Sea Clamp to the rescue!

Yesterday was an epic day in the life of the Sea Clamp, and a momentus occassion in our personal development as boaters. First, Kristen and I learned to sail! A few weeks ago we were taking the Sea Clamp out for a spin and we met Werner, a cheery 68-yr old German man who volunteers his time teaching people how to sail at Lake Calhoun. He offered us a lesson and yesterday we finally had a free moment to take him up on it.

It was an unseasonably warm October day: 80 degrees with the sun shining and the wind blowing. Perfect for sailing. We met Werner down on the dock and climbed into the little trainer boat along with Shannon and Alberto, our boat friends for the day. After Werner steered us out into the middle of the lake and explained the basics of the rudder, sheet, and the sail, we both practiced steering and tacking. Mostly the goal was to avoid the wind surfers that were speeding around all over.

Sometime later in the afternoon we were out again, this time towing the Sea Clamp behind us. And good thing, since part way out into the lake the mast of Werner's boat crashed into the water! Part of the apparatus of ropes and pins that hold it up had come undone, leaving us stranded not too far from the dock.

After making an attempt to untangle the mast in the water, Werner and Alberto concluded that our only chance of not swimming to shore was a rescue by the Sea Clamp. And Alberto, who happily climbed into the dinghy, re-tied the ropes, and started rowing with all of his might. The plan was working fine for a bit, but then it seemed that Alberto was working up quite a sweat and we weren't really going anywhere. Turns out that the sailboat was caught on a buoy used to dock boats at the lake. We remedied the problem and coasted into the dock in a few minutes.


What a day!

Strange sightings at sea

I just learned about a sailor, Fredrik of Australia, who saw an island form right before his eyes! I vaguely remember hearing about this but it's one of those stories that slipped to the edge of my memory...

So he was on his yacht near Fiji, and if I understand it right, volcanic ash, compressed into pumice stone, floated up around his boat, making it look like they were sailing through a beach. And they saw a volcanic island forming as they watched.
The images are amazing. Now that's an adventure.

I also learned, through his blog, about this thing called SailMail that lets sailors send mail via their on-board radio communication devices. Slick.

Rowing is for two

Sarah and I took the boat out today for our first just-us, no-events, relaxing day on the water. It was a great afternoon... herons and ducks, a nice breeze, and added three lakes to The Sea Clamp's list (Calhoun, Isles and Cedar).

I realized as we were rowing along, chatting, with canoes and kayaks all around, that one thing that makes it so great is that in a rowboat you face each other. You can see each other and hear each other. And it's a good thing, too, because with the rower facing backwards, the passenger needs to help navigate, especially through all of the rental return traffic on the lake just before 4:00.

This facing each other thing was really surprising after mostly canoeing. Canoeing is wonderful, of course, but feels different. Really good for getting from one place to another. Dinghies, or The Sea Clamp anyway, are really good for lounging and drifting...
(Thanks to Peter for the picture.)

LAUNCH: The Sea Clamp rows!

After two months of sawing, gluing, steaming, measuring, painting, swearing and one test float, the Sea Clamp set sail (row) on Lake Nokomis on Sunday, July 29, 2007--a special day since it was also Kristen's birthday! It was a busy weekend with final paint coats on Friday, birthday party prep and buying of life jackets off of Craig's List on Saturday, but all-in-all when Sunday arrived we were prepared for a beautiful, relaxing day of sun and water. It went something like this:

9:45 am: Peel stencil of letters off boat to reveal precise painted letters proclaiming the boat’s name

10:00 am: Load lifejackets, oars, cooler, and boat into/onto car, drive to Mel-o-Glaze to get donut holes.

10:30 am: Arrive at Lake Nokomis in perfect sunny hot weather, unload stuff, set up drinks cooler with orange juice, lemonade, champagne, and plastic champagne flutes.

11:15 am: People start to arrive.

11:30 am: Critical mass assembled. We open a bottle of champagne, give our thank yous to folks that helped us, put on life jackets and sailed off into the water!!!!! The Sea Clamp floated like a beauty. We had a bit of trouble with the oars due to mis-matched oar locks and a clamping problem, but for the most part, we had total success out on the water.

11:45 am - 2 pm: People take turns taking out the Sea Clamp. Chris sailed his skiff, we drink mimosas on the beach, take pictures, go swimming, take mini naps, get super sunburned (Bryan).

2:00 pm: Load stuff into the car.
2:05 pm: Kristen and Susy have conversation with a man on the beach that love The Sea Clamp but doesn't believe that it was built by two women.
2:15 pm: Car doesn't start (argh). We leave Sea Clamp on car at lake and pile into Bryan's wagon.
2:30 pm: Go to Sea Salt for fishy eats and beers and sleepiness in the shady sun of Minnehaha Falls.
5:30 pm: Go see the Simpson’s movie at Block E. Revel in extreme air conditioning.
7:30 pm: Back to Nokomis and other places to rescue broken cars (both Sarah's and Kristen's!).
8:30 pm: Eat leftover birthday cake and icecream at Kristen’s while watching part of a pirate movie from 1935.
9:45 pm: Go home feeling sun-tired, water-logged, and drowsy with happiness!

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.