The forecast calls for a high today in the 50’s with highs reaching the 60’s in the early part of next week. Temperatures like that make a paddler’s thoughts turn to getting out on the lake. Of course the lakes around here won’t lose enough ice to allow access to the open water yet, even with the warm temperatures. Still, as January heads toward February it is good to get a brief respite from winter and start our minds thinking about springtime. It probably is a good week to catch up on a bit of the yard work that has been hiding under the snow. At least I have some trees to water.

The kayak in the garage is starting to look like a boat. The hull is planked, which means that the shape of the finished boat is visible. It has beautiful lines and I keep running my hands over her and dreaming of how she will feel to paddle. Of course, she is a long ways from being finished. In fact, I am behind schedule and uncertain whether or not she’ll see the water this summer. The next phase of the project is shaping and sanding and going over the hull carefully to make sure that every gap is sealed. There will be a few small areas where I’ll have to cut out a bit of the wood to make room for an additional sliver of similar wood to get the shape and appearance I want. Then there is another week or so of sanding and fairing to get it just right before applying a thin coat of epoxy to seal and a single layer of fiberglass.

Epoxy and fiberglass like warm temperatures. I have a heater in my garage, but it isn’t the kind of thing I leave running 24/7. It runs on kerosene. At over $6/gallon, running that heater dramatically increases the cost of the finished boat. I’ll figure out a window of 4 hours when I can keep the garage over 70 degrees on a warm day and proceed.

After that, the boat gets turned over and things get exciting. Building the deck takes a bit longer than the hull because that is the part of the boat this is up when I paddle (most of the time) and it is the part I look at. So, I want it to be pretty. I’ve got my ideas about the design of the strips on the deck and the colors I want to use, but that is a lot of precision inlay and it will take a while to get things just so. After the deck is sealed and fiberglassed, there is a lot of outfitting, forming the hatch and coaming, installing the access covers and getting them properly sealed, etc.

This boat will get kevlar fabric on the inside. I’ve never worked kevlar before, but it works similar to fiberglass. The cloth is heavier (not in weight, just in thickness) so getting a good wetout with the epoxy will take some work. I want to have a full day with good temperatures when I do that - probably a summer day will be best.

And when all of that is done, I have to put it together, make my end pours, and outfit the boat.

By the time I get to varnish it is going to be late enough next fall that I will be thinking about temperatures I suppose.

Then again, the more a project looks like it can be finished, the more I get excited. The work does speed up on every boat project.

We’ll see. Taking my time is the only way to get the boat that I want. I think that this particular boat demands the patience that took me decades to develop. I’m glad I didn’t start it when I was younger.

Today should afford me 3 or 4 hours to work on the boat. I have other obligations and I want to get to town to watch part of the young artists’ competition. I have a young friend who is competing and whose talent simply amazes me. With some young musicians, i listen and think, “I wish I had practiced more when I was younger.” With others, and my friend is definitely in this category, I realize that no amount of practice would have enabled me to reach his genius and artistry. With people like that, I just am grateful to have been alive at the same time so I can hear the music.

Competitions between teens, however, are unpredictable. Emotions run high and anything can happen.

So I hope to get another hour with the boat after i watch the competition and attend the awards ceremony. Boat building presents challenges, but, for the most part, you can tell what is coming. I think about each step of the process hundreds of times before I do anything. When I was fitting the final strips into the hull, I had imagined those moments so often that it felt very natural to grab a mallet and start tapping on my boat. At this stage, the boat is fragile and a hammer is the last tool one would think of employing. But when the pieces are just the right size and shape, a hammer helps to make the final bend in the strip. I get everything ready and dry fit then put the glue on the strips and place them. A bit of wax paper and a few taps with the hammer and everything went into place nicely. The fit of the final planks is better than was the case on some of the earlier strips.

I think that there is a metaphor for life or for ministry in the fitting of the planks. I wrote a blog post about the theology of clamps once years ago. But I’m not sure that using a leather mallet to tap things into place is a good practice for a minister. In our church, people do what they want for the most part. There’s no forcing them into the shape I want, like I can do with thin strips of wood.

I’ll have to think about that one.

And building a boat is a good place to think about the bigger questions of life.

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