrete and steel internal ballast. Her cabin has sitting headroom, a solid fuel cabin stove and berths for two. She carries a 5hp Mariner outboard auxiliary.

Hopefully, sometime in the next year, I will have the pleasure and the privilege of sailing alongside Eider in the Valgerda, Saga. When that happens we'll take you along!

Eider, by Sam Devlin

My good friend, Kirk is back in Port Townsend, from a trip to a monastery in Japan where he climbed 2446 stone steps to a temple that was 1400 years old. While chanting with monks, backed by taiko drums that echoed like thunder and where, among the ancient kanji carved in the mountain rock he found joy and enlightenment.

Kirk is the owner of Eider, a Sam Devlin design from the early 1980's. He loves this sprit rigged cutter and it's easy to see why, from the photos.




Kirk is a sailor's sailor and we can trust his judgment on the fine sailing qualities of this little gunkholer.

After filling me in on his mountain trek, he gave the particulars of Eider:

"Sam built about seven of these sweet little cutters. She is 16.6 ft. on deck with a fixed keel and attached rudder and draws 2ft. She weighs about 1400 lbs. Sam told me that the Eiders were heavily built by eye, with no real plans other than a lines drawing. They became too expensive for their size at about $10,000(US) in those days. That's what lead him to come up with the smaller, simpler and more cost effective Nancy's China and the larger full keel Winter Wren, which is built more like Eider, but is 18ft."

Kirk has been experimenting with traditional Japanese sculling oars called Ro (what the Chinese call Yuloh).

He has a straight shafted sculling oar on Eider now, with which he sculled around the harbor at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival this year. Everyone seemed excited about how easily this nonpolluting alternative to the outboard motor worked.



He's working on building a traditional Ro for his Eider this winter and we'll be anxious to see how it works, next summer when we meet again at the Sucia Island Rendezvous.




I have a feeling Kirk would agree that climbing to a mountain top monastery is not the only way to experience joy and enlightenment, when you can sail a boat as sweet as Eider and achieve much the same.

Eider measures 16.5ft. LOD, 6.5ft. beam, 2ft. draft, and 1400lbs. "all up". She is rigged as a as an unstayed spritsail cutter with staysl and flying jib on a short bowsprit, approximately 150 sq.ft. in sail area. She also carries a drifter of about 100 sq.ft. The main and stays'l are tanbark.
She is a hard chined skiff with a slight vee bottom and a full keel and poured concrete and steel internal ballast. Her cabin has sitting headroom, a solid fuel cabin stove and berths for two. She carries a 5hp Mariner outboard auxiliary.
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