Wealth Skill: Leadership (Grandmaster)
23 Ashan 721
"Mind your thumbs, I can't tell you how many times I've hit myself with a hammer building things around Haven." Balthazar said in an oddly pleasant voice to one of the workers who'd decided to help out a little bit with the project they were working on. They were out by the beach, a good distance from the clam farm but it was still in view. They did not have an endless stretch of coastline before they ran into the Badlands but they had a decent amount. What they did not have, and what they were working on now, was a dock for the beach so that ships could come in. Without a dock they were limited to individual visitors, no large groups- only those who could make it in a rowboat from a point off the coast. Building a dock would open them up to more trade and hopefully allow them to maximize the connections they'd already made in their isolated sanctuary. It would give the Academy easier access to the research station they were renting and it would allow for easier trade between Haven and those they communicated with... but that would require a bigger dock than what they could build. They were making a dock, maybe a set of docks, not a complete port.
Balthazar wanted to get started on the twenty second but discovered none of them knew how to build a dock from the ground up, even with the materials they had. The group working on the dock were the same competent builders who'd worked on the housing which was where the bulk of their knowledge rested. The farmers, fishers, and other people of Haven with less categorical professions weren't much help in regards to the building but by now Balthazar was familiar with this particular unit of Haven's population. He'd aided them before while they worked on housing, and even constructed a windbreak with under the guide of one of them. They were not perfect builders, but Balthazar inspired them all to do the most they could with the little knowledge they had.
Balthazar didn't think a dock was very different than a house so they spent the first trial trying to come up with a plan to build the dock. The immediate issue and key difference between building a dock and building a house was the presence of a foundation. A dock sat over the water and had to be large enough to allow for ships to come in but also strong enough to support the weight of people and shipments moving across it. They had the wood they needed and so Balthazar's first plan was to assemble what would be the actual dock. Wooden two by four planks were nailed together in a loose frame first and the other boards were measured and cut to length, then laid over the frame and nailed down into place.
The process, at least in this stage, was not much different than building a prefabricated wall for a house. Balthazar thought of it like building the wall of one of the houses and in practice it was not very different. They nailed wooden boards together and put them up. However walls were not built to be walked over so they'd put a few more lines to support it in the middle of the dock's frame. They build roughly five different lengths of wooden panels that they estimated would be able to create a dock big enough for decently sized ship. It was then that they were forced to confront the issue lingering ahead of them. How did you build over the water? That puzzled them for a few breaks and during that time the work crew came up with many different, and some completely useless ideas. The solution was much simpler than Balthazar expected and was suggested to him by one of the settlers taking his lunch break. "Why not just plant posts and nail it to the posts?"
A simple question and a simple solution. Balthazar had the team go retrieve some four by four wooden planks and they spent a break shaving the ends down to a point using various blades drawn from Balthazar's bag. The thought behind making them sharper on one end was that it would allow them to drive the plank deeper into the beach. However while they were shaving down the planks another good question was presented. "How are we going to get the dock to stick to this?" Initially Balthazar thought the solution might rest in using larger nails but they did not have nails large enough that they could be driven through a four by four and support the dock pieces well. They were going to need some sort of fastener to hold the docks to the posts but without an expert blacksmith to produce them quickly, Balthazar turned back to the wood. They didn't have the worlds greatest wood workers in Haven either so progress was slowed even further, but they had plenty large pieces left over from cutting and trimming to work with. They began looking for pieces large enough to cut grooves into so that he could lock it in place around the post, then have it nailed down to keep the dock up.
It set them back a little because they were not prepared for the need. They shifted all their focus to measuring a cutting which took them the rest of the work trial on the twenty third. Balthazar left them with instructions about half way through the new project so he could go check on the rest of the settlement. He was one man but he was always doing many things. The first place he'd go was the Ashwoods so he could look in on the logging operation. They'd just about cleaned the stores out to get wood for the docks but with everyone working, they'd have more in no time... figuratively. It would take a few trials and that was a little irritating but they'd get it done. They had enough to get through the project but they would have to work a little slower so they didn't strip the Ashwoods. The trees they planted would take time to grow back.