The Nauticapedia

Site Navigation:

• Searchable Databases

  • Biography (People) Search
  • Vessel (Ship) Search

• Articles Archive

  • Pacific Nautical Heritage...

    • Vessels & Ships
    • Marine Industry
    • Nautical & Maritime Heritage
  • Gallery of Light and Buoy Images
  • Gallery of Mariners
  • Gallery of Ship Images
  • Gallery of Ship Wrecks
  • Gallery of Monuments and Statues
  • Gallery of Nautical Images
  • Gallery of Freshwater Images
  • Gallery of New Books

  • Canadian Naval Topics…

    • Reserves
    • Admirals
    • Vessels
    • Interesting Topics
    • World War II
  • Nautical History Videos
  • UNTD
  • British Columbia Heritage
  • Arctic and Northern Nautical Heritage
  • Western Canada Boat and Ship Builders
  • Gallery of Arctic Images
  • Reflections on Nautical Heritage
  • British Columbia Heritage

Site Search:

Looking for more? Search for Articles on the Nauticapedia Site.

Restoring a Lake Cowichan–style Boat

by Santino Marazzo 2018

The Lake Cowichan Boat I call the ‘Spray new’ (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

I own a ‘Lake Cowichan Boat’ a boat designed for use on Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island. I have owned the boat since 2001 and I bought it from a local owner who said that it was built in 1947. It had not previously been licenced and was described as ‘home–built’. I decided to restore the boat to a ‘like new’ condition in my shop.

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

Detail of the boat (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

All the bright work is now finished, including the fore deck. (Photo from the Santino Marazzo collection.)

The weather is looking good for the next few days so I will start putting the bottom coat of paint on the inside of the hall – two undercoats and two top coats, all by brush.

To quote from this article please cite:

Marazzzo, Santino (2018) Restoring a Lake Cowichan‐Style Boat.
Nauticapedia.ca 2018. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Lake_Cowichan_Boat.php

Site News: February 12, 2025

ANOTHER MILESTONE REACHED

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 95,146 vessel histories (with 16,409 images and 14,064 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).

The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 4000 images).

My thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of the vessel histories in the vessel database. Ray has been documenting the ships of Vancouver Harbour for more than 60 years.

Thanks to contributor Mike Rydqvist McCammon for the hundreds of photos he continues to contribute to illustrate British Columbia’s floating heritage.

My very special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

Thanks to John Spivey who is beginning his 4th year of fact checking all of the entries in the vessel database.

---