Steve Horswell
Member
For your continued reading pleasure. From time to time I will post additional misadventures...SRH
Tales of the Old Crony---Boat in the Basement
For several years, other things prevented me from working on it as much as I liked. Silly things like work, family, and home. Finally, however, it was complete in all but one detail---how to get the boat out of the basement. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The idea for building the boat was launched several years earlier while reading Zach Taylor’s “Successful Waterfowling”. Pages 100-101 included plans to build the Widgeon, a 12 foot plywood sneak boat. Although I had several other duck boats, the Widgeon would be the perfect complement to my growing fleet that included a Devlin stitch-and-glue 16 foot Black Brant 1, a Busick trace-and-cut Lake Erie layout boat, and a 12 foot Humburg “pumpkinseed”.
Finding a place to build the boat presented a minor problem though. My wife is very tolerant of my hunting and fishing foibles but she does have her limits. Her reluctance to park her car outside for several months precluded using the garage. That and a lack of a heated shop elsewhere left me with one location---our unfinished basement. Fortunately, during an earlier home re-construction project, we had installed a door and steps leading from the basement into the garage. I planned to build the boat during the winter in the relative warmth of the basement and use the stairs as a means to get the boat to daylight.
As I mentioned earlier, other things got in the way so the actual boat construction stretched to two winters. When it was time to let the boat see the light of day, I recruited The Cronies to help me. Despite the assistance of an accountant and an engineer, my efforts were confounded by geometry. It was obvious from the start that a 4 foot wide boat would not go through a 3 foot door. Although we overcame that by carrying the boat on edge, the gods of geometry were far from finished.
We soon discovered that the bow of the boat would not clear the top of the doorway prior to the stern contacting the floor. This necessitated turning the 12 foot long boat end-for-end in a 10 foot wide room. Although the natives were growing restless, I maintained my insistence to not scratch the Widgeon’s paint. At last we had the boat through the doorway and all that remained was to lift the boat 6 feet straight up. Fortunately, the boat only weighed about 100 pounds.
As I pulled the stern upward, the Cronies, with a great hue and cry, pushed the bow. After overcoming geometry, gravity, and grumbling, the Widgeon finally rested on its new trailer. And contrary to what the Cronies may say, it only took 2 hours to move the boat 30 feet.
View attachment zacktaylorwidgeon.jpg
To be continued…
© All rights reserved. Steven R Horswell 2016
Tales of the Old Crony---Boat in the Basement
For several years, other things prevented me from working on it as much as I liked. Silly things like work, family, and home. Finally, however, it was complete in all but one detail---how to get the boat out of the basement. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The idea for building the boat was launched several years earlier while reading Zach Taylor’s “Successful Waterfowling”. Pages 100-101 included plans to build the Widgeon, a 12 foot plywood sneak boat. Although I had several other duck boats, the Widgeon would be the perfect complement to my growing fleet that included a Devlin stitch-and-glue 16 foot Black Brant 1, a Busick trace-and-cut Lake Erie layout boat, and a 12 foot Humburg “pumpkinseed”.
Finding a place to build the boat presented a minor problem though. My wife is very tolerant of my hunting and fishing foibles but she does have her limits. Her reluctance to park her car outside for several months precluded using the garage. That and a lack of a heated shop elsewhere left me with one location---our unfinished basement. Fortunately, during an earlier home re-construction project, we had installed a door and steps leading from the basement into the garage. I planned to build the boat during the winter in the relative warmth of the basement and use the stairs as a means to get the boat to daylight.
As I mentioned earlier, other things got in the way so the actual boat construction stretched to two winters. When it was time to let the boat see the light of day, I recruited The Cronies to help me. Despite the assistance of an accountant and an engineer, my efforts were confounded by geometry. It was obvious from the start that a 4 foot wide boat would not go through a 3 foot door. Although we overcame that by carrying the boat on edge, the gods of geometry were far from finished.
We soon discovered that the bow of the boat would not clear the top of the doorway prior to the stern contacting the floor. This necessitated turning the 12 foot long boat end-for-end in a 10 foot wide room. Although the natives were growing restless, I maintained my insistence to not scratch the Widgeon’s paint. At last we had the boat through the doorway and all that remained was to lift the boat 6 feet straight up. Fortunately, the boat only weighed about 100 pounds.
As I pulled the stern upward, the Cronies, with a great hue and cry, pushed the bow. After overcoming geometry, gravity, and grumbling, the Widgeon finally rested on its new trailer. And contrary to what the Cronies may say, it only took 2 hours to move the boat 30 feet.
View attachment zacktaylorwidgeon.jpg
To be continued…
© All rights reserved. Steven R Horswell 2016
