Introduction:

Her name means "Great Music" and she is my father's boat. Built by my Dad (Ross Faneuf) over the course of 21 years and launched in 2000, Ceol Mor is one of the major reasons why I build boats myself. Growing up in the shop, handing screws to Ross, and "helping" with all the many tasks involved gave me a great love for the boatbuilding process.

Photo: Virginia L Thorndike (click to enlarge)

Ceol Mor is 36 feet long, designed as a performance cruiser with a cutter rig. She is built of mahogany strip planks over laminated mahogany frames, followed by three layers of veneer and two of cloth. This is where the term "Faneuf-built" had its origins. We used to joke that if she hit a ledge, she'd bounce right off. But that's a different story. Though she's rigged as a cutter, most of my experience sailing aboard has been with the main and genoa. And that was plenty exciting for my blood. She has a fin keel and a skeg-hung rudder, and draws 7 feet ( ! ) of water.

Ceol Mor is a testament to craftsmanship, dedication and love. She currently sails out of Rockland, Maine.

Many, many pictures exist of her building. Unfortunately, I don't have many of them, as they are the non-digital kind. I do have a bunch of pictures from the frenzy of launch week, as well as a few random others.

Ceol Mor Launching
August, 2000

"Yes! Yes!" - Ross Faneuf
Ceol Mor finally meets the Atlantic

I have oodles and oodles of pictures of the nutty week before launch. However, I don't have space for them at this website. For now, to see everything you'll have to head over to my Ceol Mor Imagestation gallery. They require you to sign in, but I have never had any problems or spam from them.

Here we go

The week before Ceol Mor's launch was, well... insane. from final fitting-out to paint to electrical installation, a small army of friends, family, and professionals descended upon CM in a frenzy of activity. At first we were fairly sane about things like bedtime (except Ross - but The Driven Builder doesn't count on that measure), but towards the end all semblance of normality evaporated. And that's measuring 'normality' by the standards of my family, which are pretty weird to begin with.

One of many trips to Hamilton Marine in Searsport. I'm sure they know Ross by first name.

5 Days till Launch At T Minus 5 days, CM has a coat of primer on, lots of stuff masked off, and all the needed tasks lined up. "This won't be THAT bad," I think. Ho ho ho.

4 Days till Launch Mask, paint, unmask. Sand, Clean, Mask. Paint, varnish, unmask. Sand. Clean. Paint. Clean. Install Fittings. Mask. Remove fittings. Unmask. Mask. Sand. Clean. Put your left foot in, and shake it all about.

3 Days till Launch This is one of the days where I didn't take many pictures, because I was welded to a paint tipping brush. We did the topsides this day. It involved hand sanding, taking, etc etc, then 2 teams wielding rollers and brushes, rolling and tipping the 2-part epoxy paint. Bleh. I only took a couple pictures, those of the bottom antifouling paint, which went on last - late at night - so the toxic nastiness would be dispersed by morning. We hoped.

2 Days till Launch Now we un-mask everything, and start putting in fittings. Since the fittings are bedded in nasty goop, we mask around the fitting locations to protect the paint and varnish. We joke about investing in 3M. The mast gets trundled into the driveway and rigging started.

Launch Tomorrow!!! This was the day we got way more done than possible. The Genoa track got installed. The umpteen gazillion bolts for this had to be variously bedded through the toerail to the area behind the sheer clamp. Many pieces of threaded rod with couplers were cut and fitted so the track screws would bed down. Then an unholy wrestling match commenced to bend the track into place. Nope, no action shots from me.

Finally at 4 AM the last touch: Installing the tiller. No project is complete without some minor catastrophe: The rudder axle fell into the lazarette and lodged next to the keel, a good 4 feet down. Of course, it's bronze so a magnet can't retrieve it and Ross has to dive for it. But all's done in the end. Those of us non-insane people (i.e. Not Ross) try to get some sleep before the boat truck arrives in the morning.

Fair winds and happy sailing to Ceol Mor, and all my love to Daddy.