("Tahiti, The Hard Way" by R.Jackson, pg.3)

I had a fire going in front of the shop under the old hot water tank. This was attached to a borrowed steam box, the frames stacked neatly nearby. "Everything in order," I thought. It was almost time for Tom and Jack to arrive. I was excited and a bit nervous. My mentors were about to arrive. It was chilly and still early morning grey. Dee brought out another coffee, and up the hill came Jack's pickup. He had a really pleased look on his face after surveying the fire under the tank. Steambox at the ready, frames, gloves, everything in order. Goodmornings said all around. We gloved up and decided to start. Jack grabbed about four frames and shoved them into the box. They hit the other end with a resounding thud and stuck out beyond the opening two inches. I had not tried the damn things before. Or had the bloody sense to measure the box. It had looked long enough. The expressions on Tom's and Jack's faces were something I was not soon to forget. A monel tank I had bought from a retired boat builder, open on the top, was quickly hauled into position over the fire and filled with water. It would hold nine to twelve ribs at a time and took about an hour or so to boil them into a malleable state. The two hours it took to get this water boiling were spent erecting scaffolding - another oversight on my part.

At the end of a long day, a quarter or less of the boat was framed. My friends had departed with far less accomplished than they'd planned. I sat in the quiet shop contemplating the day in general. Besides not measuring the steambox or erecting scaffolding, I had not planed off the upper and lower edges of ribbands at the turn of the bilges - an ommission, if not discovered by Tom, that would have changed her lines by 1/4" or more - a lot, when you're trying to build a fine boat. And if that weren't enough, I didn't have enough nails on hand to secure the frames to the ribbands after the clamps were removed. My mind that evening was wallowing in self doubt.

The following weekends, the framing up proceeded. Jack had suggested early on that I cut the station molds away, inboard, starting just below the bilge stringers, up to just above the sheer clamp. This would allow me to put the sheer clamp and bilge stringer on over the molds. Infinitely easier than installing them into the planked up hull, he assured me. This cut away mold arrangement worked thusly: the frame was inserted inboard of the ribbands below the bilge stringer and thwacked smartly into its socket in the keel and then it's bent over the outboard side of the bilge stringer and over the outboard side of the sheer clamp. This necessitated that the man inside, after pressing his foot against the lower end of the hot frame to guide it into the socket, must clamber on up ribbands to hang way out over the sheer in order to haul in on the top end of the frame.

One of my framing helpers, Garnie Quitslund, offered to assist in the building on a regular basis for a fee, one day a week. Saturdays. This arrangement had consequences I hadn't expected. Back in '72, a year after Dee and I had met Jack Day in Seattle, we were in Nova Scotia with Tom Pryor. I was working at the agency in Toronto on the Nova Scotia Tourist Association and had heard of an Atkins "Princess" schooner that was almost complete. The insides needed finishing. Tom had joined us from Detroit. He was going to survey her for us. She had been built on the beach.Unfortunately there were a lot of wood shavings in her bilge, and these were wet from melting snow and rain. Dry rot had started in her frame sockets. Probably just as well for us. The price was so good we would have bought here even though she was too small for what we wanted. None of us having been to Nova Scotia before, we decided to visit a few boat yards. Our first stop was not far fron the Atkins schooner, on the bay of Fundy. A schooner with the traditional spoon bow of Canadian "Blue Nose" types was sitting high and dry on her keel, leaning on her starboard side against the piles of a long dock, a good eight feet above deck. Later that day we were to come back to this boat and go aboard when she was floating. The thirty-foot tides of the Bay of Fundy are something to behold. This schooner was about 60' on deck with a draught of nine or so feet. She was now floating in plenty of water. 		We decided to drive on to Lunenburg. Tom wanted to see the shop where the duplicate of the "Bounty" used in the Brando film had been constructed. Lunenburg, it seems, was one of the last places on earth with shipwrights able to follow eighteenth century plans. Tom had sailed on her during the filming. His Tahitian girlfriend was the next door neighbor of the woman who played the princess in the film. She and Brando did the neighborly thing and invited Tom to be an extra.

Another closed-but-must-stop-and-peer-through-the-windows was the "A. Dauphinee & Sons, Ltd." shop, and old manufacturer of ship's blocks. Eighteen years later they were to build all of my blocks.

The final stop was to be at Dauphinee's brother-in-law's place, David Stevens. Neither of us knew him. Just of him. He had constructed a schooner at Montreal's Expo '67, and his schooners continually beat the U.S. boats in the many encounters over the years. We headed for the Second Peninsula. Uninvited, we drove into his drive - a long gravel drive that wound around as it approached the house, several barns, gardens, cows grazing, and , of course, the bay. Two of Steven's schooners lay at anchor. He was in a small group of family as we piled out of my VW bus. I broke into an apology for the intrusion as soon as he walked into earshot, stressing the fact that we were from Toronto and Detroit, in hope, I guess, that this would somehow excuse our unexpected appearance. Tom added that we had heard wonderful things about his schooners. Dee introduced herself, and names were exchanged all around. The man was apparently not displeased. He spent the next two hours or so showing us the construction barn, the sail loft, and wrapped up the tour by asking us if we would like to go for a sail in the just launched "Kathi Anne". Because of Tom's flight schedule we had to regretfully decline. Walking back to the VW we passed a pile of lumber stacked up on sticks, air drying. I hoped this wouldn't produce the same reaction from Tom that another pile had earlier that day. It was after leaving the 60' schooner that Tom had stepped off the path to press his nose against the end of a board protruding slightly from a neat stack of lumber. He turned to Dee and I with an expression on his face not unlikke someone nearing nirvana. "Smell this!" Dee and I pressed our noses to the specified board in a parody of Tom's example. If one could make an aftershave for boat builders, this would be what it would smell like. "Wow! What is it?" "Port Orford cedar. Comes from way out in Oregon. About the best thing you could plank a boat with. Pretty rare now." That was my first encounter with Port Orford cedar until a Saturday, seven years later.

On Garnie's first day ot work, during our first coffee break, looking out over the almost completed framing, he turned to me and asked, "What ya gonna plank her up with?" "I'm not sure. I've got enough red cedar, but it's awfully soft. And I know where I can get some pretty good fir." Garnie nodded, took a drink of coffee and then said, "Would you be interested in Port Orford cedar? I've got an uncle in Coos Bay who may know the whereabouts of some." My mind went back to Nova Scotia and Tom with that ecstatic look on his face. "Call you uncle. Think he'd be home right now?" Garnie grinned and meandered over to the phone. A month or so later I had my own stack of Port Orford cedar up on sticks. A happy boat builder indeed.

Planking up could now begin. I'd like to stress one thing at this time that I think is of paramount importance. If I had the proverbial dime for every time I read it... but I still didn't do it enough. Transfer all the lines off the loft; waterlines, buttocks, station marks and diagonals on all station molds. Everything on the loft should be on the molds. Trying to find the exact point for a sheer strake, or anything else for that matter, inside or outside a three-dimensional curved form will make you rue any omissions.

Mark my words.
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