Construction Tips and Hints
In all it was a very pleasurable experience for both me and my wife Barbara. I had some experience with mechanical bits having been a go-kart mechanic for my daughter's racing career and having rebuilt an aging Triumph motorcyle. But I was no carpenter, and Barbara had never as much as lifted a hammer except perhaps to lower a picture hanger. Yet we enjoyed the building experience for the year that we spent and we benefit a great deal in knowing how the boat works.
The pages are now in place and while we could add more it would appear that this is a lot of detail for most would-be bargers. We took lots of pictures of our progress so, while we do not intend to provide a step by step manual, we should have enough material to be of interest to those who would follow.
Everybody builds a barge differently. Our intent in detailing our approach is to provide an idea of the level of difficulty so that those that would follow in our footsteps will feel comfortable in taking on the challenge. I recall that before we started one broker that was trying to sell an unfinished hull cautioned us not to look at it unless we were extremely "handy". We didn't, but in hindsight it is not a task beyond the average weekend Do It Yourself hacker, and we could have - but it wasn't as nice a hull so I'm glad we didn't.
Have fun - it is the best retirement you can have!