No posts for eight months and suddenly two in a few days!!! The family and I just returned from two days down at the Geelong wooden Boat Festival and it was a lot of fun.

I had always promised myself and readers of this blog that I would post my experiences sailing the Vikki Bee my Stir Ven. I know those of you considering building this boat not only want to know what’s it like to build one, but more importantly what’s it like to sail! Has it met all my expectations etc etc.

On a beautiful winter’s day on Port Phillip bay the Vikki Bee was launched. It was a huge success! Here are some photos and videos of this momentous occasion.

Two years and nine months since I first recieved my plans from François my Stir Ven is finished! Well as finished as these things ever really are. And yes all of a sudden there were no more lists of tasks to do, except the most important one the launch.

How long is this thing gonna take!

Well that is the current statement I’m most commonly faced with by my ever patient family and friends at the moment. For those of you who have been following my blog for a while you’re probably asking the same questions!

No more building jig! This weekend the boat was lifted off the building jig and onto the trailer. In a weird way this almost felt like a launch, or maybe a lift off…

Struggling to put interesting posts together at the moment, not because I’ve been doing nothing, but the somethings I have been doing don’t make for exciting reporting or viewing – in my opinion!

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been… I’ve been painting, painting and I’m… still painting! It’s a bit hard to muster up any interesting progress pics for the blog during this process, but I’m going to torture you with a few anyway.

I had been wondering how to mill and shape the toe rails for some time. In profile they are a trapezoid shape and I wasn’t sure how to cut or plane the tapers into the sides. My Triton is not meant to allow the saw blade to be tilted on an angle, but as the angle wasnt severe I did it anyway and all worked a treat.

Motivation is high at the moment and I’ve made some good progress recently, maybe because the end of the construction phase is fast approaching or because the family is excited about the boat and have begun planning our next summers sailing adventures to Rottnest Island of the WA coast!