Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jackie Stewart, Winston Churchill: pre-war British yacht’s storied past comes back to life in Japan, cigar burn included

Cynara, gaff-rigged schooner, launched 1927
In Japanese waters. Click screenshot to go to article

I'm very interested in wooden boat building and restoration.
I built a small one myself in the backyard a few years back. These days I follow a couple of boat-building and restoration sites: Mark Reuten’s 2.4mR project and Leo’s rebuild of Tally Ho are favourites. Also Bob Emser building a Haven 12.5 which is the carvel version of the lapstrake Somes Sound 12.5 I built. I pay them monthly contributions because they produce excellent videos that take time and effort and cost them time and money. They give me pleasure and teach me. That’s worth supporting to the tune of a couple of glasses of wine per month… (Patreon is the go).
Here I'm book-marking a lovely story in today's SCMP about the 6-year restoration of a famous wooden boat that ended up in Japan: the gaff-rigged schooner that ended up as Cynara, nearly as scrap ina Japanese marina. Fantastic that their owners committed so much to the rebuild. 

I wish I'd known; I could've popped over to Japan and offered my humble hands. Sigh…

Watching Wood

Click to go to video. 2+ hours. No commentary 

These days I prefer to watch wood being turned into stuff. (Rather than politics stuffing stuff).

Like the one above, by a young Swedish man, Erik Grinkvist. He built his own log cabin, by hand, using only hand tools. Carefully choosing only older spruce trees, planting saplings to replace those he took, using only hand saws and axes and hatchets and adzes and augurs and chisels and log gouges and spokeshaves… hauling logs by hand… well, look at the video. It’s moving, what this determined young man does. And relaxing, too.

Other wood stuff I like looking at: making fine furniture from scrap wood, like old pallets, making guitars (I’ve made three and a mandolin), wood splitters, turning logs into lumber, building wooden houses and barns.

I got led to a tour of Richard Proenneke’s log cabin in Alaska. He was a famous naturalist…unknown to me until my wood-wind tour. This is a good one.

Who would have thought 8 million people would watch a guy cutting lumber?

I was watching this, having got caught up in a wooden groove. I built a wooden boat a few years ago, have built a few electric guitars and other bits and pieces out of wood, and so I’m a bit of a wood aficionado. So... wood. And got caught in the byways of the internet, as one does.

I was enjoying the series by the guy above, Fall Line Ridge, found it very relaxing to watch a guy ripping planks from a fine bit of fallen Red Cedar. I wondered how many might have watched it, thinking maybe 50k or so, but was staggered to find it’s over 8 million. I’m gonna bet pretty much all of them are guys. Not being sexist here, but don’t imagine too many women finding solace in milling lumber.  

Click on screenshot above, or else link is here. (For some reason the new version of Blogger doesn’t embed videos, at least for me)