laguna

This week we closed the hull. All four missing planks have been hanged and the compulsory whiskey bottle has been drunk. But let’s start from the beginning.

We don’t usually work on Monday, so I had the time to go to the junkyard and look for a sheet of some non-ferrous metal for the protections going at the tip of the bow and on the top of the transom.

Unfortunately, I found nothing of the right metal and/or thickness… If it wasn’t something that would have actually protected the boat it didn’t make sense to damage the boat with more fastening, especially in these already delicate parts (transom and breasthook/stem).

The following days we worked on the remaining planks. First the two sides of the bottom go in. These have a very fine tip at the aft end, where there is the biggest curvature, therefore I decided to pre-bend them with heat.

Here in Albaola we commonly do it using a steambox (if you recall, it’s how I bent the planks for the fore deck), but I wanted to try the Venetian way. This video clearly shows how it’s done:

We used a much modern set up, but it was the same in principle.

This method is much faster, but leaves some charred scars to the wood. Our boat is going to be painted so it didn’t really matter.

From the following picture you might notice that the central plank is asymmetrically placed. This is simply because we couldn’t find two planks with the same width for the sides of the bottom. The original boat our plans are based on has five bottom planks in total, but we tried to have less seams…

In the Anglo-Saxon boatbuilding world, the last plank is cheered with a bottle of whiskey (from here the term “whiskey plank”). Our teacher is from the U.S.A., so we embraced this tradition.

Time for a round of caulking! We chose oakum instead of cotton string, because hemp is what was used traditionally.

These boats don’t have any caulking bevel on the edge of the planks, therefore you have to open up the seams with the iron. Of course, if you hit too hard you might break the plank towards the inside of the boat.

How do I know? Well, try to guess.

After having given a coat of primer to the bottom, and having paid the seams with linseed oil puddy and primer, we flipped the work to give the finishing touches to the interior.

Last week I forgot to write that I had the shape of the stanchions changed slightly, to better armonize with the angles of the deck. This is particularly noticeable at the aft.

Also the knees at the thwart have reached to their final shape, after much thinking, thanks to a sketch that Gilberto sent me. All the nail heads(although they are galvanized iron) have been covered by a mix of beeswax and resin, in order to try to further delay corrosion.

We then sanded everything, in and outside, and gave the boat a second coat of primer.

Next week is the last one: launching date will be Saturday 22nd. We have less than a week left.

Before then, we’ll have to build the floor, for which we already milled up some larch, and then sand, paint, sand, and paint again. We have some colors in mind, but no spoilers until next week, bye!

Last week I left you with a sight of the forward deck, more on it on this post.

As you might have noticed, I avoided the modern, tapering-planks method in favor of a more traditional and efficient way of planking. I believe these two photos here below can explain more than a thousand words what I did:

Here is the finished deck, with the planks cut flush with the breasthook. At the tip of the bow you can see the top of the stem, with two small triangles filling the gap on its sides. These are normally separated from the breasthook but Ioanna liked the idea of making them all out of a single piece.

At the bottom of the picture you can see a cross piece made of oak, steam bent into place. In Venice it would be bent with open fire but we went for a method I’m more familiar with.

We then installed the two upper strakes called falche (waterboards in English maybe?). The overlap the sheer plank and are fastened mainly to stanchions and frames (but also into the thwart and the deck cross pieces).

At the aft, the transom got its final cut, and looks very elegant now.

After fastening everything, it was time to flip the boat. We therefore dismantled the strongback, since we have no plans to build another sandolo here in the near future.

We also faired the stem and the filling piece at the bow, ready to install the side planks. These are almost ready, just need a few dutchmen and plugs on a few nasty knots here and there.

But the side planks are the last to be installed. First we need to close the bottom.

Since we were afraid the dry bottom planks would swell up once in the water, pushing the side planks out of place, we decided to soak them in the sea for a couple of days.

I am not sure how they prevent this from happening in Venice, but I’ll try to find out. That’s it for this week, see you the next one, hopefully with the boat ready to be painted!

Happy May Day, everyone! Today we are not working, it’s also International Workers’ Day after all.

But this week we had good progress and you can really tell that the boat is getting close to be ready…

To be honest, the week started slowly: on Monday Albaola hosted the press conference for “La Fortuna”, a series produced by Movistar+, and directed by Alejandro Amenábar (http://www.pasaiaport.eus/es/noticias/noticias/519-la-fortuna-la-serie-de-alejando-amenabar-que-hace-escala-en-el-puerto-de-pasaia).

Some of the scenes were filmed in Pasaia, with the partecipation of tall ship replicas Étoile du Roi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89toile_du_Roy) and Shtandart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtandart_(frigate,_1999)). We were lucky enough to be invited on board both of them!

After all these distractions, we could get back to work. Ioanna started by caulking the aft deck she had installed last week.

This might need to be redone after the boat sits under the sun for a while, but we thought that the caulking would prevent the deck planks from warping too much while still out of the water.

Then, together with Alejandro, they managed to prepare four out of five of the sotocorboli, the pieces that will receive the foot of the forcole and prevent them from rocking while rowing.

Also notice that we painted the interior with some primer, after Ioanna had sanded everything.

Regarding this semicircular patter, I was once told that it is a reminiscence of the times when boats were covered in tar. You wouldn’t want to stick to the tar with your “clean” trousers, especially in the summer when it all melts. Therefore the seats would be left without tarring.

We followed the tradition, and oiled the thwart instead (with a mix of boiled linseed oil and turpentine).

I devoted my time to the closing of the forward deck. Ioanna had prepared the breasthook last week, but kindly left it to me to finish.

After installing the first beam and cutting a rabbet on the socheto (breasthook), I positioned two more beams in between with the help of a batten. The beams have been made out of larch, as will the deck.

In this group picture, you can see how the deck turned out. It still need to be fastened, but you can already notice that it is asymmetrical. It’s been made the traditional way, in order to waste as few material as possible.

After fastening it I will take some more pictures and explain more in detail how it is done.

What’s the plan for next week?

Nailing the forward deck, hanging the washboards (you can see them in the last picture, lying on the floor next to Laguna), fix the stanchions supporting them, fasten the sotocorboli, cut the transom, and maybe even flip the boat and start closing it for good!

Time to fasten the seat-risers! Or is it?

Normally, the spaces between two frames and seat-riser and outside plank are filled with larch blocks. There is no gunwale on the sandolo s’ciopon and the blocks help strengthen the whole boat.

Usually, every other space is left empty in order to be able to tie a rope around the seat-riser when mooring. This is especially useful if you think that there is no stringer either on this kind of boat.

These blocks are traditionally fitted after the seat-riser has been fastened, but we decided it would be easier to fit them before.

We also finally installed the last frames, which sit directly onto the stem and don’t have a proper floor timber.

Since they are hidden under the deck, many times they are not even cut like the rest of the frames, and square pieces are used instead. But we had a couple wrong frames left from the previous weeks and decided to recycle them.

Alejandro, a volunteer interested in applying for the Aprendiztegi, has been helping us this week, therefore we managed to get a lot of work done.

Here he’s drilling the hole for the mast in the center of the thwart he has been preparing.

Next week we’ll focus on closing the decks, plus some other little things… Stay tuned!

This week was all devoted to the preparation for the launching of the patatxe.

A patatxe (we use the Basque spelling here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patache), was a light sailing vessel with two masts originally used for patrolling the coastline, especially in this area close to the border near .

Patatxes later took part in trans-Pacific expeditions and because of their speed and versatility they were soon favored by pirates as well.

The launching went well, and we now have plenty of space in the workshop! Now back to the sandolo.

As you can see from the picture, we found some time to position the stringers and fair the frames in order to fasten them.

We also cut all the frame heads, which is always a difficult and at the same time relieving step in the construction process.

Notwithstanding all the measuring (“measure twice, cut once”, they say), some of them look a bit off and will need to be trimmed again later, until they are all nice and consistent. There is no gunwale on this kind of boats, therefore the frames will be visible and we want them to look good.

This week Ioanna and I will be back to work on Laguna at 100% and we hope to get some real progress done.

In fact, there are great news from Venice: apparently, the Vogalonga committee is trying to organize this year’s edition for May 23rd!

We may have a deadline for finishing our project.

I’ll make a post devoted to the Vogalonga further on, when we have more news about this year’s edition… and our possible attendance.