We finally have some pictures to share of our planking progress. We are on the fourth run of planking on both sides, and it will take eight runs to reach the chine. So far everything is going on easily, and we can really start to feel the boat gain strength and rigidity as all the frame work gets tied together.

 cutting the stem rabbet down for the fourth run.

 Fourth bow plank.

 This is where we are on both sides as of today. Lots of rain on the forecast so we’ll see what this week brings.

Thats all for now!

Garrett & Ruth

Hey everyone! We haven’t posted in a bit, and I happen to have internet right now. Unfortunately I don’t have our camera to upload pictures… Soon though. Anyway things are moving along. Winter and spring seem to be duking it out, and so far Im not sure who’s winning. It’s definitely warming up slowly, but we were quite surprised to wake up to snow this morning! It doesn’t look like it will last to long, but it’s been coming done pretty hard.

Planking is going swimingly although a bit slower than I would like due to all the rain we’ve been having. I am finally learning to accept these weather delays after a year of working on this project. There is always something else I can focus my energy on. For instance yesterday I finally got around to a job I had been neglecting since last summer. The said job being bolting the stem assembly together. Quite an important thing, but I got into the habit of saying “I’ll get around to it eventually” on account of it being firmly glued together with epoxy.  I get into this obsessive need to progress sometimes that I put the little things on the back burner. Another valuable life lesson to be learned from this project! As much as I want to be done building, and start sailing again I value this experience more than I can describe. It has, and will continue to teach me so much. Not only about boat building, but about life, and the way I perceive it. I know I need to get through this in order to fully appreciate the freedom and bliss of sailing, and the cruising life I have been so fortunate to live.

Once again thank you to everyone, and a special thank you to all who have donated to help us achieve our dream!

 (thought this was cool!) Cheers!

Garrett & Ruth (and swab)

s.v. Rediviva

 

We had a bit of a delay sorting out some issues with i movie, but here it is!

We have crossed another huge milestone, and we now have a sweet westerbeke diesel for our yacht!

She is a 4 cylinder 52HP Westerbeke diesel. As far as used engines go this is exactly what we were looking for. It’s definitely on the giant side for our boat, but thats what we wanted. That way we wont have to run her hard for normal operation, but we will have plenty of reserve power when we need it!

 We ran the motor for a good while before deciding to buy. It sounded great and didn’t smoke at all.

 I’ll probably clean her up and give her a fresh coat of paint as well as new hoses, belts,mounts, and fluids then she will be ready to drop in!

We are moving along with planking despite the nasty weather. Now that we have a few planks done we were finally able to get a pretty good idea about the layout of the planks, butt block spacing, and how much wood it’s actually going to take. It looks like we’re going to be a bit short on our planking material, but O well we will just have to hunt for more…  So far everything is still going together quite easily although the weather is still slowing things down a bit.  Here are a few picture updates!

 The sheer is starting to show even more. I wish we could get a picture that really shows her curves.

 Ruth being cute

 Planks seated in the stem rabbet

 If you want to build a wooden boat you will need to buy a butt load of clamps…

 

 

 

The day has finally arrived! I can write about planking the hull! We have three planks on the boat so far. The two 40ft long sheer planks that we scarfed together went on swimingly! The scarfs are totally unnoticeable, and the solid plank makes for a totally fair curve to the sheer. We were fortunate enough to have some friends help us fit the sheer planks which was really nice because the 40ft planks would have been a bit tricky with just the two of us. Now that the sheer is done it is super easy to put the rest of the planks on since they can just be clamped on to the planks above. The rest of the planks will just have normal butt joints rather than scarfs, so I can easily handle them myself. I have started to cut tapered planks aka stealers for the forward planks. This is necessary because there is so much sheer on this hull therefore there is much more space to be covered at the bow then the rest of the hull. Im hoping that I can fill in the distance and still have really nice flowing seams by starting the stealers right away with a smaller taper rather then using uniform planks for the first bit. We will see… I would like to sand the seams open a little so they show nicely on the finished hull.

getin everything lined up.

 

 You can see one of the scarfs at the bottom right of the last picture.

  They go on really easily now!

I just have to cut the rest of the stem rabbet, but that should’t take long. After that we should be able to just start hangin planks like crazy, and it’s about time!!! The halt of progress during the winter was tough… I don’t do well when im not being productive. Soon we will have a hull, which also means a WHISKEY PLANK PARTY!! Plans shall be made…

Thats it for now!

Ruth here:

“Welcoming the 50 degree weather with cutting planking material and scarfing together our first planks! Garrett got all the scarfs cut and so now we’ve got them curing under two tent-like apparatus, meaning tarps thrown over the things. With not much in way of heating we’ve used one propane heater, two candles and oil lamps for the rest.

With hopefully the last few days of winter we are taking advantage of using it as a beer cooler!

Both Garrett and I are getting increasingly excited about the days becoming warmer and longer. Garrett can work well passed 5pm now. We are one month away from our 1st anniversary building Rediviva and we are aiming for another 9 months or so before she is either in the Columbia River or on a truck down to the Bay Area for finishing. One of the things both of us have enjoyed about doing this blog and the videos is that we can look back easily and realize how far we have come. At times it feels like we haven’t moved at all, which may be true, but summer is coming and winter is leaving and with that is new time to get shit done!

Cheers to progress!”

We have been trying to keep at it and finally get some planks hung. We are getting so close! The sheer plank is the top plank, and also the first plank to install. Unfortunately it’s also the most time consuming… The reason is this plank has to follow a perfect curve along the sheer determined by the lofting. If it doesn’t your boat will look lumpy and ugly… Also I am extremely talented at convincing myself to do more work than is necessary because it will be “better that way”… I have my doubts… I think…

Anyway I have decided to scarf the sheer plank together into one ridiculously long plank. That way it will be super easy to lay the plank into a perfect curve… At least thats the theory!

 Cutting planks down.

 Cutting the scarfs is actually super easy. I thought about making a jig, but I think I could cut all the scarfs by hand in the time it takes to build a good jig. I just draw some lines, run a bunch of saw cuts, knock the chunks out with a chisel, then hit it with and planer. It took about 45 minutes to do the very first one, but I think I can knock that down to 30 minutes. 18 inches would suffice for a 12-1 scarf, but I felt like 24 inches was more appropriate…

We are hoping to get all these cut and ready to glue up by sunday. The only thing thats kind of a pain is that we will have to build a little heated tent around the planks to cure the epoxy, but that shouldn’t be to difficult.

 

Thats all for now!

 

Salt&Tar Episode 6 !