Conclusion of our series on the building of MOUSE , a lapstrake gunter yawl (14’ on deck, 22’ overall including bowsprit and boomkin, with a generous beam of 6’ 6.”
Bronze oarlocks and pads, bolted onto the cockpit coaming. Leathering the 10.5’ spruce oars, which were cut in half and joined via carbon-fiber ferrules from Duckworks Boat Builders Supply. In photo at right, oar handles in a wooden nest I shaped…shown before final painting and installation. A pre-build illustration we commissioned, showing the sail plan for MOUSE, along with centerboard and rudder design. (I didn’t follow this early illustration exactly, eliminating the rise shown in the cockpit coaming…an idea inspired by Pete Culler’s brilliant Concordia Sloop Boat. When making patterns for MOUSE’s cockpit coamings, I discovered my already-milled Sapele planks weren’t quite wide enough—considering swoop of the MOUSE coamings—to go with the raised forward section…so my coamings became the same height off deck from one end to the other.) You never know where a small side project will take you. I needed wooden jaws for the mainmast yard, since the mainsail would be hoisted like a gaffer, but with the yard going nearly vertical. So, for strength, I found a block of white oak the right size, drilled a hole down through it matching diameter of the yard, then split the block down the middle on the tablesaw, and bolted the sides through the yard and shaped the sandwich—including mahogany-plywood jaws I’d cut and radiused—into final shape. The spars were all painted a dark brown, to suggest something that might have come from the late 1800’s. Simple mahogany jaws for the mizzen boom.