Work on the Ranger trickled to a halt in August as I had to spend the time doing a few repairs to my racing 18-footer replica BRITANNIA after 16 hard racing seasons. Several sections of planking and several sections of seam battens were split and needed replacing. Several of my stalwart crew helped me bring the BRIT home from the Club sheds and roll it over in my suburban street, and slide it into my driveway. After assessing the scope of the work I drove out to my Western annex, a container on a friend's property an hour away where I selected some planks from my rapidly diminishing stock of Australian Red Cedar and planed them down with my excellent little Dewalt thicknesser. While I was there I ripped a few Huon Pine planks for the next few rounds on the Ranger on my Laguna bandsaw as well as smaller stock for BRITANNIA's seam battens. This video documents the process of replacing the plank sections. It also shows the renewed mast step, another necessary job. The lower spar on BRITANNIA's larger ringtail had been broken and repaired several times over its career, but it was beginning to embarrass me, so I built a new one, slightly thicker at 2 1/4" diameter (58mm) from a nice clear piece of Oregon Pine (Douglas Fir) I'd been saving. The following video illustrates some of the processes. The new work and a few worn sections needed a build-up of coats of varnish, followed by a crew day with an all-over sand and a complete varnish coat outside and in (naturally the outside varnishing was done before rolling the boat back right way up). All of the standing rigging and most of the running rigging on the second rig of BRITANNIA needed replacing also, and I prefer hand-splicing on a traditional rig so that took up a fair bit of time as well. But ahhh....the smell of Stockholm Tar!
The 2018-19 racing season is now underway so I am starting back on the Ranger and will keep you posted.
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AuthorIan Smith, Boatbuilder (ret'd) Archives
January 2024
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