Life on the Outer Coast

"Frapping"

Or maybe Frappe (needs an accent mark). There was a phrase instead of just one word for today, but I'm afraid its completely gone from my overworked brain. Frapping refers to wrapping around something (either keel, stringer or rib junction) to help secure the lashing. The keel was attached to the ribs using a continuous box tie (it looked like outlining the short ends of a rectangle) from the bow to the stern of the kayak. We used the same technique to atach the stringers to the ribs at the turn of the hull. We attached (8" spaced brads) a spacer piece on the upper edge of the gunnel to give the boat a more pleasing shape and keep the skin off the ribs (abrasion ?). Only one nail went seriously astray (I pounded it in, but it adds to the amateur appearance of the workmanship). I was relieved when I wasn't the only one to do this trick. I have to admit, I was also relieved to see at least one other person removing a few mis-hammered nails. Not just misery loves company.
The bow stem and stern post were attached to the gunnels with lashing (v-shaped) as was a narrow deck beam that formed the v-shape in the aft deck. 2 deck beams were placed just astern of where the seat will be placed. These were attached to either side of center with pegs. I managed to drill through the wood on one of these, again I was happy to not be alone in this. Just use plenty of glue was the cure.
At one point in the morning we place the kayaks on the floor and climbed in to see if one of the extra ribs needed to be removed. I was fine with the placement of the ribs and my heels, but Brian decided to remove one of mine (maybe 6?) anyway to keep some uniformity and in case I had trouble reaching my foot pedals. Am I really that much smaller than the rest of the people on the planet?
The most troubling thing again was the block planer, although I might finally have a miniscule amount of skill with the job. We faired (sp?) in the bow and stern pieces to join with the keel, okay I had some help. Earlier we used the block planer to fair the piece that was added to keep the skin off the gunnels and ribs. For some reason or other I found that task troublesome.
Keith, Sam and I drilled the holes for the foot pedal brackets while Scott and Jonathon drilled holes for some other unknown purpose.
Brian and Jackie sanded and steamed each combing to bend a swoop into it (aesthetic purpose). The combings were steamed for 15 minutes and a 1 X 2 piece of cedar was clamped over it to achieve the bend. The were left clamped overnight. I believe that Scott had to pound a few of my nails in further as I was lacking in some necessary brute force yesterday.
Again I'm sure that I've forgotten something, maybe Scott's photos will help jog my memory.

Since there was some waiting around today (hard to imagine when) we filled in with lessons on fire starting with a bow drill, thanks to Jonathon. I have a ways to go in my skills, hopefully we can invent some time tomorrow.

This morning there were orange crowned, townsends, and wilson's warblers, varied thrush, robins, a winter wren and hummingbirds in the garden visible from the computer. All seemed to be eating madly away in the garden. One townsends' and one varied thrush seemed to be juveniles.

We did our last marbled murrelet count this evening between 8:30 and 9:30. We saw a total of about 168 birds heading in and 132 going out. How many were duplicates, I don't have any idea. There were also rhinoceros auklets, common murres, 2 pigeon guillemots and mew gulls.