Paint makes all the difference

The launch is four days away. We're on our second coat of paint and it's an amazing transformation. We got marine-grade interior-exterior oil-based paint from the Paint Liquidator on Minnehaha Ave in Mpls, and it looks incredible, if nothing else. It's so glossy it's like a big orange mirror. We're not revealing it yet, but here's a photo from the workshop that will give you an idea of our color scheme.

The Sea Clamp is ready to launch (almost)

For the past two months we’ve been building a boat. It’s almost done and it’s got a name: The Sea Clamp. It’s a small one, good for a couple people, but it’s been a big enough project for us.

It’s a Portuguese-style dinghy that's made from one and a half sheets of plywood (provided you don’t make any mistakes, which we made a couple of). We got the plans from Hannu, a Finnish boat-builder who generously shares a lot of his designs for small boats online.

We’re planning to launch it Sunday, July 29. You’re invited to come, if you’re in the neighborhood: we’ll be at Lake Nokomis in South Minneapolis, at the 50th Street Beach on the east side of the lake, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. or so.

We’ve taken a lot of pictures along the way, but we're just getting started documenting this whole process. We were glad to have a guide in the form of Hannu’s instructions, but found we ended up doing a lot of things twice because we needed a little more information. So we’re planning to describe things in terms of what we learned and the mistakes we made. Check back as we reveal embarrassing moments (the bottom that we cut too small) and boat-building secrets (what is a Spanish windlass?), as well as key tools and materials, our favorite nautical inspirations from page and screen, and our plans for trickin' this little rowboat out.