ROAR2 - Rebuild and Mod

A while back I wrote a quick blog entry about my intention to rebuild and modify my Roar2 rowboat. This was a result of two factors. Firstly, the boat was a few years old and there were a few areas of rot around the gunnels and some of the plywood. Secondly, and far more importantly, a great big sheet of ice fell off of my garage roof one winter and crushed a large portion of the boat! (Yes, in retrospect that wasn't the best place to store it...)

So, I decided that I would rebuild and make some modifications at the same time. I had originally planned on putting a cool window in the floor of the boat but I haven't gotten to that yet. You see, I recently purchased a sailboat and I needed a tender quickly so that I could get to it. Thus the window in the floor idea got side-burnered and I focused on just getting my roar2 floating again, with a seat, so that I could get to my new toy.

So, here's what I did to my roar2:

The first problem was that my gunnels were smashed to pieces and a what remained was fairly rotten. I also had some serious rot sections in the hull. So, I took off all of the gunnels and removed the sections of rot from the hull. I replaced that with new plywood and fibreglassed it in place with epoxy and fibreglass tape.

This picture is after the first coat of epoxy and before sanding. You'll see in the next picture that I did this in a few spots.

Next I started with the seat design/installation. I created cardboard templates to get the shape of the hull at the position that I wanted. In retrospect I wish I had saved my forms from when I built her because they would have been perfect for seat sides.

I cut out the basic shape of the seat sides from 3/8" plywood and wired them in place. Once they were secured and positioned properly I put some fibreglass tabs in place to hold it together while I build the rest.

Next I added a top to the seat. I used a piece of 10" laminated pine board for the top of the seat (because I had it).  I cut out a section of the top to use as a storage area. I used a thin blade when cutting out the whole so that I could re-use the cutout section as the seat and still have it fairly tight fitting.

I added a couple of pieces of pine board to the inside of the hole to keep the seat cover from falling through.

Once I had it assembled I fibreglassed inside and outside edges of the seat. to make it waterproof and very strong. It also has the nice affect of adding rigidity to the hull (which it kind of lacked before).

Once the seat was completed I redid the gunnels using 1x1 cedar. I had used spruce before but decided on cedar this time because the stock at the lumber yard looked much better than the spruce.


Since I'm using this as my tender (for now) I also took this opportunity to add a eye to the front of the boat for towing. I basically just took a 3" stainless steel U-Bolt, bent to to the shape of my bow, drilled holes through the bow and epoxied it in place. So far it has worked great. I've towed the boat for around 20km in fairly heavy waves and it has held fine.

This isn't a great picture of the inside of it finished (I'll have to take another and update) but it shows the basic look of the inside with the seat.

This is a swimmers-eye-view of the finished product. I've very happy with the restore. It looks great and it still rows really well. The Roar2 is definitely my favorite choice for rowboats ...so far.

As a tender the roar2 is a little long. I am in the planning stages of a shorter 8 foot tender. That will be my winter project for this year. Stay tuned...

ROAR2 - Mods

I'm in the midst of doing some modifications to my ROAR2. I had some repair word to do so I thought that I would add a few new touches at the same time.

As shown to the left, I'm adding a permanent seat at the rowing station as well as a "glass bottom".

Until now I've used a little wooden stool as a rowing seat. This worked OK but it wasn't very comfortable. By adding the permanent seat I'll get rid of some hassle and gain comfort (and storage!)

I saw a kayak recently with a glass bottom and I was inspired to add that at the same time. I have grand visions for how cool this is going to be. Hopefully it doesn't just turn into a leaky spot in my boat...

My seat is almost done and I will add pictures some time soon. It is a basic stitch and glue construction.

I just bought my lexan for the glass bottom today. Hopefully tonight I will get some time to start cutting out the spot for it. My plan is to do a simple frame for the glass to fit into and to fit a hinged cover over it to prevent scratching when not in use. We'll see how that plan actually materializes.

Stay tuned...

ROAR2

I thought that I should put a mention in here about a previous article that I wrote for Duckworks Magazine. The article documents my build of my ROAR2 rowboat, designed by  Jim Michalak 

I got a lot of positive feedback from the article. I'm currently doing some maintenance to the ROAR2 because of an ice incident last winter. I'll post on that once I take some pics but I'm basically rebuilding the gunnels, fixing some rot areas and installing permanent seats/storage areas.