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Restoring a Lake Cowichan–style Boat

by Santino Marazzo 2018

The Lake Cowichan Boat I call the ‘Spray new’ (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

I own a ‘Lake Cowichan Boat’ a boat designed for use on Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island. I have owned the boat since 2001 and I bought it from a local owner who said that it was built in 1947. It had not previously been licenced and was described as ‘home–built’. I decided to restore the boat to a ‘like new’ condition in my shop.

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

All the bright work is now finished, including the fore deck. (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

The weather is looking good for the next few days so I will start putting the bottom coat of paint on the inside of the hall – two undercoats and two top coats, all by brush.

To quote from this article please cite:

Marazzzo, Santino (2018) Restoring a Lake Cowichan‐Style Boat.
Nauticapedia.ca 2018. http://www.nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Lake_Cowichan_Boat.php

Site News: April 24, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,289 vessel histories (with 15,634 images and 13,293 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).

In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!

My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.

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