“Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” – Richard Cushing
When I discovered a one eighth scale model of the Northeaster Dory existed, I didn’t need much convincing before securing the purchase. While we bore anyone who’ll listen with adages pertaining to prior preparation and planning, I think we all know the opportunity to revisit our childhood and love for building scale models wasn’t something I could easily pass up.
As it happens, building a scale model of the boat we had set about to build wasn’t such a bad idea at all.
The construction of the model Dory largely follows the same process as the actual boat build itself. The advantages of having assembled this lovely (some might say ‘cute’) specimen were recognised early. When the wood and other material were delivered, it allowed me to quickly identify the puzzle of components without looking as puzzled as Reece. (Those confused looks were saved for the ‘epoxy’ incident. See Boat Build – Day 3).
Following a failed attempt to dye the white sail material (that accompanied the kit) and many a spent hour trying to iron out the creases – I eventually shelved the idea of redeeming it from the ashes and managed to source some cut-offs from a sail shop proximal to our North Fremantle sanctuary. The effort overall was well worth it – and has pretty much matched the imagined colour scheme of dublduck, inclusive of the ‘tanbark’ sails.
With aesthetics in mind, the process of attaching the main sail to the mast and boom was a solution which we found to be far more intrinsic than we’d hoped for, pretty much requiring the hands of a surgeon. Unperturbed and uttering many a curse word under our breath, we arrived triumphant in victory and the skirmish with both needle & thread was finally over.
So here you have it. The scaled down version of dublduck.
