We have a little extra help in the shop today.  Elisa's mother, Marita Schine, has come to visit Elisa for a few days  so she has joined us in the shop to help with the Camp Darrow canoe.  Marita was the first female  trip staff member ever hired by Camp Darrow and of course she was a prime mover to help motivate the camp to switch from a all male camp to a coed camp. Now all her children have attended the camp and Elisa had been on staff for four or five years and will be guiding their 6 week Labrador Canada canoe trip.  This canoe was one of the original canoes used by the camp which was built by the camps founder, John Houlton.  The Schine family has a lot of emotional connection with the canoe which make working on the canoe that much more rewarding.
In the picture they are removeing the tacks from some of the broken ribs and latter they will be steam bending the replacement ribs over the outside of the hull. There is a lot of hull damage so this set of ribs will only be the first set of ribs that we will be replacing.  We can not replace them all at once or the hull would just fall apart!  After this first set of ribs I'll do some bracing on the hull to try to pull the hull into a better shape before the second set of ribs are installed.