Multi-colour boats

Gabe made a comment about our "multi-colour boats" today. He was working with Dave to install one of the cap rails, which are fashioned from Purpleheart. Below him on the port side, Eva and Gerald were sealing seams with wax on the hull of the first of the twin schooners that we caulked - green wax no less! - and then applying another coat of grey primer to her bottom.

All this led to comments about the crazy, neon yellow sawdust that was created when we were fashioning the double sawn frames from Osage Orange. There was one day Bub looked like a character from a Scooby-Doo cartoon he was so covered! The Alaskan Yellow Cedar hull planking added its own unique hue, as did the Angelique in the bilge and the Wana on deck.

It sometimes seems a shame, as one of our Facebook friends recently pointed out, to paint over such a handsome selection of wood. But it is all part of the process. We selected these materials to create strong and durable hulls that can sail anywhere in the world; now we're treating and preserving them.

But the fresh paint does something else too. In covering the admittedly handsome natural features of the schooners' component parts, particularly here on the hull, it takes your focus away from the wood to instead highlight the beautiful lines of these boats.

Have a nice weekend everyone!