A Viking Faering

Cricket headed to Colorado a few minutes after we decked the Loper boat, and the next morning Pat and I flew to Maine to build a faering at WoodenBoat School. Jay Smith, our instructor, said the faering, which means a four-oared boat, was perhaps the Datsun pickup truck of a thousand years ago in Norway. It was the knockabout carry-all transport boat that you couldn't really live without. They still make them in Norway, still do it by eye, and they still look exactly the same. Why change a good thing?

We set up our fortresses in the campground. Turns out it's a good thing we used the raised platforms. For most of the next two weeks we got torrential rains, flattening my tent a few times. Luckily there's a drier in the Farmhouse a few hundred yards away.

We cut out fore and aft stems, then cut a keel to match.

Lovely white oak grain, no?

Then we made some primitive scarphs joints to fasten them together.

We used big forged iron spikes and rivets and little else to put the beast together. The blacksmith that makes them sounds like quite a character. Jay quotes him, "I'm a Finn. And I'm a berserker. Don't f*#k with me."

Prow in the foreground, Farmhouse with student lodging in the background. It's warm and dry in the Farmhouse. Why are we camping?

Oak knees that Jay harvested for the project. The two big ones closest are for frames in the bow and stern. The other four are oarlocks.

Jay's world of Viking tools.

The caulking yarn is made from the long, wiry guard hairs of some strange sheep in England. Wild stuff.

Fastening on the garboards.

The caulking string gets soaked in a mix of linseed oil and pine tar, then laid in a small groove in the planking.

Gene Shaw was our wonderful assistant. We couldn't have done it without him.

Then we begin shaping and putting on the strakes, five per side, all steam bent and force-fit.

Jay telling us tales of Norse boatbuilding heritage.

Gene gave a wonderful demonstration of his woodcut printing process one evening. Holy smokes, what an artist.

It rained a lot and blew hard from odd directions. Directions I did not have my tent suitably braced for. Back to the drier.

The WoodenBoat Magazine offices, up on the hill, on a foggy morning.

Iron rivets are a lot more work than copper ones, and a whole lot noisier.

My friend and sailing coach Jane coaxed us out to Naskeag Point to watch the sunset.

It was so pretty we forgot the tide was rising. Oops.

Cutting in the gain for the next strake.

I got the idea to make a pair of oars for the faering. Viking oars are as strange as Viking oarlocks. Huge triangular-ish upper looms tapering to a thin spoon blade. But it kept me out of everyone else's way for two days. Here is one of them with the oak oarlock I shaped.

We finally topped out and Jay showed us how to cut the sheer line down with a broad axe. Yikes.

We got her done enough to float. A wee bear came by one morning during the build, so the boat got christened Lille Bjorn, which is little bear in Norwegian.

It was a treat to see her on the water. All of a sudden, instead of a daunting series of tasks to do, we could see the boat for what it was. Mighty pretty.

Off Like a Prom Dress

Cricket headed to Colorado yesterday afternoon, and Pat and I fly to Maine this morning. But we kicked some butt yesterday in the shop. We started by taking a few steps backward, revising a few of the deck arch supports to be more accurate to the original. Then we started decking with 3/8" plywood, but took another step backward and downsized to 1/4" like Bert did. The arch of the decking makes the 1/4" plenty stiff.

One detail I missed in the last post. Turns out Bert was a Seagrams Crown 7 drinker. So we added some to the paint. Seemed like the right thing to do.

Is that grin maniacal?

Knocking down the bow post. It's made of part of one of the old boat cradles from Grand Canyon National Park. The cradles held the historic boat collection for several decades--boats from Julius Stone, the Kolb Brothers, and so forth. I'm sure a little magic seeped down into them.

We made a commitment to quit around 2 yesterday so we could deal with our lives and imminent travel arrangements. But we couldn't stop. We finally got the decks on at 3, toasted Bert and ourselves, left the shop an utter shambles, and stumbed out the door.

Loper Boat at Light Speed

Its continues to amaze me how fast things happen with a good crew of three boatbuilders. We are a bit behind pace for our more typical McKenzie or Rogue dory build, but this boat is a new, unfamiliar design, unfamiliar construction, and we had to build a strongback. All things considered, we're screaming along. 

This morning, Day Four of the build, we ground down and prepared the gigantic 17' x 5' floor for Bert's Boat, and faired the boat to receive it.

The precision of the screw holes normally necessary for our dory builds is not so important here. For one, the ribs and chines are very wide and hard to miss. Secondly, we are replicating a crudely built boat, created by an 80-year-old feller who built it under a cottonwood tree in Utah with old bent nails and salvaged hardware. Sometimes we just have to say "What would Bert do? He'd probably use cheap deck screws instead of high dollar silicon bronze wood screws. And so we do. Looking at the remains of the original boat, screws, nails and roofing nails are randomly banged into the frame to hold it together. Perfect spacing on our part would be inauthentic. 

Here I am putting in the last floor screw. It's an old rusty one from Bert's original boat that was heading for the river when I rescued it. (So can we call it a restoration now?) And the screwdriver was given to me by Rolf Holmstrom many years ago when I was planning to replicate Buzz's boat. "You'll need this," Rolf said, handing me the old Yankee screwdriver. "It's the one Buzz used."

On with the cheesy but authentic plywood chine cap. And a rock bumper.

On with the ghastly yellow paint. Bert's was likely a mix of old paint cans given to him by Greenriver locals. Ours unfortunately had to be purchased at full whack, as none of the mis-tinted paint was close to the appropriate color. This hue is called Fuzzy Duckling.

The plywood, however, is top dollar marine ply. But so was Bert's. He wrote a nice letter to the Harbor Plywood Company, from whom he bought the wood for his 1939 boat. They were so charmed they gave him the wood for the cost of freight. I need to work on my letter writing..

Hoping to get the decks and hatches on tomorrow, as July has few opportunities for the crew to get together again. We'll see how far we get--we need to shut down early to head for our various destinations--Cricket to Colorado, Pat and I to Maine to build a Viking Faering. 

Bert Loper's Boat

Bert Loper died at his oars in Grand Canyon just shy of his 80th birthday. His companions caught his boat several miles downstream and pulled it up on the bank, where it remained as a memorial to the Grand Old Man of the Colorado. 

But the elements have not been kind and 70 years later little remains of Bert's Grand Canyon.

It seemed like as good a time as any to build a replica before there is nothing left. Using photographs, correspondence, reports, journals, and some measurements Andy Hutchinson and I took fifteen years ago, Cricket and I were able to pull together what we think are a pretty accurate set of lines.

This week we seized the opportunity of Cricket, Pat and I all being off river and got started. Monday we began building ribs and built a strongback.

On Tuesday we finished the ribs, bulkheads, bow post and transom and began hanging them on the strongback.

Today we installed the inner chine and a sort of inner gunwale.

Then we patterned the side panels, cut two of them and screwed them on. The floor is massive--five feet wide and seventeen feet long. Fifty-six feet of scarf cutting to assemble the beast.

Not bad for three days' work. We'll see how much farther we can get in the next day or so, then it's off to Maine for five weeks of serious boat fun. So blog posts will be even more infrequent I am afraid.

But to tide you over until later this summer, here are a couple nice videos that came out recently about Cricket and I and the boatworks:

Faces of the Canyon: Meet Amy Jane "Cricket"

Art of the Outdoors

Three segments on Arizona craft folk--I show up just before minute 12.

And for those who missed it, here's one that came out last year:

The Boatmaker

Ouch Ouchy

The months just keep whooshing by. It's river season so at least I have an excuse. I took Hetch Hetchy downriver for a spin. Here she is about to launch into Grand Canyon for the first time in about 45 years.

She got to stare downstream at House Rock Rapid all night--the scene of her loss of front end many years ago.

But we made it fine. It was a treat to see Vasey's Paradise running again after years of decreasing to last fall's pathetic dribble.

All the side streams are happy this year.

Well, I reintroduced Hetch Hetchy to Grand Canyon in style, cracking her front end in Crystal Rapid. We were just a touch too far right.

But that's why we carry four colors of duct tape. She looks as good as new.

But I don't.

Storms and chilly weather. Beats the summer heat.

It's sure a nice place to "work."

The spring convention of Flannelmouth Suckers

My favorite view in Grand Canyon--Lava Falls from Tequila Beach with my morning coffee in hand.

Exploring.

A nice display of Hetch Hetchy's lines. She rowed well, but not quite as quick to turn as a Briggs boat--a wee bit narrow for her length. The lower bow was a bit wetter, but easier to move in the wind. 

And back home to the shop. Hetch will dry out for a while I attend to other things. A pretty simple fix, but the drier the better.