S/V Ripple

I declare the topsides done.  If you want to see if they look decent, you'll have to come sailing with me. In the words of the Mary Tyler Moore show, they are 'not awful'. I pulled the tape and retaped for the bottom paint.  Pretty easy as I had an edge to tape to.  The bottom paint is the remainder of a gallon I had left after the bottom job on Ripple this past summer.  Plenty to do a couple more coats on top of the two I applied, but two should be enough.  I put on two coats in as many hours, the first having dried in an hour or so with the help of the propane heater I use to take the ice out of the air. While the paint was drying, I shaped two octagonal spar blanks from 2 x 2 inch blanks of sitka spruce.  Two inch cross sections are actually smaller than the plans call for for the mast (but not the sprit-spar), but I am making them from an 8/4 plank of clear grained sitka spruce,  and I am thinking that will be plenty hefty.  I bought ...

My brother tells a story of a Tidewater boat builder  in Virginia who's disclaimer for less-than-perfect finish work was It's a boat, not a piano.   Of course, he built beautiful boats largely without defects, and mostly by eye.  That ain't me. I've been struggling mightily to get a coat of Brightsides on that I wouldn't be ashamed to acknowledge as my work.  Two undercoats and 6 finish coats later, I'm not there.  I don't recall having anything like this difficulty getting the topsides of the canoe looking good.  Or even Ripple , which is far from perfect, and was done in the sun, where keeping a wet edge was a race against time, juggling holidays and sags. I tried foam rollers, which don't seem to carry enough paint to avoid holidays, I tried mini nap rollers, which covered much better, but but left so much lint behind that i had to sand off nearly the whole coat.  My latest attempt is simply brushing.  Still wet, it looks better than any...