the serendipity of diminishing returns

Gone are the days of buckets of epoxy and the saw cutting swathes through acres of ply. Now it takes all morning to find the right spot for a cleat. But having said that, it is also time to multi-task. To-day I sanded and varnished the yard, made and installed some angled blocks for the jib sheet cleats, epoxied one side of the centre-board, fitted the jib halyard cleat and two aft painter cleats, fitted two deck blocks, varnished the mizzen mast and bomkin, and plotted the solution to the old 'how-does-this-design-deal-with-the-problem-of-holding-down-the-centreboard' problem. In short I did my best to move like the old 'road-runner', having had a few days away with Julia at a lovely part of the coast. I love wild coast, and I really loved the company I had...but I do like shed time too.

Incidentally, last time we went to Port Fairy we loved the food at Portofino restaurant. From this trip I would add Lemon Grass Thai restaurant- really lovely, fresh food.

Sail Day with some Wooden Boat Association members, Rye Victoria

Above, Tony's slippery sharpie 'Ursa' skiff viewed from Paul's scaled-up Tammy Norrie yawl
A Scruffy, a sharpie, the club's Oughtred dinghy, a racing 'fireball', a 1952 canoe, and the Tammie Norrie.
The week-end saw us drive the perimeter of Port Phillip, beginning with a drive to Queenscliff, the car ferry over to Sorrento, a picnic at Point Nepean (the old Quarantine Station, and later Army Barracks and Officer Training Facility) and then a lovely afternoon spent on Rye beach with some members of the Wooden Boat Association, and half a dozen of their boats. This was a very relaxing time with gentle breezes, pleasant water and very good company.

Of course I couldn't help pointing the camera at everything that looked like it would float, and some of these will appear on Page Three Boat Pics and this blog over the next little while.
The above pic is a detail of a NZ Kauri Pine clinker dinghy thought to be about 100 years old and restored by Wayne Parr, shipwright at Woodenboatshop Sorrento Victoria. It has a single lug sail and has been nicely restored to an un-glamourised working condition.

new life

Angelique, a Belted Galloway cow, presented the first of the new crop of calves this morning, a little heifer which, when I first saw it, was curled and looking for all the world like a very small black hole in our top paddock. There is nothing like a birth to remind you of the possibility of perfection here on Earth, but it is a grounded view of perfection, reminding us of the heavy cycle of life and death that we often pretend to ignore as sophisticated people- often living on the protein from these creatures without ever giving any thought to their dignity as fellow sentient beings.

You can't live with a herd of cattle without becoming aware of their sensitivity towards each other, their social relationships, their capacity to feel quite complex nuances of emotion, in general quite a few of the things that we regard as especially human. The more we concentrate ourselves in cities, the more abstract these lives become to us and the less we care to know about the grubby details of their lives and deaths- the births and the slaughter.

I walked over to this sweet little thing with the tools in hand to steal it's sex if I found it to be male- because if that was it's gender, the only future he would have would be to live and grow until big enough to be eaten. As it happens, she was not a bull calf, so she has some chance of living into maturity and having calves herself.

Tonight, wondering if the other cows might be ready to calve, we walked up to the little mob with a nagging doubt about the new calf. She was calm and quite self-possessed, but we hadn't seen her suck. Moving quietly amongst them- with the sort of supportive interest shown by all the other cattle (even the steers), I moved them about to see if the calf would take refuge at the milky place under it's mum, but she still hadn't connected with the working bits.

The defining, memorable moment for me came when, at the right time, I gently lifted the front of the calf and put the teat into her mouth. Half a ton of cow stood stock steaming still next to me, seeming to know my intentions and trusting my interference. We three soon leant into each other as the calf eventually got the hang of it and the cow made soft noises. It was all I could do not to make soft noises too.

two steaks on the BBQ

A gob-smackingly gorgeous evening to be out of town. Home in the country feels twice as good as normal on a Monday night. Twenty Degrees C., but a little easterly wind to keep things fresh, just the two of us on yet another Valentine's day. (the steaks weren't as black as they look in the photo) (if anything, Julia's was a little rare) I feel really blessed to be sharing these simple, perfect moments with the person that I attached myself to in my very early 20's.

The boat demands a different kind of focus now. No more mixing epoxy in 80ml batches- it's all about varnish and fittings; finishing sub-assemblies and drilling holes. I've been in this headspace before and I know enough to let it flow at its own pace, and enjoy the process. This sometimes takes a bit of discipline because it is tempting to imagine a few clear days of work to have her on the water. But there is always more in finishing than you can hold in your mind and the end of the process is not worth considering, but the enjoyment of attending to details is...

starting the brightwork

Well, if you have a very little brain, varnishing can seem like a change of pace from painting. So, this is the first coat on the brightwork, even though I haven't finished painting. And for a complete change of pace, I'm making the tiller extension, possibly as avoidance behavior because business is picking up and I feel some slight rise in pressure. The cleats happened because there were plenty of things I should have been doing instead. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get anything done when I retire, because that pressure to do the right thing won't be there....(this was the sort of mind that sometimes needed the pressure of a deadline to get excited about an assignment when I was studying)

Sometimes it is nice to have an imperative to give energy to a parallel, totally unrelated dreamscape.

in praise of the knife

Making a few cleats began with me using the tools that I've been working with on site, but it felt all clumsy and wrong-handed. Nasty, gritty, vibrating things didn't feel good in making such a humble and simple device, so I resorted much more comfortably to my little planes and then my violin making knives. What a difference! Silence and comfort at the bench.

The knife shown has a long taper and so it could be considered similar to a skew chisel, but with two bevels. The beauty of it is that it slices across a contour, so that instead of cutting down as with a chisel, you cut across, and as the blade gets wider, the cut progresses deeper into the work. Slicing slivers from hardwood is much easier than pairing it or cutting it across the grain. With this simple tool, cutting small radii is a pleasure.

The knife is simply a piece of German tool steel set into a pair of facing grooves in the handle stock before they were glued together. The blade can be removed for honing.

Incidentally, the navigator book is now available on Kindle from Amazon. I'll put a link on the book's blog page sometime...

learning to walk slow

Billy, above, is mainly Julia's dog, but he has become part of the business when it's just him and me at the workshop. I've given him a role in Customer Relations, but he is sometimes a bit too enthusiastic in his work.

Being rescued from some sort of urban situation, his country walks are fairly straight-forward affairs; mainly concerned with avoiding any sort of wildlife and staying as close to our legs as possible. But it is a different story when we're at work in town. Walking is a mission. An artform. He is the first male dog we've had. Our female dogs attended to bladder issues simply and directly, much preferring to sniff actual dogs than their sign-posts.

But Billy has taught me to walk very slowly, not exactly smelling the roses, but something in that vein. His first desire in the morning is to check his p-mails, but he does so in a tedious series of log-ins that stretches the perimeter of his claimed territory. Before I've even logged-in, he is at me for a second round, because things of the second priority cannot be done while re-establishing dominance after a night's rest.

Slow Walking. It has a nice ring to it. Perhaps there are benefits for those of us who are habitually goal-oriented, simply to saunter, and pause at every post.

When sailing on our Waller 540, Billy chooses to occupy the locker under Julia, carefully finding the opposite one as we all change sides on a tack. But I made those lockers a bit low when his girth is increased by his PFD, so it is a bit of a squeeze. The up-side of that is that it is harder to fall out of the locker in a sudden lifting gust.

a quick sand and a lick of paint....

It really annoys me on 'lifestyle' type TV shows, when they show you how to make something, and all it needs is 'a quick sand' (scrape, scratch...done) and a 'lick of paint' (30 seconds max).

I'm not really sure what that 'sand' is supposed to achieve. They never talk about surface shape or contour and they never mention texture as an element of that. It doesn't seem to occur to these folk that 'smooth' is such a relative term...

Anyway, those things are sort of what I've given the interior of the boat. But it took a bit more effort than it would to make good TV viewing.

The colours I'm using are an attempt to capture a certain mood on the one hand, and to relate the colour of my sails to that. The sails are from Duckworks and are 'Egyptian cotton' colour- which can range from quite yellow tones right through to red-ish mushroomy colours. Mine arrived definitely leaning to the red end of the spectrum, and for me that meant that any 'cream' or light colours would need to be warmish, and definitely not leaning toward yellow. The hull is a blue-grey, which has the capacity to look quite drab or quite blue, dependng on its surroundings. Next to wood colours it leans towards blue. So I needed to find a light colour that would suit me with the grey and also with the sail colour.

I like to use Norglass paint, but the colour range is limited, so I made a tint from a yellowish cream plus a bit of red. This related well to the sails but was too powerful for the cockpit and deck, so I added it to a given quantity of white for the interior, and the mix for the decks will have twice the proportion of white. I hope it works....who knows?

Incidentally, the pics above are of the first rolled coat. Now I have to figure out the alignment of the boomkin before I glue the coaming on.

for everything, turn, turn, turn..

I have to say that while upside-down, Annie appears to have gained weight. When she's on-edge she seems as wide as she is long, but I daren't say anything, it is a sensitive subject, girth. Boats don't like to have their great beam pointed out to them. So how can we tell them that we like it without causing offense? We wouldn't want our boats to look like magazine models, would we?

Annie turned over without incident or assistance. I used the blocks that will become her mainsheet tackle to lift her onto her side, then switched tackle over to the other side to lower her gently and with great dignity onto her bottom. She is currently re-gaining her composure on a few bales of grass hay. I had a celebratory drink on her behalf. It was the least I could do.

waller - great lake sails late december

Great family day on and off the water.

sometimes you just call it..

I'm often plagued by the edges of the parameters I chose to work within. Life is a series of envelopes, and while you are wriggling within one, the next one beckons.

Yesterday I 'called it' on the outside hull paint. All I can see is surface imperfections, irregularities and flaws, and I know that given another four or five days of rubbing and re-surfacing I could achieve a really good surface, but I value my time and the rest of my life too much. So it isn't perfect, but it was never going to be. I loath perfection as a concept, and I have always struggled to explain that to people. It probably has something to do with a bigger picture- that no individual job deserves to be fully nailed because there are always things to consider beyond it...so you pick your line and you draw it.

I know from the last boat that this paint will hold up well, and that nature will take part in making the boat look comfortable and used, and I want to be relaxed in using it. It's almost like any extra time would be gratuitous and self-indulgent, once the line is identified.

The paint is Norglas marine enamel, made in Australia. It becomes tough as boots as it hardens. It was applied with a foam roller, the only worries being the bubbles that form- they need to be re-rolled very quickly without any pressure at all to remove them- and where possible, only working from one wet edge, to feather each new application of paint into the last.

It takes concentration and focus, but that is all. I like to rub each coat back, first looking for surface bumps with 180 grit and a long sanding block, then later with 220 grit on a foam block, looking for surface texture. So, I guess there were six or seven coats, but only the top three cover everything.

top coats and blissful sails

Here's 'Annie' with some top coat on, but the video that I wanted to show of some blissful moments in our other boat apparently don't want to be uploaded to blogger. There is a low res version on flickr for those interested. I had hoped to add some sailing to brighten the day for those frozen inside their houses, but not yet it seems.

As well as the hull paint, the spars are progressing nicely, and I'm tempted to finish them with the plane, imperfections and all, because it is such a nice surface without yucky abrasive paper. I never use sandpaper on a violin, but that is a much smaller-scaled object to plane and scrape. We'll see how they turn out.

The Waller is such a lovely boat to sail with three competent crew. She just loves the weight and the multiple hands to the task, and sailing her with family lined up in the cockpit is such a joy.

Australian Empathy

Such is the empathy that Australia feels for those northern countries currently frozen and blizzarded (!), we have had a foot of snow falling in our 'Alpine' areas this week, in Summer. Where normally, I would be escaping the heat and self-medicating in the long hot evening with a measured, controlled and manageable quantity of beer, instead I am now enjoying something red and much more hearty. A Merlot from New Zealand actually- and I have to say it is quite different from Australian Merlot, more akin to our Cabernet, or even maybe some of the softer shirazes with lovely colour and long complicated flavours. It's from Oyster bay in NZ.

This summer we have been under the influence of some hot air generated over near South America that has generated what is called a 'la Nina ' pattern, bringing tropical moisture right down the eastern coast to Victoria, and quite exceptional rainfall. After more than a decade of drought, in part because of the effects of the opposite South American phenomenon, the 'El Nino' which seems to have been a regular visitor since the 1990's, we are reveling in the rain, but some crops are ruined again in the process. Some communities are flooded too. And when we get a change, the Southerly brings an icy blast from Antarctica, and Winter conditions in Summer.

The upshot is (for the purposes of this blog, anyway) that my paint is not drying on the hull, and I'm drinking winter wine, and the shed fairies that might have dried the paint are off helping Santa, although I heard a rumour their flights north have been cancelled, so why the hell haven't they stayed in my shed?

So Steve, I can't compete with the splendid photos of a white Christmas in Plymouth, but we are doing our best to get cold in sympathy.

A little blog site for the new book....

'Something About Navigator' has its own little blog site now, to enable specific feed-back and communicate any items of related interest, and to provide a place to purchase copies on-line.

The site can be found here.

The boat, above is of Dave Perillo at the helm of a rampant and quite hormonal 'Jaunty', going somewhere quite quickly...

Navigator book released on Amazon.com

Amazon have listed the books on line. The color edition of Something About Navigator can be found here and the monochrome edition, here. Or a search with the title will also find them.

I should point out that bundles of ten books, tied to-gether with string will make a brilliant door-stop, and copies epoxied edge to edge would make a very decorative floor.

Recent research shows that nine out of ten doctors surveyed recommend reading this book as a cure for insomnia, and world conflict. Reading this book instead of watching TV will reduce your carbon footprint, and it will cost you less than taking your family to a hotel for a meal.

Even if you can't read, looking at the pictures will have the same effect as long-term use of Prozac, but with fewer side effects. Further, the author of this post sometimes exaggerates things. A bit.