Ruth here:

“I wake up to a cool chill in the morning with the rising birds singing to the blue skies. The sun slowly overcomes the shadows of the dawn and warms my face as my coffee steams in my hands. Each day the boat grows like a child outgrowing her first pair of clothes. My mother and my aunt came to see her yesterday. My mom hasn’t been out since August seeing as she lives in California. My aunt saw her for the first time traveling all the way from Chicago. I love watching first impressions. In person, Rediviva towers over your head something the pictures just can’t capture.

The picture I snapped this morning is foggy because it was quite cold for the camera and then it died…. apologies

I’ll let Garrett explain this next planking technique when I can get better pictures to illustrate. Not much area left to cover now on the Port side. Exciting!

Every plank front and back eventually gets covered in the green preservative: copper naphthenate

It’s “easy” now to pull 10 hour work days and we are flying through planking. We scored on a few more pieces of wood for the bottom planking to come and even talked with a sail maker! Things are starting to get real.”

Cheers

Ruth here:

“In order to celebrate I’ve put together this video. I’ve taken so many pictures this past year and this made it hard to choose the right ones for this “flashback” video. I feel pretty satisfied with how it turned out. Not originally what I set out to put together but it’s become so much better. I’ve re-watched it several times already and it brings tears to my eyes to think back on all this hard work! So many days we were exhausted beyond our limits and yet the next day the sun came up and with it the next work day began. We’ve certainly helped hold each other up. Many months before we started we went back and forth on whether or not we should even undergo something so crazy and would we go crazy ourselves while doing it. Our biggest fear was that it would become too much. Both of us are quite stubborn so we were determined once we began there was no other option than to finish. This didn’t, however, stop those thoughts from arising and that conversation to be had time and time again. Now a year in and we both are saying with confidence we are half way through the build. Soon she will be floating and this all will seem like a dream just as it was from the beginning. A dream now a reality!

Cheers to year 2!

Ruth here:

“This week we may see up to 70 degrees! I just can’t contain myself.
We are moving right along. We’ve got the first plank on in the bow for run #5 and we’ve begun cutting the next planks for the rest of the 5th and then the 6th run. The sun is shining and I’ve got the next 4 days off to help Garrett get stuff done!

Here is the beautiful Redivivia now half way through her topside planking!

Keep sending the good vibes!”

Ruthie

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!