Chine bLog

I have spent much of my free daylight hours over the last couple weeks putting paint on the Peace Canoe. Today, at about 10:30 AM local, I made some final touch-ups and called her done.

Obviously there are little things that make me cringe (that only I will likely notice, for the most part), but on the whole, I am pleased with the boat. If I do say so, the colors work well. I agonized a bit on this point, so it is good that the results are so positive.

Part of the reason the results are so good is that the design is a good one. I had moved the boat into the front yard to paint (we have an oak the rains acorns), and as I began to see the boat from a shallow angle on the port side, I began to fall in love with the sheer.

Well done, John Harris.

By the way, I wish I had moved to the front yard months ago. I have gotten tons of complements from folks walking by (we live on a main path to the local coffee shop), as well as several drive-bys (including a "Damn! Good job, sir!" from a dude in a utility van). It has been a thrill. Of course, if I had been working there earlier, there may have been more commentary on the work in progress ("yes, I DO know that that piece is cracked!!!")...

So here is the situation: as I have mentioned I have a family with small children. I get to go out in my kayak sometimes, but if we had our own boat, I would get out much more because it can be a family activity. Rentals are possible, but leave things to chance (availability) and limit expeditions to a few places. There wasn't much interesting on Craig's List, and I was having a hard time thinking about adding ANOTHER non-wooden boat to the family fleet. Buying a wooden one was too expensive and I don't have the room to build one I'd really want. T'was a conundrum.

What I needed was to find a easily built boat - meaning I could pull it off over short period of time in my back yard - that didn't seem bland or non-functional. I admit this was a tall order - I am a bit snobby on this front. Well, fate began to intervene recently in the form of the recent two issues of Getting Started in Boats, WoodenBoat's companion publication. Volume 3 of this new publication came a couple months ago showing the Peace Canoe, a design by John Harris of Chesapeake Light Craft. I admit - again - I dismissed it as another boat that was great for getting people started building, but wasn't, ahem, a "real" boat (yes, I will get over myself at some point). Volume 4 the arrived recently, just as I was chewing on the dilemma above. I looked again. I studied it a bit more. I started to like its lines. Lo and behold, it fit the bill.