since my last confession. Today the boat escaped the basement at long last. I had to make room for HVAC workers and new HVAC parts. Until today, one thing has led to another, and the rowing project has been sidelined over and over.
June 12, 2026. I am amazed: freed from its claustrophobic shipyard, the boat is beautiful!
Moving it around on a cart designed for much smaller craft was a pain further complicated by the need to protect the skeg. I put larger wheels on the cart for added ground clearance. The boat likes to twist relative to the axle which leads the whole kit astray. I’ve sketched out longer rails to hold everything more firmly in general and at right angles to the axle. I got well along in making the hardware needed before discovering that my supposedly infinite supply of 1/4×20 bolts is exhausted. The 8 two-inch ones I need for this sub-project will arrive in a couple of days.
June 15, 2026. Fixed. I clamped some right-angle aluminum stock to the top of the canoe carrier using 1/4×20 bolts, nuts, and 3/4-inch-wide flat aluminum stock. I taped 2-inch aluminum tubes to the angle stock to serve as support rails. It’s a first approximation. I’ll need something compressible to both protect and grip the hull before using this for real (split noodles work for now). A rubber strap holds cart and hull together. Leave the rigger in place while wheeling the boat to the water’s edge and carry the oars. It’s coming along.
June 19, 2026. I’d like to say I left the boat out in the rain (0.4 inches over a day and a night) as a test, but the truth is that I got busy and couldn’t find a tarp quite large enough to completely cover the stateroom. I bailed out the collected water and then found more. Rinse and repeat. I elevated the bow and opened the front hatch and found more water. The front bulkhead is evidently not as watertight as expected. Epoxy and fiberglass and varnish are not enough? There must be a gap and I will find it. Unintentional tests are often the most effective –they don’t come with built-in assumptions.
The rigger was grinding lightly against something which turned out to be the security bar on the clamp that locks the drop-in rigger against the mounting plates epoxied to the deck. I filed a few mm off the top of the bar, and all is smooth again. The three bolts that attach the clamp assembly to the deck are already rusted (unlike any others anywhere). I tested one to be sure it can be removed easily and then sprayed WD-40 all over the contact surfaces. I’ll replace all three bolts with stainless steel versions right soon. For now, I am collecting small issues to be dealt with together.
It’s as if the boat, removed from the table that has supported it all these years, is relaxing, shifting, adjusting slightly, and some of the tolerances are not entirely adequate for these new stresses and strains. I’ll deal.
A few last minute thoughts.
This lake is not entirely empty, especially in summer. How about rear view mirrors? Three possibilities come to mind. (1) versions that clamp onto sunglasses (see bicycling days), or (2) dedicated visors (TriEye) that are ideal but also expensive especially in tempting glare-suppressing versions, or (3) handlebar-end mirrors (my seat does not move, so maybe these could be used).
Think about some rollers to help get it onto the car-carrier. I have ideas. Of course I do. Watch me over-design this.
To stop or limit the rigger’s motion to simplify early efforts, I need only to drop a short pool noodle (or similar) into the rigger’s tracks to limit its motion. It sure took long enough for me to think of that, didn’t it?
Nagging but low-priority concerns are the small kayak-style blades on my oars. Replacement sculling blades have been surprisingly hard to find. Durham Boat Company in New Hampshire offers a decent selection at affordable prices and very reasonable shipping. A wider assortment is available from Zijie Sport in China with the usual caveats (shipping, tariffs). In any case, I’d need to make adapters to fit the blades’ presumably 38-40mm sleeves. I built the whole damn boat, so I am pretty sure I can handle that.
Stop now. Please get the actual boat on actual water before taking up hypothetical concerns, improvements, and other mods.