Guests drop in for dinner at the South Kupreanof Yacht Club–of which I’m Commodore so I must make a good impression.  Yet our headquarters is a bit shabby.  Time to rebuild!

First is the weathered front of the net shed.  This building is perhaps 100 years old and falling apart.  Fortunately, the pilings have been sistered and the building is stable to a point–only about 1-2 degrees out of whack.  I can deal with this.

First order of business is to order lumber and haul it to the construction site. We get our yellow cedar from Prince of Wales Island and barge it over to Petersburg, dump it in the saltchuck and haul it two miles down the Narrows to the yacht club.  Landed here, it costs less than $2 a board foot.  Here we are on the beach ready to start construction…..

Look at the Yacht Club interior!   Full of everything including boats.  Imagine!  The lumber on the right has been stickered all winter and is dry and ready for nailing up.  Just add a fire in the barrel stove, a cold beer and a good cigar and life is near perfect!

Time to knock off walls and get down to business…..  Great job on a rainy day.

Here I am half done with a new window even!

Tibo, aka Thibauld, from Provence France, a couch surfer, now our ‘nephew,’ aids me in removing panels.  Tibo is 6′ 6″ and strong as an ox and loves to work!  We replace a few beams below him–got to have good fung shui here.

Nearly done!  on the left is a new 6″ X 6″ beam for the kitty-corner (last year we replaced another beam).

Oh boy–nearly done and here I’ve also repositioned the horizontal beams and eliminated a lot of old repairs.  Battens will cover these gaps.

And this is the finished product–new doors and a ‘broken oar’ flagpole for the burgee which hangs in the window.  Time  for some pickled herring, a swig of beer and a dip of snoose.

The doors lock in the open position with the same locking brace–now that’s clever!

Now I fill the shed with boats–there are six in this photo.  Can you spot them?  The Yacht Club now boasts four canoes, one kayak, three wooden rowboats, two Norwegian faerings, three aluminum skiffs and the 73′ tug Katahdin.  Can’t have too many boats.

The next phase will be to build a stairs down to the beach at left–the beams stored on the grid await this purpose.  Behind, our Lund is up for the winter.  The trouble with fixing up the front of the shed, is that the rest of the shed looks terrible now so I’ve got to replace the whole perimeter…..then the floors…..then the roof.  It never ends!  Stay tuned.