My biggest woody ever...boat that is.

After close to three years of slowly building this thing, it will finally get its maiden voyage sometime this weekend out near Florence.  I wanted something I could get the whole family (Me, wife, three young kids) in to get the kids out paddling.  I have to say that it is quite enormous.  It is 18.5 feet long and 35.5 inches at the widest point in the beam. The waterline beam is 34.5 inches.  It has a capacity of about  750 pounds (that's a lot of cameras for me to lose in the Willamette). It started out as a 17.5 foot long box beam I built in November of 2008 on which I attached the forms:



And then started putting on the strips:


It took me almost one year to get it to this point:

I had a new bay girl in January 2009. She is cute, but she slowed the build down a bit

 
I added a few layers of graphite powder mixed with the epoxy for abrasion resistance and slipperyness (new word):

Winter came along and made the epoxy cure too slow so finally in March of 2010 I added the gunnels made of cherry and black walnut:


Then, this spring I finally got around to fiberglassing the inside and ordering seats.  Earlier this summer, I added the inwales and fit the seats. A couple weeks ago I made the decks out of cherry, ash, and black walnut and made the thwarts.  I finally got around to varnishing it this past weekend, with a new coat everyday this week.  Tonight, I installed everything. After all is said and done, here she is:

the angle I took this first one at makes it look weird and lopsided.








I was hoping I would have a canoe large enough, and worthy of Bsteves training me to be his Freestyle canoeing doubles partner.

-Craig

WOW!  She is PRETTY!!!!!!!!

That's amazing.  Great job! Congratulation!!!!!!!!!

All I can say is WOW!!!

Thanks guys.  The only thing I would have done differently would have been ordering cherry wood seats rather than the light ash seats I got.  I guess there is always sanding and staining that could be done.

WOW, that is a beautiful boat and nice 26"er too.

I threw her back, the most recent time she was caught and measured, she was about 31 inches.

That is a spectacular boat!  Great job.  The fifth pic, everytime someone tells me they had a baby I always picture fish; he/she is X lbs and Y inches.

That is a spectacular boat!  Great job.  The fifth pic, everytime someone tells me they had a baby I always picture fish; he/she is X lbs and Y inches.

I think I had just received the hawg trough a couple days before, and I wasn't fishing much with a new born, so I had to test it on something.

She is a thing of beauty and a work of art. Oh and the Canoe is really nice also.
Congrats on both Craig.

Nice work!