A Little Help From the Masters - Episode 190 - Acorn to Arabella: Journey of a Wooden Boat

“Before the snow flies,” is a busy time around a farm, and this year it involves improvements to the shed, fixing Akiva’s platform, and doing a few other labor-intensive tasks for which we had a passionate group of volunteers to help with. Thank you very much to Noah, Bill, Thomas, Adam, Paul, Jerome, Randy, and Bill for your time, talent, and effort!

Steve approached this project knowing a fair bit about woodworking, while respecting the fact that he needed to learn some specific skills for boatbuilding. He’s consulted all sorts of people along the way with deep and varied experience in boat building and wooden boat restoration in order to get that knowledge.

When it comes to sails and rigging, the same is true, and in this video we take you along with us to talk to a few pros. Only a small bit of our conversations are here, as there were long pauses for contemplation or for our friends to study the plans as they spoke.

Joe Mello, the pro-rigger at R&W Rope https://rwrope.com/ walked through Arabella’s rig with Steve, and we got a little closer to knowing what we’re going to do with some spots on the boat where there are options that would require tweaks in the design. Here’s a little more about Joe: https://www.tradeonlytoday.com/industry-news/rw-rope-acquires-rigging-solutions-llc

Here’s more about Captain Bob Glover, who’s sitting all the way to the left in the R&W Rope segment: https://rwrope.com/blogs/news/meet-captain-robert-c-glover-iii

Harold Burnham is an absolute legend. Boat designer, builder, sailor… and as it turns out, a wise mentor. “I’m not going to tell you how to do it, I’ll tell you the way I do it, and I hope it wouldn’t imply that it’s the right way to do it,” he says. He’s built his own sails, and is encouraging us to do the same, so we went to see a bit of how he went about making sails for his boat, and to get advice about what we can glean or change from the plans.

Please visit Harold’s website to learn more about his boat, Ardellle, and about schooner Sylvina W. Beal. https://schoonerardelle.com/

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Acorn to Arabella is a boat building project taking place in Granby, Massachusetts. Steve and Alix started as amateur boat builders building a 38′ wooden boat in Steve’s backyard: designer William Atkin’s Ingrid with a Stormy Petrel’s gaff rig. These videos follow the journey from tree felling, to lumber milling, to lofting, to the lead keel pour and beyond—sharing details of the woodworking, carpentry, metal smithing, tool building, and tool maintenance that wooden boats command. This ultimate DIY project will continue well past launch, when they will travel and learn to cruise aboard the boat that they’ve built. Just kidding about all that, this channel is about a Siberian Laika named Akiva.

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