Last week I got to finish the boat by building the oars and the two boom sticks. It was a great week. The weather was perfect, and the fish were biting! I went out one morning and caught 2 nice, summer run salmon. I’ve been talking about the salmon fishing in the last few post, so I figured I better let you see what swims up our famous Columbia river. The best part about the whole fishing thing is that all the fish that swim up this river have to swim right in front of my house. Anyway, this one weighted in just short of 26 pounds.
The boat is done, and as you can see I did something a little different with the rigging. One of the oars is stepped as the mast and the other sets in an oarlock in the stern and is used as the rudder. I took some 3/8″ copper pipe, heated it up and pounded it into the yoke for the gaff boom stick. This slides up the mast oar and is put in place with a small block at the top of the oar. I drilled a 1/2″ hole in the blade of the oar and fit a 1/2″ piece of copper pipe in for mounting the block. Hopefully I will get the sail made this week, and in the next post, I will tell of her performance! Happy 4th!