Finished Oar

Once again, I found myself limited to just a few hours of work on Shan Skailyn this last weekend. Is it me, or do things just keep getting more and more busy? No problem. Just plug away when you can and it'll eventually get all done.

I managed to finish the steering oar. Turned out pretty nice, though I do wonder about it's flexibility, if it may be too much. Oh well. I'll leave that up to future experience to tell me. Again, this is a backup steering/propulsion system. I simply modeled after the diagram in Gary's book. Went with the 10' version. Total weight is 3.6 kgs (7.9 lbs). Seems a bit heavy to me. Though I'm not sure what one might expect from a 10' oar weight wise. Only thing left on the oar at this point is to put the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th coats of exterior varnish on the oar. Also note the texture I put on the handle (see picture in previous botched post). My thinking was that it would provide better grip in wet conditions. I'm wondering if it might only serve to expedite the development of blisters. Hmmm. If it does, I can just wrap inner tube strips around it for comfort. Hmmm. Why didn't I just do that in the first place?!

One other thing I did on Saturday morning was to varnish the underside of the fore and aft decks. This is something I neglected to do initially, thinking it wouldn't be a problem to just leave the plywood bare on the deck since it's in a sealed compartment. However, as I've thought over things, I've come to realize that my original thinking was naive. In a water craft, I think one can assume everything will get wet at one point or another. Best to leave zero surfaces unfinished if I want to extend the life of the material. So I got that done. Not an easy job on an assembled boat. I had to assemble the fore and aft pieces and turn it upside down on a table so I could sit up inside the hull and reach my arms inside the sealed compartments and apply the varnish all the way to the stem. Now I know why I've delayed doing that. All that work and it feels like I didn't really accomplish anything meaningful, at least not anything perceivable. But I do rest better knowing I've taken a good step toward preserving Shan Skailyn. After reading Chris Grill's blog (grillabongquixotic.wordpress.com - gotta check it out if you haven't already) and seeing what happened to his deck, I'm taking whatever measures I can to keep this one intact as long as possible. Of course his boat, Desesperado, has been in the water nonstop for more than a year, not to mention it's a completely different construction method and material. But the principle is the same... water eventually rots wood. Thus it is a good idea to do what you can to keep the water off the wood.