lost in the woods

Despite the fact that almost a half of Estonia’s territory is covered with forest, it is pretty much impossible to acquire locally grown timber decent enough to be suitable for boat building. Baltic pine for example. No there aint any, at least in lumber yards Im aware of.

I do not know where they hide it, but as I strolled through several lumber yards I still ended up empty handed. If the planks happened to be dry enough and with dense grain they were littered with dozens of knots. So I had to turn my gaze into direction of imported timber. Douglas-Fir particularly, from Mass AS.

Bought home two logs of 5,5m 105×50 mm Douglas-Fir.

Douglas-Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), also known as Oregon pine is not boat building wood in traditional sense due its low-medium rot resistance and vulnerability to insect attacks. But what it makes more than a suitable material for epoxy stitch-and-glue is its high strength to weight ratio. Also Douglas-Fir is easily workable.

Just by side note I have to mention that in the wooden boat building forums there is lots of confusing fuzz going on around timbers like Douglas Fir. There is bunch of wide jaw bawl by the coalition of traditional boat builders stating that Douglas Fir is actually mere firewood, and not suitable for boat building. Just ignore this, because those fellows do not acknowledge the fact that in stitch and glue method all the wood will be sealed with epoxy.

something is brewing

The dream… it all started brewing some five years ago. The initial impulse started with kind of uneasiness… I felt that it is time to change the boat type or sailing location. Later seemed unfeasible, so I started to look around for alternatives regarding the vessel i might continue sailing with. So far I had been fooling around only with monohulls, from Optimist and Laser dinghies up to keel yachts.

And as it happened to be there were one Hobie 14 for sale in Estonia. Back then it was only a half a dozen beach cats sailing around or just sitting in the back yards in Estonia.

So without much further ado I went for this particular Hobie 14 and fresh breeze began to  blow… There were aspects to rediscover and new things to learn. Beach cats can act like in the midway between dinghy and surf board. With Optimist I have had started sailing two decades back and reflexes – embedded since  – had to be reshaped.

So as I get the fun out of my little Hobie 14 called Fatu-Hiva, the phobia of multihulls – commonly wide spread amongst the sailors of Norhtern latitudes – started to fall back in my mind. I started to dig deeper into this world and discovered amongst others the Wharram designs. The sleek and dare lines of Tikis caught my eye. The combination of simplicity, seaworthiness and beauty converged in the designs imprinted themselves somewhere in the hidden corners of my consciousness.

And here Im as the opportunity window opened I bought building plans of the Wharram Tiki 21 catamaran.

And today is the day when I received those.

Will see how it goes… hard to put into words… its strange to hold in hand a folio of papers which ought to shape up into a boat that carries you over the waves some day…

fatu21