deck – Acqua Stanca

Building a traditional Venetian boat in the Basque Country /12

A bit unexpectedly this week I have been to Venice. I took advantage of this opportunity to photograph lots of boats, both under construction and moored along the city’s canals.

Of course I have been rowing a *sandolo*, too. This one is called “Miss K”.

Needless to say, it was wonderful. Especially now that there are almost no tourists because of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, in the Basque Country, the work on “Laguna” didnt’ stop. Ioanna and Alejandro kept on going and finished the aft deck and all the stanchions.

There are different ways to build the decks, here is how we decided to do it:

The aft-deck planks are actually notched into the plank on the forward side, in order to give the deck some more steepness.

A cross piece at the aft end prevents the transom from cupping and helps supporting the deck as well.

We nailed the deck planks straight into the edge of the planks, even though they often are nailed into another piece next to the plank.

At the end, a piece is placed on the connection between deck and “gunwales”, to protect the edge of the deck and visually ease the transition between the two different bevels. We also added two small triangular pieces to the planks in order to have an extra-raked deck.

All this seems quite easy and straightforward, but has all been coordinated via messages on Whatsapp and phone calls. Luckily in Venice I had access to many boats and books that I could take pictures of and send to my team.

Our invaluable volunteer helper Alejandro worked on the stanchions (mancoli), which we decided to make slightly taller than the original boat, in order to have a higher washboard (falca), and account for the mistakenly low sides…

Ioanna has also been working on the breasthook (sochéto), but I’ll post more pictures of that next week, together with the other deck.

Oh, and happy April 25th! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Day_(Italy)