My now deceased Pirogue - "Boueux"

In a post from February of 2011, I was trying to decide whether to build a pirogue to fish from or a kayak for longer touring.  By the end of August of 2012, I'd made up my mind and started a pirogue, to be named "Boueux", which means muddy in French and sounds kinda like "Boo".  Here's the one photo I remembered to take:

The plan was for a 14-1/2 foot long, 24 inch beam boat.

I got the main body glued up and to the point of glassing it when my mom had her stroke.  That put my weekends on hold, so the boat sat under plastic in the yard all winter and most of the spring.

This past summer, I started sanding and fairing.  The boat building instructor at the Apalachicola Maritime Museum convinced me that I didn't need to glass it, especially since I hadn't used marine ply.

I sanded and sealed, puttied and faired, and had her looking pretty good:



This photo is 'done', just before painting the gunwales and inside of the hull.  I'd finally gotten it dried in, fully painted, and was ready for a weekend trial when we had a couple of weeks of non-stop rain, then three days of unusually hot sun.

Well, the laminations in the plywood couldn't handle that.  They decided to blow out the bottom.

Guess I will paddle my kayaks after all.  Lesson learned:  If you're going to be a shade tree boat builder, get the wood soaked with epoxy or whatever finish as early as possible, OR...get a workshop.

I think I'll name my Tarpon 160i "Boueux Deux"