Coamings and Oarlocks

Sorry about the inconsistent blogging ... yes, I'm still making progress on the boat.  No, I haven't fallen off the (boat building) wagon.  I'm dedicated to finishing this little boat this summer.  Although, I've gotten a little distracted with gardening and also homebrewing beer, (because I figured I needed some homebrew to splash on the bow of my homebuilt boat on launch day!)

Here's my latest progress.  The hollow coamings are painted inside first before putting on the last piece of plywood.  Two coats of primer and two coats of topcoat.

Painting inside the coamings.

The plywood for the small backrest is cutout and prepared for gluing.  Small cutouts are made in it for access to the hollow of the coaming.  A good place to store peanuts or something maybe.

Preparing the coaming plywood for gluing.

 After that piece of plywood is glued and nailed on, the top of it is trimmed flush with the belt sander, then a 1/2" thick oak capping is glued and nailed.  If you look close, you can see some scarf joints, since the capping is made of multiple pieces of oak.  I only had a few short pieces of oak left and I decided to use this instead of buying a new long piece. 

The coaming plywood glued and nailed.  Also the oak capping pieces and oarlocks installed.

 The recess for the oarlock sockets are carefully drilled and chiseled out of the top of the coamings.  (I'm pretty handy with a chisel since I had some practice with it when installing some hardware on some interior doors of the house a few years back).

Here is a closer pic of the oarlock socket installed in the coaming.

The oarlock sockets mortised into the top of the coamings.

The oarlocks are positioned toward the outboard edge of the coamings so that the oars move freely without rubbing.  The oarlocks are positioned longitudinally (fore and aft) for a person sitting backwards on the centercase trunk to comfortably operate them.  I sat in the boat for quite some time pretending to row until I found a comfortable position for the oarlocks.  A person could also row facing forward sitting on the aft deck or standing up.

Here is a pic of the oars in the stowed position.  For convenience, I'm going to try to leave the oars in the oarlocks and just flip them back into this position while sailing.  Hopefully that will work, because I have no where else to stow these 8ft oars on this little boat!  In this position, they hang about 1ft off the stern.  I'll have to make some tie down straps or something to secure them.

The oars in their stowed positions.

 In other news, the sheriff came by the house to inspect the boat last weekend and I just received my title and registration in the mail.  So now there is nothing keeping me from launching the boat in local waters ... except that construction isn't quite done yet.  I was toying with the idea of taking her out for a row soon, but decided that the first launch will also be her first sail too.  I'm hoping to launch her in August, but we'll see.

The hull construction is now complete, besides some cosmetic sanding, filling and painting work.  There's still a lot of work to be done, but this is quite a milestone.