This one was early on a cool morning last week. Nice morning…

Here is the bad girl going into Hermit. Pulled an oarlock about halfway through, but it didn't seem to matter much. Big wet ride--the water was pouring out over the gunwales at the…

To my utter amazement, I made it through Grand Canyon in the 48-inch-wide Edith upright. She's a wet and wild ride, but ballasting is a miraculous cure for a cranky little boat. Here is Granite Falls, one of the wilder rides, and one that I'd been dreading since the onset of the…

I just posted a few videos of the Edith—the Kolb boat I just finished—running the Big Drops in Cataract Canyon last week. That is one wet boat, but hard to pivot! 

I haven't found the way to downsize these for the web without losing  lot of clarity. Oh well. Check 'em out at:

www.fretwaterlines.blogspot.com

I head to Lee's Ferry with Edith in the morning for a Grand Canyon run.…

Edith had her debutante party today. She's way fast, and very easy to right. Let's hope I get to do lots of the former and not too much of the latter.

Here's a video:

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Other than putting her name on her bow, Edith is pretty much done as of midnight tonight. Although there are a few days of tinkering and accessorizing left, Edith really came together this afternoon/evening. Pretty exciting. I'll fiddle around with her tomorrow and Sunday we will take her out to the lake for the big experiment. Does she really float? Will she stay right-side-up? I'll let you know. Anyhow, here she is. Lots more pictures and stories at…

I screwed Edith's decks on today. She really looks a lot like old Julius, with one big difference: a foot-and-a-half longer and nearly a foot narrower. Hugely significant numbers. It makes me realize how much Holmstrom was looking at the Galloway boats for inspiration and the Oregon boats for common sense and stability. Buzz really was a genius.

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Here is a quandary I just posted on my blog (fretwaterlines.blogspot.com)

Ten years ago when we built the Julius, a replica of Buzz Holmstrom's beautiful, home-built 1937 expedition boat, Roger Fletcher and I ran into some serious design issues. As it turned out we had been trying to reconcile two set of photographs of the original boat, and the second set, I finally realized, had been taken after a subsequent owner had sawed two feet off the stern. Little wonder that our hull…

Well, after a few well-deserved setbacks, we riveted the final strake onto the Edith yesterday, and will roll her right-side up in an hour or two. She sure is cute--I fear all the boy boats will be hitting relentlessly on her. Here are a couple shots. Lots more on fretwaterlines.blogspot.com

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I finally quit dorking around and got the strongback pretty much together for the Kolb boat. This will be the first true Galloway boat built since the early 1930s I think. Buzz Holmstrom built his modified Galloway in 1937, which we replicated in 2001. Although the lines and construction were similar to a Galloway, Holmstrom's Julius F. was a foot shorter, a foot wider, built of better wood, and was all-in-all a far superior boat according to contemporary river runners. As I walk around the…

Although I will continue to post entries here that are particularly pertinent to wooden boatfolk, I have finally started a blog for myself that will include not only the progress on Edith, but other ramblings as well that do not need to clutter up the Wooden Boat People pages. If you get a hankering for more details and tangents, look here:

http://fretwaterlines.blogspot.com/…

Well, I'm committed. Or should be. Just received the first half of the lumber for a replica of Emery Kolb's EDITH, which was built 100 years ago this coming summer. The EDITH and its twin, DEFIANCE, rowed by brother Ellsworth, were built out of white cedar planking with white oak framework in Racine, Wisconsin. Brass screws, copper riveted lapstrake. My favorite style of building. The brothers launched in September in Green River, Wyoming, and followed Major Powell's route down the Green and…