Lay Day
Gray low skies drop
Weekend rain, warmer
Than workday rain for
Construction trades,
Colder for desk trades.
It clings on the fall
To standing rigging,
Stainless cable tautly
Faithful, then rills
Down and down – what
Miniscule, complex
Currents hum in the
Descent along the
Spirals? – to spill
Across adamantine
Bronze and stainless
Fittings, flood the deck,
And exit scuppers,
Homecoming to the
Bay.
Abraxas fidgets at her
Docklines, nudges her
Pig-snout tough
Bumpers, pulls and
Relaxes forgiving
Nylon fibers, doing
Nothing more than
Enduring. Until
Her skipper arrives,
Unable to stay away
Too long, and clambers
Aboard, unbuttons her
Tenderly, enters.
Untouched rain-beaded
Sailcovers, untouched
Shroud still mourning the
Holy wheel and binnacle.
A lay day.
Nautical term: day
Without necessity to
Nose out through chop,
No gray heroics,
Weather-cancelled.
“It’s not dangerous
To sail,” the Prudent
Mariner insists,
“It’s dangerous to
Sail no matter what.”
So the skipper reminds
Himself that he could
Sail. He could. But
Prudence trumps
Possibility. And he
Lights the bulkhead
Stove to hiss and flame
Merrily behind its
Oven-glass firebox
Port, yellow dancing
Of diesel combustion
At a low order of
Utility but filling
The familiar saloon
With grateful warmth.
For projects, chores,
Repetitive, comforting
Checks, new catalogue
Schemes of stowage,
The dream of even
More miraculous
Software. Radar, GPS,
Sounder, chart display
Unawakened.
No sane, no bright,
Will grant kindness
To objects. Only
Romantics observe
That fidgeting has
Become rocking,
Enduring became
Protection, and
Abraxas could. It
Could. If the warmed
And occupied skipper
Breathed, thought,
Deemed an order.
Jan Adkins
6 March 2011
Novato, CA
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself is grateful to Chris Northcutt for buying a splendid 37' cutter and encouraging him to crew often. It's not the Bay he knows but it's sailing, and Chris is a skillful skipper who questions everything. This questioning fascinates and nourishes an adventure side for Himself. He needs that adventure quotient in his life or he gets stale and cranky.
Showing posts with label boating industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boating industry. Show all posts
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
BIG OCEAN
When we taped the promo sequence of our Childrens Public Broadcasting hopeful, "Ahoy Archimedes," I signed off with an antique sailing farewell, "Fair winds, a flowing tide, and following seas". This is a farewell in the original sense of “fare thee well.”
Fair winds are those blowing in the direction you’re bound. A “flowing tide” is the fortunate opposite of a “foul tide” (current against you). Following seas lift and seem to carry you – anyone who has tried to make headway in a “head sea” (waves opposing your course) knows what a buffeting, frantic, frustrating experience it can be.
The tide might seem a mega-force acting over enormous areas that has little application to tiny boats on its surface. At sea, yes. Onshore, it is to larf. When enormous areas of water attempt to empty from or fill up smaller areas of water, the resulting water pressure and consequent current can be shocking. Tidal bores in France and in China regularly set up six-foot to eight-foot walls of water moving at the speed of a bus up tidal rivers. The wicked “holes” between Buzzards Bay and the Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds see current twice a day that challenges the bladder control of staunch, experienced skippers. In one of them, Woods Hole, steel ocean buoys six and eight feet in diameter, weighing several tons, whip back and forth in the full flow, appearing at the surface only at one limit of their heavy mooring chains, emerging in a boil of water like sportive dolphins, sucked down again to make the next circuit and rear up at the other chain-limit. Tidal current fills and empties the Bay of Fundy inside Nova Scotia, making a waterfall that reverses directions twice daily, and giving ports at the head of the Bay a tidefall of (a flabbergasting) forty-five feet. To put this in perspective, the tide there would cover and uncover a four-story building twice a day.
When the tidal current runs against the wind, it sets up an unholy chop. At the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal, where the six knot SW current meets a steady twenty knot “smoky sou’wester,” standing waves of eight and ten feet set up in the channel off the Canal’s protective breakwater into Buzzards Bay. Watching a fifty-foot yacht expose half of her bottom, from forefoot to keel, before she crashes into the trough is impressive from shore but truly breathtaking from the deck.
One of the explanations I was making to Kai, a delightful kid who was part of our taping, is that a wave isn't what it seems. A wave is an energy pulse that travels through the water, while any given molecule of water stays pretty much in the same area, moving up, forward and back in a circular or elliptic motion. The water stays put (except for current effects) while the physical disturbance of the water travels on. The wicked surf on many beaches is an amplification phenomenon – the energy of the pulse rebounding from the shallowing bottom when the depth is less than a certain proportion of the waves’ height and period (length or time between crests). The rebounding energy increases the height of the waves without affecting the period, so the amplitude (height) of the wave is multiplied and, eventually, can’t support itself structurally and “breaks” – surf. There are tremendous waves at sea that can be very impressive from a small boat. It's not uncommon in, say, the Roaring Forties (40° south latitude) for seas to reach a regular height of forty feet and their crests, blown by wind, break in “combers.” Breaking waves like this are called “graybeards” in respect and awe. But the period of these graybeards, the length between crests, is dictated by wave physics uncomplicated by bottom amplification and can be a quarter or even half a mile.
In the vast fetch of the sea (“fetch” is the distance over which waves travel and grow) the waves around you may be generated by more than one factor. A storm working up the sea a thousand miles away can send its waves to you, and this “train” of waves (a long set of energy peaks) meeting your local waves at an angle can amplify, diminish, or alter the frequency of your wave conditions. It can be tricky to steer in a “confused sea” like this because the pattern of amplifications and diminutions seems random (which it ain’t).
Traditional oceanography was pleased with its wave theory until recently. Water is, after all, a relatively uniform fluid, so physical laws apply uniformly. Obedient wave equations had been built and confirmed. You seen one wave, you seen ‘em all. Professional bluewater sailors disagreed. Many have faced the phenomenon of “rogue waves,” which were considered folklore until sober reports from supertankers, research vessels, and sea-measuring radar satellites confirmed their existence. It’s now considered likely that, at any given moment, ten mountainous rogue waves are alive and rushing across the World Ocean for hours at a time, some in excess of a hundred feet. In 1943, for instance, the celebrated liner RMS Queen Mary had been pressed into service as a troop ship. She was capable of such extraordinary speed that she needed no conventional convoy escorts but she was sometimes accompanied by fast-moving, sub-killing Navy blimps. The Queen Mary met a a pair of rogue waves, startlingly larger than the “normal” storm waves around it. One wave was photographed from a blimp breaking OVER HER BRIDGE, ninety-three feet above her waterline. Bridge windows were stove in, the bridge flooded, and the Queen Mary, among the largest ships afloat, nearly went down in the battering. She listed 52° for several minutes before she righted herself and continued.
There are mysterious places – the Agulhaus Current off the Cape of Good Hope is one – that also produce rogue troughs, “holes in the sea.” A British warship encountered one in the 50’s, fell into the trough, and kept going down. Lost with all 600+ hands in a few moments.
A tsunami is not a rogue wave. Indeed, the energy pulse of a tsunami can pass under a ship without notice. It’s essentially a huge convex disturbance of the surface, of such a scale that a ship wouldn’t be able to detect it. When it reaches the continental shelf off the shore, however, bottom reflection of energy converts it to a giant, lethal wall of water.
The point is that our World Ocean is aqua incognita. It ain’t Kansas. It is an arena in which humanly unimaginable forces dwell daily. We don’t know a great deal about the ocean, so far, and haven’t devised a way to live securely on or in it. Bits and pieces of information drift in like flotsam to the shore. Space Travel? Captain Kirk and the Enterprise? Puh-lease. We’ve got places a few miles offshore where no man has gone before.
NOTE: SAILOR FOLKLORE
There is an ancient joke about sailors’ reportage: What’s the difference between a “sea story” and a “fairy story?”
A “fairy story” begins, “Once upon a time…” A “sea story” begins, “Now this ain’t no shit…”
Readers are assured that, within the limits of good-faith research and suppression of poetic license, the above ain't no shit.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
As Himself has often said, "No one can love the sea." It's too cold and cruel and unfeeling and dangerous. But it's difficult for a thinking person not to be fascinated or even obsessed by the sea. The cowboys say, "The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man," and the hayseeds may be right. But ocean fascination and being on the water is good for the heart and mind. Neither Adkins nor I have any pretensions of mastery or even professional knowledge of the ocean. We're shoreside dabblers, coastal sailors with occasional leaps across blue water. I'm glad that neither of us has false courage about the water. One is especially pleased that a romantic like Himself still has a healthy fear of setting out on the face of the mighty deep, even when it's shallow. Fear is a much-underrated virtue.
Fair winds are those blowing in the direction you’re bound. A “flowing tide” is the fortunate opposite of a “foul tide” (current against you). Following seas lift and seem to carry you – anyone who has tried to make headway in a “head sea” (waves opposing your course) knows what a buffeting, frantic, frustrating experience it can be.
The tide might seem a mega-force acting over enormous areas that has little application to tiny boats on its surface. At sea, yes. Onshore, it is to larf. When enormous areas of water attempt to empty from or fill up smaller areas of water, the resulting water pressure and consequent current can be shocking. Tidal bores in France and in China regularly set up six-foot to eight-foot walls of water moving at the speed of a bus up tidal rivers. The wicked “holes” between Buzzards Bay and the Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds see current twice a day that challenges the bladder control of staunch, experienced skippers. In one of them, Woods Hole, steel ocean buoys six and eight feet in diameter, weighing several tons, whip back and forth in the full flow, appearing at the surface only at one limit of their heavy mooring chains, emerging in a boil of water like sportive dolphins, sucked down again to make the next circuit and rear up at the other chain-limit. Tidal current fills and empties the Bay of Fundy inside Nova Scotia, making a waterfall that reverses directions twice daily, and giving ports at the head of the Bay a tidefall of (a flabbergasting) forty-five feet. To put this in perspective, the tide there would cover and uncover a four-story building twice a day.
When the tidal current runs against the wind, it sets up an unholy chop. At the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal, where the six knot SW current meets a steady twenty knot “smoky sou’wester,” standing waves of eight and ten feet set up in the channel off the Canal’s protective breakwater into Buzzards Bay. Watching a fifty-foot yacht expose half of her bottom, from forefoot to keel, before she crashes into the trough is impressive from shore but truly breathtaking from the deck.
One of the explanations I was making to Kai, a delightful kid who was part of our taping, is that a wave isn't what it seems. A wave is an energy pulse that travels through the water, while any given molecule of water stays pretty much in the same area, moving up, forward and back in a circular or elliptic motion. The water stays put (except for current effects) while the physical disturbance of the water travels on. The wicked surf on many beaches is an amplification phenomenon – the energy of the pulse rebounding from the shallowing bottom when the depth is less than a certain proportion of the waves’ height and period (length or time between crests). The rebounding energy increases the height of the waves without affecting the period, so the amplitude (height) of the wave is multiplied and, eventually, can’t support itself structurally and “breaks” – surf. There are tremendous waves at sea that can be very impressive from a small boat. It's not uncommon in, say, the Roaring Forties (40° south latitude) for seas to reach a regular height of forty feet and their crests, blown by wind, break in “combers.” Breaking waves like this are called “graybeards” in respect and awe. But the period of these graybeards, the length between crests, is dictated by wave physics uncomplicated by bottom amplification and can be a quarter or even half a mile.
In the vast fetch of the sea (“fetch” is the distance over which waves travel and grow) the waves around you may be generated by more than one factor. A storm working up the sea a thousand miles away can send its waves to you, and this “train” of waves (a long set of energy peaks) meeting your local waves at an angle can amplify, diminish, or alter the frequency of your wave conditions. It can be tricky to steer in a “confused sea” like this because the pattern of amplifications and diminutions seems random (which it ain’t).
Traditional oceanography was pleased with its wave theory until recently. Water is, after all, a relatively uniform fluid, so physical laws apply uniformly. Obedient wave equations had been built and confirmed. You seen one wave, you seen ‘em all. Professional bluewater sailors disagreed. Many have faced the phenomenon of “rogue waves,” which were considered folklore until sober reports from supertankers, research vessels, and sea-measuring radar satellites confirmed their existence. It’s now considered likely that, at any given moment, ten mountainous rogue waves are alive and rushing across the World Ocean for hours at a time, some in excess of a hundred feet. In 1943, for instance, the celebrated liner RMS Queen Mary had been pressed into service as a troop ship. She was capable of such extraordinary speed that she needed no conventional convoy escorts but she was sometimes accompanied by fast-moving, sub-killing Navy blimps. The Queen Mary met a a pair of rogue waves, startlingly larger than the “normal” storm waves around it. One wave was photographed from a blimp breaking OVER HER BRIDGE, ninety-three feet above her waterline. Bridge windows were stove in, the bridge flooded, and the Queen Mary, among the largest ships afloat, nearly went down in the battering. She listed 52° for several minutes before she righted herself and continued.
There are mysterious places – the Agulhaus Current off the Cape of Good Hope is one – that also produce rogue troughs, “holes in the sea.” A British warship encountered one in the 50’s, fell into the trough, and kept going down. Lost with all 600+ hands in a few moments.
A tsunami is not a rogue wave. Indeed, the energy pulse of a tsunami can pass under a ship without notice. It’s essentially a huge convex disturbance of the surface, of such a scale that a ship wouldn’t be able to detect it. When it reaches the continental shelf off the shore, however, bottom reflection of energy converts it to a giant, lethal wall of water.
The point is that our World Ocean is aqua incognita. It ain’t Kansas. It is an arena in which humanly unimaginable forces dwell daily. We don’t know a great deal about the ocean, so far, and haven’t devised a way to live securely on or in it. Bits and pieces of information drift in like flotsam to the shore. Space Travel? Captain Kirk and the Enterprise? Puh-lease. We’ve got places a few miles offshore where no man has gone before.
NOTE: SAILOR FOLKLORE
There is an ancient joke about sailors’ reportage: What’s the difference between a “sea story” and a “fairy story?”
A “fairy story” begins, “Once upon a time…” A “sea story” begins, “Now this ain’t no shit…”
Readers are assured that, within the limits of good-faith research and suppression of poetic license, the above ain't no shit.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
As Himself has often said, "No one can love the sea." It's too cold and cruel and unfeeling and dangerous. But it's difficult for a thinking person not to be fascinated or even obsessed by the sea. The cowboys say, "The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man," and the hayseeds may be right. But ocean fascination and being on the water is good for the heart and mind. Neither Adkins nor I have any pretensions of mastery or even professional knowledge of the ocean. We're shoreside dabblers, coastal sailors with occasional leaps across blue water. I'm glad that neither of us has false courage about the water. One is especially pleased that a romantic like Himself still has a healthy fear of setting out on the face of the mighty deep, even when it's shallow. Fear is a much-underrated virtue.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
GREEN BOATING
A discussion in today's "Marina, Boatingbuilding and Dealer Professionals" forum asked if "Green Marinas" were viable. This is a charged debate because the "professionals" depend on big boats for their profits, and the big powerboats get about half a mile to the gallon, if that.
But being on the water is so important, so precious. Watching from shore just isn't a substitute. You see the ocean and its life only beyond the surf. My contribution to the subject was:
The Green Marina is a goal. Even faltering steps toward energy savings and zero-added-pollution should be encouraged. Should Green Marinas harbor sailing craft only? Not necessarily; some motor yachts designed for modest speeds are fuel-efficient. And some small, economically disenfranchised boaters are zero-polluters. How many marinas welcome small scale sailors – kayaks, pulling boats and daysailers?
It's surprising to most wind-sailors how much fuel fast-moving demands. It's a guilty fact that we motor through calms, light winds and even headwinds. We might return to the slip after a trip out to the Farralones and back, motoring for a good part of the day, and use, perhaps, 7 gallons of diesel. The sport-fisherman across the dock has made the same trip at a higher speed, has admittedly covered more bottom by setting and pulling crab pots and trolling for stripers, but has burned more than ten times the fuel. Things change. Oil is no longer a negligible component of boating's future.
Being on the water is a rare privilege most landlocked souls aren't offered. The prime benefit of access to the water life is witnessing and being part of its powerful but delicate ecology. A responsibility comes with the privilege: we're obligated to do as little harm to the water we love as possible.
A Green Marina, even one with some contradictions and drawbacks, is a good start and a good example. Any Green Marina would remind its skippers to think more clearly about how they affect the water. If we saw more Green Marinas, the industry would inevitably push technology (still grounded in its high-ticket, twin-Chrysler, go-fast stage) toward efficiency and sensible conservation. It may not be too early to accept the logical expression of our privileged closeness to the world ocean: reducing fuel consumption at LEAST in proportion to reduction in automobile standards.
We don't want to lose marinas! They're critical portals to the water world, and they're a happy, colorful component of shore life. Marinas can't survive if they can't make money. Big boats make big profits. Fuel markups aren't what they were but they're part of the profit margin. What's the responsible, proactive, progressive, foresighted path? Green Marinas are one part of the answer: they're an institutional commitment to positive change.
The sensible path surely depends on reading the future as wisely as we check the weather forecasts: can go-fast powerboating continue as a highly visible symbol of boating's lack of concern for conservation? Will every big, creamy wake, so visible scarring the Bay, encourage legislators to make the boating industry a sop to Cerberus? Will legislation crack down on boating as a smoke screen for allowing trucking and auto manufacturers to ignore fuel reduction guidelines?
You know that I'm merely a gadfly in this discussion. My dog in this fight is a Chihuahua. But from a journalist's perspective, the boating industry might serve itself best by getting on the Green Barge and making its own changes.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself can offer himself to ridicule pitifully eagerly. One speculates that marine businessmen, boat manufacturers and even small-boat builders would prefer that amateurs simply shut up. But ridicule can be an honorable state for journalists, whose business demands that they step out onto the balcony of palaces and observe aloud that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Ridicule doesn't do journalists much lasting harm, and we suppose they must accustom themselves to the sting of cold water in their faces in order to say the critically important thing when it is, by common consent, ridiculous.
But being on the water is so important, so precious. Watching from shore just isn't a substitute. You see the ocean and its life only beyond the surf. My contribution to the subject was:
The Green Marina is a goal. Even faltering steps toward energy savings and zero-added-pollution should be encouraged. Should Green Marinas harbor sailing craft only? Not necessarily; some motor yachts designed for modest speeds are fuel-efficient. And some small, economically disenfranchised boaters are zero-polluters. How many marinas welcome small scale sailors – kayaks, pulling boats and daysailers?
It's surprising to most wind-sailors how much fuel fast-moving demands. It's a guilty fact that we motor through calms, light winds and even headwinds. We might return to the slip after a trip out to the Farralones and back, motoring for a good part of the day, and use, perhaps, 7 gallons of diesel. The sport-fisherman across the dock has made the same trip at a higher speed, has admittedly covered more bottom by setting and pulling crab pots and trolling for stripers, but has burned more than ten times the fuel. Things change. Oil is no longer a negligible component of boating's future.
Being on the water is a rare privilege most landlocked souls aren't offered. The prime benefit of access to the water life is witnessing and being part of its powerful but delicate ecology. A responsibility comes with the privilege: we're obligated to do as little harm to the water we love as possible.
A Green Marina, even one with some contradictions and drawbacks, is a good start and a good example. Any Green Marina would remind its skippers to think more clearly about how they affect the water. If we saw more Green Marinas, the industry would inevitably push technology (still grounded in its high-ticket, twin-Chrysler, go-fast stage) toward efficiency and sensible conservation. It may not be too early to accept the logical expression of our privileged closeness to the world ocean: reducing fuel consumption at LEAST in proportion to reduction in automobile standards.
We don't want to lose marinas! They're critical portals to the water world, and they're a happy, colorful component of shore life. Marinas can't survive if they can't make money. Big boats make big profits. Fuel markups aren't what they were but they're part of the profit margin. What's the responsible, proactive, progressive, foresighted path? Green Marinas are one part of the answer: they're an institutional commitment to positive change.
The sensible path surely depends on reading the future as wisely as we check the weather forecasts: can go-fast powerboating continue as a highly visible symbol of boating's lack of concern for conservation? Will every big, creamy wake, so visible scarring the Bay, encourage legislators to make the boating industry a sop to Cerberus? Will legislation crack down on boating as a smoke screen for allowing trucking and auto manufacturers to ignore fuel reduction guidelines?
You know that I'm merely a gadfly in this discussion. My dog in this fight is a Chihuahua. But from a journalist's perspective, the boating industry might serve itself best by getting on the Green Barge and making its own changes.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself can offer himself to ridicule pitifully eagerly. One speculates that marine businessmen, boat manufacturers and even small-boat builders would prefer that amateurs simply shut up. But ridicule can be an honorable state for journalists, whose business demands that they step out onto the balcony of palaces and observe aloud that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Ridicule doesn't do journalists much lasting harm, and we suppose they must accustom themselves to the sting of cold water in their faces in order to say the critically important thing when it is, by common consent, ridiculous.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
CLINKER-BUILT
Every Tuesday evening at the Dolphin Club we give the pulling boats some care – repairing, sanding, varnishing, rebuilding. After we work three hours or so, we all eat together in the boat house at long tables.
A big crowd tonight, but not because it's Fat Tuesday and one of the members has made jambalaya. Big doings in the shop. Word has gone out that the Club's boatwright, Jon Belinski, is installing five new ribs in one of the older pulling boats. This is a rare demonstration of antique skills and methods, requiring teamwork, timing, speed and finesse. It's more than woodworking.
The ribs begin as tough locust staves. To bend this adamant wood into the fair curve of a rib, it must be cut to its cross-section and steamed in a long, closed, hissing iron pipe for half an hour. The locust ribs emerge at 200°F+ as limp as noodles. Limp for only moments. We will pluck ribs out one at a time with thick gloves and push them into the boat's inner shape, working feverishly before the inner heat dissipates and the locust stubbornness revives.
Contemporary sport boats are, in the old Massachusetts boatyard phrase, "built by the mile and cut off to suit." They're mass produced. You won't see ribs being steamed unless you haunt a cranky New England shipwright's shop peopled with wood-heads devoted to traditional (read "lavishly expensive") wooden boats built more carefully than a Hermann Miller coffee table.
We walk through the steps we will take in dumb-show first, noting where our feet will go, what will be in the way, who must step back, who must come forward. Everyone must work fast and in close concert, because the locust will be flexible from the steam box for less than a minute.
We take special care of these exquisite craft but they endure. Some are older than any of the people who work on them. And because why, mate? Because these 'ere boats is clinker-built, as light as eggshells but tough as pigs' noses. They are San Francisco variations on the Whitehall model. This means that they are rowing boats with a distinct and delicately cupped shaped, a "wineglass" transom (aft end), and that they're very light for their size, built in the ancient "clinker" construction.
"Clinker" is an Old English cognate of "clencher," which indicates that the boat is constructed of thin, overlapping planks of a light, flexible wood (in this case, white cedar) "clenched" to thin ribs with copper rivets. This fastening mode is a very old usage that binds more tightly than nails and more securely than screws. Indeed, nails and screws wouldn't have much to "grab" because the stock is so thin. The soft-as-cheese cedar is milled thin, not much thicker than 1/4" and about three inches wide. The ribs are only 5/8" wide and about 1/2" thick. While they're still whippy and hot, we will drill through and secure a rib, the lower part of an overlapping cedar strake (one of the curving horizontal planks) and the upper part of the next strake.
Now. A rib is whisked out of the steam pipe, slammed into the boat, bent against the soft interior curve of the strakes and forced under some of the boat's inner structure. Held hard, holes are immediately drilled, time management and tool quickness.
As soon as the holes are made a copper riveting nail is tapped through them. The "nail" is square in section to grip the wood more tightly. A round copper washer – called a "burr" – is forced over the square nail with a special riveting tool; it's like a chisel with a flat, blunt end drilled with a hole for the nail to occuply, so that whacking the burr down onto the nail forces the rib and strakes together. When the riveting tool is taken away, the nail is snipped off just above the burr and, while one partner "bucks" (holds a heavy iron on the nailhead end to prevent it from being driven away), the other shapes the soft copper with a small ball-peen hammer. This is the hammer with one flat head and one round head, made specifically for work like this – shaping the "mushroom" with the round head is called "peening". The copper is so malleable that it mushrooms over the burr and each stroke of the shaping ball-peen tightens the assembly.
It seems like intolerably fussy and unnecessary complication but it's the only thing that will bind these whisper-thin planks and light ribs into a remarkably rigid, nearly monocoque hull. It's historic, it's ancient methodology, very cool to watch and do.
Jay and I work as a team. Half the time I'm above the boat, tapping the rivets home, shaping the mushroomed-over heads in the soft copper. Half the time I'm under the boat, lying on the shop floor, holding the heavy bucking iron against the nail head. The shaping is a more focused task, it requires more care, but holding the bucking iron is heavier work.
There are compensations for that heavy work. Lying beneath the boat's lyric curves I see each strake describing a separate curved plane with a strake-thickness separating it from the next plane – graceful lines paralleling and harmonizing, the color of the varnished white cedar glowing golden and varying with the glare from every work light, shading from dark umber in the shadows to chrome yellow in the light. Beautiful.
The locust wood ribs emerging from the steam box smell bitter and damp. The drilled cedar smells like incense. The tapping and the calling between three or four sets of partners – two sets riveting, two sets placing new ribs – has a discernible rhythm and order.
The work had a sensible urgency and a splendid, strong outcome. What do we do in our lives that gives us much of that?
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself needs more physical work and more contact with working people. The abstract life of a writer and illustrator can be barren, like a room decorated with B&W print-outs of reports. A room and a life need color and a bit of mayhem.
A big crowd tonight, but not because it's Fat Tuesday and one of the members has made jambalaya. Big doings in the shop. Word has gone out that the Club's boatwright, Jon Belinski, is installing five new ribs in one of the older pulling boats. This is a rare demonstration of antique skills and methods, requiring teamwork, timing, speed and finesse. It's more than woodworking.
The ribs begin as tough locust staves. To bend this adamant wood into the fair curve of a rib, it must be cut to its cross-section and steamed in a long, closed, hissing iron pipe for half an hour. The locust ribs emerge at 200°F+ as limp as noodles. Limp for only moments. We will pluck ribs out one at a time with thick gloves and push them into the boat's inner shape, working feverishly before the inner heat dissipates and the locust stubbornness revives.
Contemporary sport boats are, in the old Massachusetts boatyard phrase, "built by the mile and cut off to suit." They're mass produced. You won't see ribs being steamed unless you haunt a cranky New England shipwright's shop peopled with wood-heads devoted to traditional (read "lavishly expensive") wooden boats built more carefully than a Hermann Miller coffee table.
We walk through the steps we will take in dumb-show first, noting where our feet will go, what will be in the way, who must step back, who must come forward. Everyone must work fast and in close concert, because the locust will be flexible from the steam box for less than a minute.
We take special care of these exquisite craft but they endure. Some are older than any of the people who work on them. And because why, mate? Because these 'ere boats is clinker-built, as light as eggshells but tough as pigs' noses. They are San Francisco variations on the Whitehall model. This means that they are rowing boats with a distinct and delicately cupped shaped, a "wineglass" transom (aft end), and that they're very light for their size, built in the ancient "clinker" construction.
"Clinker" is an Old English cognate of "clencher," which indicates that the boat is constructed of thin, overlapping planks of a light, flexible wood (in this case, white cedar) "clenched" to thin ribs with copper rivets. This fastening mode is a very old usage that binds more tightly than nails and more securely than screws. Indeed, nails and screws wouldn't have much to "grab" because the stock is so thin. The soft-as-cheese cedar is milled thin, not much thicker than 1/4" and about three inches wide. The ribs are only 5/8" wide and about 1/2" thick. While they're still whippy and hot, we will drill through and secure a rib, the lower part of an overlapping cedar strake (one of the curving horizontal planks) and the upper part of the next strake.
Now. A rib is whisked out of the steam pipe, slammed into the boat, bent against the soft interior curve of the strakes and forced under some of the boat's inner structure. Held hard, holes are immediately drilled, time management and tool quickness.
As soon as the holes are made a copper riveting nail is tapped through them. The "nail" is square in section to grip the wood more tightly. A round copper washer – called a "burr" – is forced over the square nail with a special riveting tool; it's like a chisel with a flat, blunt end drilled with a hole for the nail to occuply, so that whacking the burr down onto the nail forces the rib and strakes together. When the riveting tool is taken away, the nail is snipped off just above the burr and, while one partner "bucks" (holds a heavy iron on the nailhead end to prevent it from being driven away), the other shapes the soft copper with a small ball-peen hammer. This is the hammer with one flat head and one round head, made specifically for work like this – shaping the "mushroom" with the round head is called "peening". The copper is so malleable that it mushrooms over the burr and each stroke of the shaping ball-peen tightens the assembly.
It seems like intolerably fussy and unnecessary complication but it's the only thing that will bind these whisper-thin planks and light ribs into a remarkably rigid, nearly monocoque hull. It's historic, it's ancient methodology, very cool to watch and do.
Jay and I work as a team. Half the time I'm above the boat, tapping the rivets home, shaping the mushroomed-over heads in the soft copper. Half the time I'm under the boat, lying on the shop floor, holding the heavy bucking iron against the nail head. The shaping is a more focused task, it requires more care, but holding the bucking iron is heavier work.
There are compensations for that heavy work. Lying beneath the boat's lyric curves I see each strake describing a separate curved plane with a strake-thickness separating it from the next plane – graceful lines paralleling and harmonizing, the color of the varnished white cedar glowing golden and varying with the glare from every work light, shading from dark umber in the shadows to chrome yellow in the light. Beautiful.
The locust wood ribs emerging from the steam box smell bitter and damp. The drilled cedar smells like incense. The tapping and the calling between three or four sets of partners – two sets riveting, two sets placing new ribs – has a discernible rhythm and order.
The work had a sensible urgency and a splendid, strong outcome. What do we do in our lives that gives us much of that?
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself needs more physical work and more contact with working people. The abstract life of a writer and illustrator can be barren, like a room decorated with B&W print-outs of reports. A room and a life need color and a bit of mayhem.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
MORE SMALL BOAT TALK
I REMEMBER a daysail with the Traditional Small Craft Association up in the Sacramento Delta. I had an idyllic morning and afternoon aboard a Redwing 18, a home-built plywood skiff with a big cockpit and a cuddy. WoodenBoat sells the plans for about $100, and I'm wondering how many Redwings there are, carrying couples and families over small waters.
I'm accustomed to big, powerful sloops and ketches in the 36' to 65' range – OPB's, other people's boats – but that odd little outboard in the complex little sloughs of the Delta offered a scaled-down, wholly delightful adventure.
The four-stroke, ten horsepower engine was quiet at the pokey rate of travel the slough mandated, perhaps 5.5 knots. Conversation was easy, the banks were lovely and the birds were plentiful and varied – egrets, green herons, great blue herons, redwing blackbirds, crows (my favorites), wrens, robins, mockingbirds . . . Some spoke of seeing otters in less-traveled sloughs. The cooler with sodas and lunch was in the shade of the cuddy cabin. The day was fine though I could see that a canvas Bimini cockpit cover would be a blessing in the depth of summer.
An oddly pleasing part of the voyage was the wheel, itself. It was a small galvanized workboat wheel, with its six teak hand-spokes extending the cast galvanized spokes, mounted on the starboard face of the coach house. The little engine swung to it, and the engine controls were mounted to the right of the wheel. Perhaps the comfortingly elderly wheel made it feel more like a sea boat. We're all suggestible, subject to delusions, me more than most. I remember it as one of my favorite little passages.
I love big boats, long may they wave, but I'm speculating that the marine industry must expand the base of small boaters. Small experiences may lead to big-boat purchases in time. Even an 18-footer consumes an appreciable amount of marine equipment, year by year.
I could be way wrong about this. If I were a businessperson I wouldn't be a writer. For boatbuilders already set up to produce grand vessels the only course is to winkle out high-ticket owners from the Fortune 500. One thinks of steep oil price increases, however, and wonders what big breweries were thinking just before Prohibition. Some actually went into the root beer business.
Welcoming a wider public to life on the water is good sense and good seed. By and by most dinghy sailors want a bigger boat for longer voyages, and for learning new things. Young people who play on the water with their families are more likely to invest in a big boat when they have families of their own. Should boatbuilders and chandleries be thinking about what Stewart Brand calls "the Long Now?"
I find such peace and a settling of the soul on the water. I can't imagine not getting onto the water – on a big boat, a Redwing 18, or an innertube. Water is the only magic I know. So I'm an advocate, and were I the Pied Piper the trail of my tiny-footed band would lead to the shore. I want kids to see the grace of the water, and to see the shore from the ocean perspective – both useful visions.
Adkins
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
It's true that Himself is calmer and more lucid, less flighty and anxious, when he returns from a trip around the Bay. Perhaps other men center themselves in the woodshop or on their bicycles or hunting moose. Himself is a Water Healer; get him off the shore for a few hours and he's nearly tolerable. He says that the problems of the land diminish in proportion to the height of the trees as he sails away from the dock. Is it merely one form of temporary nepenthe, or is it like the old Norton Utilities program that rearranged your hard drive storage into logical, faster segments? Either way it's better than vodka.
Adkins
I'm accustomed to big, powerful sloops and ketches in the 36' to 65' range – OPB's, other people's boats – but that odd little outboard in the complex little sloughs of the Delta offered a scaled-down, wholly delightful adventure.
The four-stroke, ten horsepower engine was quiet at the pokey rate of travel the slough mandated, perhaps 5.5 knots. Conversation was easy, the banks were lovely and the birds were plentiful and varied – egrets, green herons, great blue herons, redwing blackbirds, crows (my favorites), wrens, robins, mockingbirds . . . Some spoke of seeing otters in less-traveled sloughs. The cooler with sodas and lunch was in the shade of the cuddy cabin. The day was fine though I could see that a canvas Bimini cockpit cover would be a blessing in the depth of summer.
An oddly pleasing part of the voyage was the wheel, itself. It was a small galvanized workboat wheel, with its six teak hand-spokes extending the cast galvanized spokes, mounted on the starboard face of the coach house. The little engine swung to it, and the engine controls were mounted to the right of the wheel. Perhaps the comfortingly elderly wheel made it feel more like a sea boat. We're all suggestible, subject to delusions, me more than most. I remember it as one of my favorite little passages.
I love big boats, long may they wave, but I'm speculating that the marine industry must expand the base of small boaters. Small experiences may lead to big-boat purchases in time. Even an 18-footer consumes an appreciable amount of marine equipment, year by year.
I could be way wrong about this. If I were a businessperson I wouldn't be a writer. For boatbuilders already set up to produce grand vessels the only course is to winkle out high-ticket owners from the Fortune 500. One thinks of steep oil price increases, however, and wonders what big breweries were thinking just before Prohibition. Some actually went into the root beer business.
Welcoming a wider public to life on the water is good sense and good seed. By and by most dinghy sailors want a bigger boat for longer voyages, and for learning new things. Young people who play on the water with their families are more likely to invest in a big boat when they have families of their own. Should boatbuilders and chandleries be thinking about what Stewart Brand calls "the Long Now?"
I find such peace and a settling of the soul on the water. I can't imagine not getting onto the water – on a big boat, a Redwing 18, or an innertube. Water is the only magic I know. So I'm an advocate, and were I the Pied Piper the trail of my tiny-footed band would lead to the shore. I want kids to see the grace of the water, and to see the shore from the ocean perspective – both useful visions.
Adkins
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
It's true that Himself is calmer and more lucid, less flighty and anxious, when he returns from a trip around the Bay. Perhaps other men center themselves in the woodshop or on their bicycles or hunting moose. Himself is a Water Healer; get him off the shore for a few hours and he's nearly tolerable. He says that the problems of the land diminish in proportion to the height of the trees as he sails away from the dock. Is it merely one form of temporary nepenthe, or is it like the old Norton Utilities program that rearranged your hard drive storage into logical, faster segments? Either way it's better than vodka.
Adkins
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
ARTICLE FROM SOUNDINGS by William Sisson
OK, I admit it. I’m a sucker for good-looking small boats. Always have been.
The latest one to catch my eye is the Whiticar 21, which is both gorgeous and one of a kind. It’s the only outboard boat ever built by Whiticar Boat Works, the noted Stuart, Fla., builder of quality cold-molded offshore sportfishermen.
This little gem was built in 1966 for T.R. Garlington of custom boatbuilder Garlington Yachts, who used to run her a mile or two out into the Gulf Stream on fair days to fish for sailfish. She was completely restored in 2009 by Paul Scopinich, who owns Scopinich Boat Works in Stuart, which is known for its quality fighting chairs and custom boats.
Scopinich bought the 21-footer about eight years ago from a local captain and stored it in a garage until last year, when business slowed and it seemed like a good time to tackle a refit.
“I pulled it out of the garage in June, and we all went at it,” Scopinich says. The cold-molded mahogany-planked hull was in surprisingly good shape. There were a few soft spots on the deck, on one of the frames and around the aluminum windshield, but otherwise the structure was sound.
Scopinich was impressed by how well the little Whiticar had weathered its 43 years. “The hull was perfect,” he says. “They go overboard when they build stuff. They don’t forget the epoxy.”
The only structural changes Scopinich had to make during the restoration were replacing a few planks and frames. In breathing new life into the Whiticar, he and his team completely rewired the boat, put a teak deck over the original cold-molded plywood one, added a teak helm pod and two new helm chairs, and rechromed all the original hardware.
He replaced the aluminum windshield with a lovely wooden one that Whiticar founder Curt Whiticar sketched for him on the back of a nautical chart. “Curt, who is 94, is the one who built that boat,” says Scopinich, who enjoyed consulting with the spry nonagenarian during the restoration of the former Ju Ann.
At one time, the boat was powered by a Mercury Black Max outboard. Scopinich hung a new 90-hp Suzuki 4-stroke on the transom and replaced the Suzuki stickers with new specially made Mercury ones from the Black Max period. Nice touch. He painted the hull “fighting lady yellow,” with a “snow white” deck.
In all, he figures he has about 850 hours into the project, which wrapped up in November. Scopinich has put a price tag north of $80,000 on her, although he says he may wind up using the boat himself. For photos or to contact Scopinich, go to www.scopinich.com, (772) 288-3111.
She is a lovely little dayboat with a strong pedigree. Makes you wish boats like this were the rule in our world today, rather than such an exception.
ADKINS COMMENTS to the Marine Industry Forum
What a sweetheart of a boat, and what a reassuring story about trustworthy construction, respect for the vintage form, and the care that our older boats deserve. The icing on the cake was the collusion of her original, 90+ builder.
I'm wondering if we in the marine sector are reading our compass correctly. A lot of us are surely following the rest of American business by scrapping over the disposable income of the very wealthy. That's the common wisdom. Granted, she was rebuilt as a gold-plater with a gold pricetag, and one hopes the builder is rewarded with a good price. But when I see a sweet little boat like this I wonder if we shouldn't be selling the water-life to a more modest demographic of families and young people. Perhaps boating can once again be an ideal of egalitarian sport. It wasn't so long ago that New England yacht clubs were places you could meet folks with very different net worths – a senator, a young middle-class family, or a retired bass-fishing guide. Perhaps we're seeing an era of small boat exploration again.
WoodenBoat is running a series on "Getting Started In Boats" (I've written two of them, but they're all quite good). Young men and women are making impressive kayak trips, camp-cruising along the coast and even out into the big sounds, very like the dreamy, iconic voyages of the Rob Roy in 1866, or some of the pre-1900 voyages down the coast in decked canoes and kayaks.
The only thing we know about oil is that it will become more and more expensive. If the house of Saud falls, which seems more probable than possible, the price of oil will spike immediately. Folks who now motor out of San Francisco Bay for good fishing around the Farallones simply won't be traveling that far, if at all (80 gallons @ $4/gal for a day of fishing?). A contemporary problem is abandoned vessels, often sound and well-fitted, abandoned by owners who simply can't afford the continuing costs of fuel, insurance, slips and maintenance. Perhaps some of the gracious, big twin-screw behemoths will survive but the bottom will drop out of marina service and marine sales. Unless we cultivate a new market in family boating aboard small, home-maintainable vessels, kit-boats, small adventurers.
My meetings with the Traditional Small Craft Association show a lively interest in both old forms and in small adventures on a budget. Are we doing enough to encourage a new market? Are we emulating that sterling character, that admirable waterman found in all Coast Pilots, the Prudent Mariner? Who's watching the compass?
Adkins
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
IT'S ABOUT TIME himself paid attention to his blog. He's been reliably informed that the only way to raise his creative profile is to put himself out into the current, to float his work in the channel. Direct selling does creatives very little good. Most of his "big mailings" have netted nothing, nada, goose egg, while his major commissions seem to drop out of nowhere. Nothing drops from nowhere. He's needed a bit of prodding but Adkins is at last beginning to use his blabby facility and send it out again. "Watch this space," as they say. He needs a crotchety dwarf like me to nudge him into action.
Braxinoso
OK, I admit it. I’m a sucker for good-looking small boats. Always have been.
The latest one to catch my eye is the Whiticar 21, which is both gorgeous and one of a kind. It’s the only outboard boat ever built by Whiticar Boat Works, the noted Stuart, Fla., builder of quality cold-molded offshore sportfishermen.
This little gem was built in 1966 for T.R. Garlington of custom boatbuilder Garlington Yachts, who used to run her a mile or two out into the Gulf Stream on fair days to fish for sailfish. She was completely restored in 2009 by Paul Scopinich, who owns Scopinich Boat Works in Stuart, which is known for its quality fighting chairs and custom boats.
Scopinich bought the 21-footer about eight years ago from a local captain and stored it in a garage until last year, when business slowed and it seemed like a good time to tackle a refit.
“I pulled it out of the garage in June, and we all went at it,” Scopinich says. The cold-molded mahogany-planked hull was in surprisingly good shape. There were a few soft spots on the deck, on one of the frames and around the aluminum windshield, but otherwise the structure was sound.
Scopinich was impressed by how well the little Whiticar had weathered its 43 years. “The hull was perfect,” he says. “They go overboard when they build stuff. They don’t forget the epoxy.”
The only structural changes Scopinich had to make during the restoration were replacing a few planks and frames. In breathing new life into the Whiticar, he and his team completely rewired the boat, put a teak deck over the original cold-molded plywood one, added a teak helm pod and two new helm chairs, and rechromed all the original hardware.
He replaced the aluminum windshield with a lovely wooden one that Whiticar founder Curt Whiticar sketched for him on the back of a nautical chart. “Curt, who is 94, is the one who built that boat,” says Scopinich, who enjoyed consulting with the spry nonagenarian during the restoration of the former Ju Ann.
At one time, the boat was powered by a Mercury Black Max outboard. Scopinich hung a new 90-hp Suzuki 4-stroke on the transom and replaced the Suzuki stickers with new specially made Mercury ones from the Black Max period. Nice touch. He painted the hull “fighting lady yellow,” with a “snow white” deck.
In all, he figures he has about 850 hours into the project, which wrapped up in November. Scopinich has put a price tag north of $80,000 on her, although he says he may wind up using the boat himself. For photos or to contact Scopinich, go to www.scopinich.com, (772) 288-3111.
She is a lovely little dayboat with a strong pedigree. Makes you wish boats like this were the rule in our world today, rather than such an exception.
ADKINS COMMENTS to the Marine Industry Forum
What a sweetheart of a boat, and what a reassuring story about trustworthy construction, respect for the vintage form, and the care that our older boats deserve. The icing on the cake was the collusion of her original, 90+ builder.
I'm wondering if we in the marine sector are reading our compass correctly. A lot of us are surely following the rest of American business by scrapping over the disposable income of the very wealthy. That's the common wisdom. Granted, she was rebuilt as a gold-plater with a gold pricetag, and one hopes the builder is rewarded with a good price. But when I see a sweet little boat like this I wonder if we shouldn't be selling the water-life to a more modest demographic of families and young people. Perhaps boating can once again be an ideal of egalitarian sport. It wasn't so long ago that New England yacht clubs were places you could meet folks with very different net worths – a senator, a young middle-class family, or a retired bass-fishing guide. Perhaps we're seeing an era of small boat exploration again.
WoodenBoat is running a series on "Getting Started In Boats" (I've written two of them, but they're all quite good). Young men and women are making impressive kayak trips, camp-cruising along the coast and even out into the big sounds, very like the dreamy, iconic voyages of the Rob Roy in 1866, or some of the pre-1900 voyages down the coast in decked canoes and kayaks.
The only thing we know about oil is that it will become more and more expensive. If the house of Saud falls, which seems more probable than possible, the price of oil will spike immediately. Folks who now motor out of San Francisco Bay for good fishing around the Farallones simply won't be traveling that far, if at all (80 gallons @ $4/gal for a day of fishing?). A contemporary problem is abandoned vessels, often sound and well-fitted, abandoned by owners who simply can't afford the continuing costs of fuel, insurance, slips and maintenance. Perhaps some of the gracious, big twin-screw behemoths will survive but the bottom will drop out of marina service and marine sales. Unless we cultivate a new market in family boating aboard small, home-maintainable vessels, kit-boats, small adventurers.
My meetings with the Traditional Small Craft Association show a lively interest in both old forms and in small adventures on a budget. Are we doing enough to encourage a new market? Are we emulating that sterling character, that admirable waterman found in all Coast Pilots, the Prudent Mariner? Who's watching the compass?
Adkins
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
IT'S ABOUT TIME himself paid attention to his blog. He's been reliably informed that the only way to raise his creative profile is to put himself out into the current, to float his work in the channel. Direct selling does creatives very little good. Most of his "big mailings" have netted nothing, nada, goose egg, while his major commissions seem to drop out of nowhere. Nothing drops from nowhere. He's needed a bit of prodding but Adkins is at last beginning to use his blabby facility and send it out again. "Watch this space," as they say. He needs a crotchety dwarf like me to nudge him into action.
Braxinoso
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