Presentation Shelf for Gaffers' Race Trophies

It is very unlike me but I neglected to get a finished photo of this one before I delivered it. ...... Oops!

Every spring I participate in the annual Frank Fredette Memorial Gaffers’ Race held until recently in Sidney BC. Two years ago the race moved to my home Cowichan Bay and I became the organizer.

One of the advantages of this move was the involvement of the Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre. The centre hosts us supplying dock space, gathering space, shore support, and lastly a place to display the race trophies that have never really had a home. .... and this is a forty year old race.

The upshot was that I was collared to build a shelf to display these treasures. I agreed but of course insisted that I be allowed a little marquetry. My design involves simple silhouettes of boats carrying six different gaff rigs arranged in the spaces of a sort of pinrail motif. The shelf itself is a piece of teak and holy cabin sole plywood that I had around.

The part that I didn’t get a good photo of is the shelf trim. It is done as if it were a table on board a boat with teak fiddle rails and cleanout corners.

The fourth and fifth photos show the shelf installed in the library of the centre in Cowichan Bay. The last one is my “Friendship” in an epic battle at the finish line of the stormy 2010 race.