boat dreaming

[Sam Jones]

Ed Claxton, Some Ghettoites might remember Ed's brother Mike Claxton, a
musician that did something with Gilbert. Ed's quite a character, type his
name into Google and you will get a couple of pages on his guitar and boat
building exploits. We shared a shop here for three or four years making
guitars and banjos until Ed got the serious boatbuilding bug and a
girlfriend, traded out my interest in the Titmouse and took it to Galveston
where it was sold to someone working with him on the Elyssa.  

Sam in Austin

-----Original Message-----
From: austin-ghetto-list-bounces at pairlist.net
[mailto:austin-ghetto-list-bounces at pairlist.net] On Behalf Of Michael
Eisenstadt
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 3:13 PM
To: survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 60s
Subject: Re: boat dreaming

Sam,

Thanks for the info. It must have been some other titmouse
built here in Austin.

You lucked out by not having to build the mast. Spruce
is not easy to come by. It turned there was a lumber yard
in San Antonio catering to airplane builders which had
spruce 2 by 4s. As for gluing it up, I had to borrow clamps
from a number of carpenters. There must have been close
to 50 clamps used.

And you lucked out not having to buy all the hardware
or the sails.

What happened to the boat? And who was Ed your
co-builder?

Mike

Subject: RE: boat dreaming


> Can't remember if it was you or not, Mike. Probably not, Our boat sailed
> just fine to windward and we didn't haul it back and forth to the coast. 
> We
> sailed on Town Lake and Travis a few times then it went to the coast and 
> it
> stayed there. We rejected the cuddy in the design and curved the forward
> coaming, a la Winslow Homer's "Breezing Up". The foredeck and short
> afterdeck was mahogany with a white oak king plank. Hull planking was
> western red cedar. We spent four days culling out knot free boards in two
> lumber yards to get enough. The nicest thing that happened was this 
> stranger
> that stopped by and gave us the spruce mast, boom, a set of useable sails
> and most of the hardware. His father had wrecked his boat and the parts 
> were
> stored in his barn and he didn't want them to go to waste. Wasn't that a
> nice thing for him to do? We sure appreciated it since we didn't have 
> enough
> clamps to lay up a mast or boom.
>
> Sam in Austin
>