When I was a kid I liked to make models. There was a store in town next to the IGA Grocery called Cressy’s. My mother called it the five-and-dime. It turns out Wikipedia has a definition for five-and-dime so apparently it’s a real term. Cressy’s was too far from our house so I wasn’t allowed to walk there on my own but sometimes, if I made enough of a nuisance of myself in the IGA when my mother was busy shopping for groceries, she’d kick me out of the store and send me across to Cressy’s.

I remember thinking the place was huge, but I drove through that town again not too long ago and nothing there was huge. Before going back I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that our favorite sledding spot, Baker Adams’ hill, was taller than Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, and that Sam Walton got the idea from Cressy. So I guess I was pretty little. In spite of all that time I spent in Cressy’s, all I really remember about the inside of the place was the carousel style Matchbox car display case and the shelves full of Revell models. They must have sold other stuff in there, but I was all set with the match box cars and the models.





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Vintageyachtingclub.com

I’m new to the world of wooden boat building, so when I started in the office at Rockport Marine I set my sights on knowing the ins and outs of the boats that we are working on. I wanted to figure out what makes them special and be able to answer questions at the drop of a hat.

I decided to start with the EAGLE a Trumpy yacht constructed in the early 60’s and once known as MON AMIE. The Trumpy came to us for repair because the plank seams had been rotted away and needed a half dozen floor timbers repaired. Jeff Morse, Project Manager, proceeded to have his crew remove the rotted areas and fill in the seams with Mahogany splines, which are small strips of wood that are inserted into notches in the center of a joint between two larger pieces of wood. The splines serve to stiffen the joint by preventing motion across the joint. After this was completed they began to fair the hull and paint which is still in progress now.
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