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About Us
Hi - we're Mark and Shawn, extreme apprentice boat builders, based in Petaluma, California, which, for the uninititiated, is a town about 35 miles north of San Francisco, at the edge of the Sonoma county wine country. As with many things, after a few beers, it seemed like a good idea to build a boat and the Mirror dinghy project was born. Before you know it, an order had been placed, once again proving a mix of nostalgia, alcohol, and the internet is a bad idea. All that aside, and probably against his better judgement, Lorne Bellamy, of Mirror Sailing Development, was kind enough to build us a kit, which arrived in early December 2006.
Now here's the interesting thing, while Shawn knows what he's doing as far as boats go, Mark's got no idea and has steadfastly resisted any interest in anything vaguely nautical. It's odd what Dempsey's (http://www.dempseys.com/) fine microbrews are capable of - perhaps a testament to the quality of their fine adult beverages, so here's a free plug for them. The food's good too. Go there if you come here. | Before we got started Picking up the kit was an odd experience. We took Shawn's old truck across to San Francisco International Airport (5 MPG tops..) to pick up the crates from a shipping company that seemed on permanent break. Finally got it but not before being made to hang around for over an hour for no good reason. All I can say is it's a good job the kit was crated well given the quality of shipping care.
As to the latter crating, this adds about 100lbs to the kit so lugging it up the hill to the workshop was a bit of a challenge. Luckily nobody died, though it was touch and go for a while, and we got it to the workshop eventually. Nobody even lost an eye. 
Below the old workshop gets overhead plug-in fluorescents that make quite a difference. Ah, good old steel conduit and boxes... 
Basically, after having a new power circuit installed, we ran conduit, boxes, and outlets throughout, with several in the ceiling for lights and power. Having an 'above you' power supply is actually handy if you're working around something like a boat as you get less tangled.. | And then there was the workshop After the initial bravado of buying the kit and declaring it would be built in one of our garages, we both decided against incurring the wrath of wives, especially given the amount of epoxy needed to build these things.
So, on to the old workshop in Oakland which needed a serious cleanout, wiring for electricity, lights and a few windows. It looks pretty good for something built in the 1920's and will serve the purpose very well.
As an added bonus, the wives are happy that not only is there no epoxy, but they get rid of us for decent periods of time.
And below, in comes the power for the workshop, which makes everything possible. 
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