Peacefuljourney

I am not a writer, never been, never will. Imagine now doing it in a second language… It give you a idea!
What i am doing, well this is the question. Communicating with the new fashionable mean of talking.

Took millions of year to develop a form of spoken language, to make it disappear by the mean of something abstract that people call Internet. My own mother don’t even talk to me she prefer Messenger, I’ve had meeting in jobs via computer where most of the people was less then 20 foot away.

All that to say we all need to learn that new trade of writing. Being not a writer I do not know what to say much on this website anymore, there is no really adventure and I am such into deep technical thinking of wooden boat that it would bored the most polite person if you let me go.

The days are long the progress are slow, a simple sentence of “Broke a plank” doesn’t really explain the feeling and the days spent working on it before. The long 7 days a week work trying to see the end of it, being so deep into a project that you can’t put your mind elsewhere cannot be resume by a picture.

There is always enough progress to keep the hope, but never enough to see the end. Boat building is a long commitment and I understand the sentence of Paul Gartside saying: “Each boat I’ve build for others have taken a chunk of my life”.

Do we regret it? No.
Do we would do it again if we had the choice? We would seriously put more time thinking about it…

The skills learned is not even comparable but does learning a old trade that disappeared by the evolution will worth it in my life, this we gonna see.

Wooden boat are great, strong and low maintenance if properly build. But there is no way you can build a wooden boat as fast as a Fiberglass one, so there is no way they can compete with it and came back in strength.

We shall see…but if I do not update often it’s simply as I do not know where to start.

Take care all.

In our years of cruising, we often meet dream that end up like nightmare.I would say that in every port we have found a couple selling their boat for just a airplane ticket to go home, often when their retirement fund was use to buy the boat.

Please, movie are not like truth at all, and sailing is a skills which even with the fancy electronics of today, can’t be replaced.Learning the hard way is not made for everyone, except for those that love suffering by nature.

I do not say it is not available to anyone, but it need to be learned by small step and preparation. You may wonder why the hell I am saying all that, well this weekend the old boat from a good friend was abandon at sea and badly damage.

Constellation, a Contessa 26, sailed from England to Australia singlehanded with no issue. The new owner that bought it filled with wet dream and no (By the look of the story) experience tried a small offshore passage and asked by Epirb to be evacuated when the boat was doing fine.

Salvage by a fisherman the boat was badly damage during the rescue mission and not before.

You may find myself rude talking this way, but I just have seen enough of people losing a lot thinking that cruising are like movies…  If this is your dream please prepare, try the boat, go daysailing often doing longer trip everytime which will end up as a nice adventure.

You can read the whole story of what happen here:
http://davec-loopfish.blogspot.com/2011/11/this-is-how-it-all-went-down.html

Day’s are passing so fast it make us wonder how much longer we gonna stay here…

Right now we are working on a 38ft mast that we are building for a boat in the area. The work is fun, but it does have taken us twice more time then expected slowing down the boat building.

I’ve been working 13 hours a day since a while now, doing boat work after the mast. I can now say there is 3 planks on both side of the boat installed, which were the longest one on the ship to do. The reason why those where so long it’s because they touch entirely the boat on 13 ft and not just every 12″ like the framing do. This mean the planks need to be perfectly carved with the curves and the twist of the boat and it was quite demanding with quite some cursing I have to say…

Meanwhile, and this is not one of those April fool joke, Catherine really pregnant! We wanted to finish the planking before “working” on that project but adventure had arrived sooner then expected! It’s all good and we are happy, just working harder to get the boat done before the small us decide to see the light.

We moved to a small house with a local friend, which is nice and we can relax more in between the days of work. It’s in a wood at around 10 minutes from the building area. It is also with him that I build the mast and we became quite good friend. He help me on the building once a while which is really nice also, strangely enough we discover that we have the same family name… Maybe that’s why we are so much alike…

Have fun all!

Hello all,

Seems like long time I didn’t write on the website, but also nothing really happen for a long time. The thing is we waited to order fasteners and what needed to finish projects on the boat as it came from the US.

When we finally made that order, Canada post office decided to go on strike and then in Lock out which stopped the project for 3 weeks!

We have now received the planking in beautiful 20ft long board (BC Fir) which we look forward to that step. The screws arrived yesterday and was able to screw 2 planks as they were ready, those are named the stealer.

Most of the floors are done, and now it’s time to cover those rib! We are still missing 1500 pounds to do the ballast so this project will be for later this season.

Here it is, after some long weeks of waiting our Shipmate stove arrived well packaged by a helpful Boater (David Gage) in Florida.

Even with the wood cradle, the foam inside and the bracing it arrived broken. A corner of the stove, firebrick and a important piece inside need repair. I do not know what Fedex have done with it, but it sure wasn’t delicate shipping!

We left the stove at a local welder to see if he can fix it, as Cast Iron is really hard to repair. We were lucky to have furnace cement from our bronze casting to fix the firebrick & I contacted the shipmate stove company if he can supply me the piece inside. Will see how that turn out.

Meanwhile we received the glue to start laminating the floors. Floors in wood boat mean the piece attaching the framing to the “backbone”. We have problem right now with all that, as I need to align the backbone and all the framing before bolting them down. I am using the roof to nail them when they are right, but the problem is the temporary building is moving every time it’s blowing and the soil is too soft because of the snow melting to do anything! A well challenge is what we are use too!

We had wonderful news from the sawmill who made a mistake and miscut too much of a order which is perfect for our planking! Some nice quarter saw BC Fir is coming in a few weeks and will start covering those ribs.

The new website is getting online slowly,
this will bring a lot more features!

I am still working on it, but should be fully on in the next day or so.
I’ve already imported all the old news from 2004 to today.

Hello all of you,

I have to say I am a bit disappointed. Last year in around the same date I’ve been a bit extreme with a news about a fire into the boat building extension. With the result of that new I thought that you guys will remember it for quite a while but I am happy to see not, as this year my lot more soft April fool convinced everyone!

No Catherine is not pregnant yet, and the boat is still our first priority and coming along well! I think next year I should found something more in the middle for a joke as leaving the boat to go
circumnavigate Alaska in a hot ballon .

Life is good here, we bought a new stove for the boat a Shipmate wood stove. You can see one of those at:

http://www.shipmatestove.com/Details.cfm?ProdID=32&category=6

Thanks to David Gage that make this possible, as the stove is in Florida. Dave kindly did the transaction with the person selling it, packaged the 135pounds stove and send it to us. Thanks again Dave!

Catherine put pictures of the neighborhood often for those interested, they are on our website in the pictures section.

Take care all!

Hello Everybody!
I hope you are all doing well & happy.

Life is interesting these past weeks, most of the frames are up and only 2 are needed to be cut so the boat is complete. Sadly the band saw need repair and we should receive the part monday.

Meanwhile I started to put fair and true all the frames already up, it turn out that everything was well done because the temporary planking(Ribband) I’ve put over the boat show that everything is within 1/64″, so minor adjustment will need to be done hooray!

As some of you already know, one of the reason we started this build is because we wanted more space to be able to carry a child with us. Well I guess that after practicing so hard for when the moment will come(No pun intended), time have decided it will be sooner… Yes Catherine pregnant… We are really happy about it!

In the mix of joy and excitement, we discover that this sooner then planned, tiny human may change a few things… First Catherine will be out of work, so I will need to slow down a bit on the building to bring the finance for the new family and the not finished home(boat). We have a city permit for the extension where we build the boat but only 18 months left on it so we got to be quick! As the extension hide most of the ocean view of the neibor, and that he don’t like us much we didn’t get the renewal.

Anyway in the mix of a lot of those new informations to process we will see how things go. Like most of you will understand the priority change a bit, so the boat may be put aside so I take care of my girl as she got something in the oven

Will try to put pictures soon, Catherine gone to the city for the weekend and she brought the camera with her!

Wow!

2011 is here! Time go so fast!

Fisrt, Happy new year everybody! Wish you happiness and everything you need!

Here in our little Gaspésie town, everyday is one less until our boat will going to sail! Since the last two months we have been slowed by the Finance. So, during last two months, Stéphane worked on floors and wooden pulley to sale on the Internet.

But now, everything it’s better, so last week we bougth oak that we need to finish the last 10 frames! Youppi!

Canadian winter is nice, white, snowy and…cold. Wooden stove work practically 24/24. Some -35 degree Celcius ( -31 Fahrenheit). We did some snowshoeing, ice skating and sledding. I’ve put pictures on the website (View pictures at your right).

I project to make homemade things for a special event coming this summer, talk to you later about that.

See you!

Catherine

Hello all!,
well just reading the last post we have done I realise that things have progressed a lot since a month.

Half of the frames are up and done : http://lh6.ggpht.com/_gUnliSwWdY8/TOQrxmKHmSI/AAAAAAAACVc/emqOKYgBC0s/s800/P1080402.JPG

Still have some finishing to do one them, as it’s really hard to get them perfectly straight alone to finishing the socket there go in. Once more will be up I thought of a way to do this, will see if it’s work before I am telling more about it!

Frames are white oak, riveted every 6″ with copper nail. Where you see a line on the frames is a joint of 2 differents pieces of wood, which will be cover my a big 12″ copper plate and riveted both side of the join to make it stronger (Also, for the look of it, as just a big piece of wood over would have done the job there).

A close up of the oak we use: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_gUnliSwWdY8/TNtWFMBgjJI/AAAAAAAACTA/9fJ6Ctgnz3I/s800/building%20frames2.JPG

And rivets:http://lh6.ggpht.com/_gUnliSwWdY8/TNtWFk0At2I/AAAAAAAACTI/uW_F6-FUHlI/s800/Rivets.JPG

It’s nice to see the progress rapidly!

More pictures are available from the view pictures at your right.

Take care all! Sorry if I don’t show a lot of pictures of around, but I Actually don’t go out… I am 100% on the building, I pretty much just know the grocery & Hardware stove… Catherine will put up some picture of the area soon (I hope she feel the pressure here!)