Virgin Plank

I have read about planks, dreamed about planks, feared leaky planks, dreaded sprung planks, scraped planks, painted planks, and ripped out old rotten planks. I finally got a chance to spile, steam, and hang a plank. Friday was a very salty day for me.

First, you take a spiling batten (an 1/8" thick piece of plywood) and lay it out as a template where the plank will be. "Spiling" is just a fancy, boaty term for "marking". Then, you mark the location of the back rabbet, as well as the outside edge of your plank (as previously laid out on the molds). Now you write down the bevels at the rabbet at all your station lines. Some are under bevels, and some are standing bevels. You are bewildered at this point, as this makes no sense. This is because you made minor errors when cutting your rabbet. Not to worry; you will bevel (continuously, of course) your plank edge to accommodate these angles you just recorded.

Virgin batten



Spiling marks at stem

Next, pick someone who doesn't suck, and have them swing your bandsaw table as you run your expensive cedar plank thru the saw. Now, build a fort around your steam box because its blowing 45 knts outside. Use a wheelbarrow and a piece of sheet steel if you are Yoda. This rig reminds me of Tennessee. It even has duct tape on it. Light her up. Beware the "woof". It is propane after all, and will likely explode in your face. Use a 4 foot rolled up piece of newspaper.

Now, while you're waiting to build up some steam, you have to plane the "wow" out of your plank, and bevel it according to your spiling batten. This only takes about an hour. (20 minutes for steam, and 40 to screw around with your board). Stick her in the steam box, wait 20 minutes (one hour per inch of plank thickness), and pull her out. FAST. You only have 4 minutes to clamp the plank in place before it cools and won't bend.

180 degrees in the steam box, and Yoda has no gloves on. I look like a weenus. Now, hang and clamp her on the molds.

Notice who is driving on the sharp end where the bend is greatest. Its apparently easy when the Force is with you.

And there she is, hanging in all her steamy splendor. When we got it clamped, i didn't even have enough sense to know whether or not it fit well. Turns out i was supposed to leave half an inch on the bottom edge for wiggle room if she didn't fit right.

OOPS. I apparently missed the memo on that one, and cut exactly to the line. I got lucky. The bottom edge split the pencil line marked for it on each mold, and the hood ends (curved end at stem) were only about 1/16" off. Ray laughed and said, "That's some Tennessee luck there, buddy! It doesn't get any better than that."

Turns out the plank fit exactly right. I told Ray I'd rather be lucky as good any day.









Bondo

It's amazing how much bondo stinks. Truly amazing. I sanded it all day today, (after scraping off the half a quart that didn't cure correctly) and never smelled it at all, as i was wisely using my respirator. Then i got in the car to go get a coffee, and couldn't figure out what the horrible chemical stench was. Then i realized that everyone at Starbucks was standing farther away from me in line than usual. I then had a mental flash forward to me exploding while starting a fire in the woodstove. I'm sure i was laced with enough fumes to be flammable. I caught a mild buzz driving back while listening to "99 red balloons" by Nina.

Maybe I'll just start wearing Bondo aftershave whenever i need a little personal space, or a little pick me up. But only in the summer.

Got all of the outside of the boat sanded, bondo'd, and sanded again. Tomorrow, sanding inside, and priming the topsides.

I "washed" my hair in my kitchen sink as it was very thick and matted with Bondo dust. Now its kind of dry and crunchy, kind of like when you comb out Mousse. (Does anyone still use that stuff, or did that stop with Duran Duran?) Maybe I'll start a line of Bondo hair and body products. Perfumes, skin desiccants, hair stiffeners and the like. I'm sure they'll sell like hotcakes.

I think I'm still high. I'm going to stop now.

The "Widowmaker"

Former Glory: Main, Top'sl, Square'sl, Jib, Flying Jib

Ridiculous

As the self-elected Chairman of the Board of the Widowmaker Restoration Project, I decided today was the day. A long weekend ahead, a total crap weather forecast, and way too much time in the Hobbit Hole recently all lead to my decision to begin restoring Cap'n Wayne-o's boat: The Widowmaker.

Why such a petrifying name? You might rightfully ask. The boat is 15'-9" ish overall, and made mostly out of construction grade plywood, galvanized 6 penny nails, rusty drywall screws, and schmooey. She was also "designed" to carry more sail than a tall ship. (See opening shot). Certainly WAY more sail than is advisable or sane. She is not even 16 feet long, and has a SIX foot bowsprit. In non-nautical terms: ludicrous. Oh, and she was built 12 years ago, and has since been residing in the crawl space under the Sail loft.

This nonsense all started in 2000 ish when Wayne-o rigged the Tole Mour on Lake Washington in Seattle. He found himself with a gang of boatbuilders, riggers, and sailmakers working on a full time gig on a lake--with no boat to sail. They literally held some plywood together, drew a few lines, nailed it, and cut off the rest. Plans? What Plans? It was old school, quick and dirty "by guess and by God" boatbuilding. They had access to 55 gallon drums of epoxy, so they actually bothered to tape the seams on the hull. Don't get me wrong. The hull proper is not glassed--just the seams. Get'r'dun.

Wayne-o said they sank her more than once, got "pulled over" for speeding, and sailed her drunk as a monkey--but NEVER got passed by another sailboat that summer.

The Widowmaker has been in the hands of a few other folks over the years, and the rig has been cut down to something less preposterous, but the 6' sprit is still a bit foreboding. My comrade Liz (from the perfect sailing adventure) is pretty sure we're going to swim in this thing. She's got the hypothermia figures dialed in just in case. Fourteen minutes. That's PLENTY of time.

Look at that stick!!!

Frankly, this is my dream boat. Flashback to 1985. Anyone remember a certain brush painted red datsun truck named "The Mobus"? Best vehicle of my life. What's the connection? TOTAL BEATER. I love it.

Today we got the topsides sanded, tomorrow "dura-glass" marine grade bondo in the deck and hull, and hopefully paint on Sunday. Rig inspection and minor woodwork odds and ends on Monday. Flip her in a few weeks, scuff and go on the hull, and hit her with some bottom paint. Sand and varnish some spars, rig her up, and blow up the bay to Port Townsend for a victory pizza one Saturday night. Sleep in the boat(eep?), sail home Sunday.

Total cost:
$50 sandpaper and bondo. 
Free paint, boat shed, sea chanteys, and encouragement from Wayne-o.
$26 victory pizza.

Springtime sailing of hand-me-down garbage made by awesome folks after a cold, wet, shitty winter:
Priceless.

Unicorn Wood

The stem, keel, keel apron, sternpost, and transom of our boat are finally coming together. Here are the pieces of the puzzle:

Eric "Vannah White" Hervol and stem assembly (comprised of four separate curvy, bevely, not ever square pieces)

Stem bolted and "schmooied"

The stem bone is connected to the keel bone, and the keel bone is connected to the stern post.

Now, for the transom, or rear end of the boat. As all sailors know, a boat has to have a very sexy bottom. The only way to achieve this, is to use the fabled "Unicorn Wood".

It has been said that a long, long time ago, a boat builder wandered countless eons through far flung exotic rain forests, searching the world over for the perfect boat building wood. He had heard that trees grew where the unicorns dwell--hard, durable, rot resistant, straight, with grain as true as the hearts of the unicorns themselves. Alas, one day, near the end of his life, he chased the tail of a rainbow...and ended up in a Mahogany forest in Honduras. Yep. Honduras Mahogany, or "Hondo" is the perfect wood. Beautiful, planes like butter, never rots, and is nearly gone. We used it all up, and now you're as likely to find a freakin unicorn as you are a stick of Hondo. Turns out, Yoda has connections. Feast your eyes on this FOURTEEN inch wide board.

We were able to get the whole transom out of 2 pieces. they were bent and wonky, like a unicorn's horn, so we had to joint them carefully, and cut a 1/4" rabbet in the center to spline them together with goo. Finally, my first lethal toxic epoxy goo experience in boat school! I got that shit everywhere, but the spline came out great!

Next, i used a beater chisel to get the glass hard goo off, then hand planed a trash bag full of shavings to get the whole thing flat. (Props to Farmer B for the #4 Stanley)

I took the Hondo shavings home and started my fire with them tonight. The unicorns blessed me with the trees of their homeland, and rainbow colored fairies danced around my wood stove as i lit her up.

Next, Eric and i cut the transom to shape. EEEEEEEEP! Three days of work invested in priceless, magical wood, and i had to shove it thru a bandsaw and cut a continuously changing bevel. Eric tilted the table, and i wrangled the slab of Hondo. 

I must say, it came out very well...

And alas, the unicorns frolicked and played amidst the beautiful, glowing trees of their mythical forest world.







Joyride

When is the last time you had a perfect day? Not just a pretty awesome day. And not a really badass, but i wish i hadn't forgotten my water bottle sort of day.

This is what a perfect February day in the Pacific Northwest looks like. At least to me, and about 40 people i know who don't have an awesome pal who needs help "borrowing a friend's boat".

The perfect day started with butterflies in the stomach, and thoughts of "So...I wonder HOW MUCH she leaks. She is an old wooden boat. Hmmm. Oh well, better get used to it..." and progressed to coffee and scones. Next came trailer wrangling, launching from a very shallow beach, and subaru near sinkings associated with such low launching angles. The low launching angle also accounted for Liz's wet jeans and socks, but forethought was on our side, and we both brought dry clothes in a fancy dry bag. Very high rent.

We left the dock in a peaceful 1kt breeze, got the boat rigged, and sailed around Port Hadlock harbor for our "shake down cruise". This also gave us time to gauge how much water was coming in at an alarming rate. We figured about 5 gallons every ten minutes was "normal", or at least why we both had enough sense to wear rubber boots. After pumping like hell, we agreed that we would not sail further away from land than we could swim in the 10 minute hypothermic window. Good Plan.

The wind picked up, offering some exhilirating small boat sailing, especially for Liz who's experience is mostly on tall ships. It takes about 2 days for a tall ship to lay over far enough to necessitate "going high", or shifting your weight to the high side of the boat. It takes about 2 seconds in a leaky 14' day sailer, so i hopped around a bit and sat on the rail as required to keep the slick side down while Cap'n Liz steered.

Our intention was to sail to Chimacum Creek for a picnic, but the picnic happened en route, punctuated by our pumping. The boat started taking up about halfway thru, and the leaking stopped considerably. So did the worrying about hypothermia. We made a landfall at the mouth of the creek, put on more clothes, and caught the fair wind back home. About 2 hours tacking out, and about 15 minutes wing and wing on the way back. Down wind sailing is also very useful for drying your wet Hello Kitty socks.

The wind really got rollin as we got back to the dock, and we managed to get her back on the trailer in a virtual seaway. We also managed to do it without getting the boat stove in, or the Liz sopping wet. (I'm too old for that shit, and aint jumpin' off a trailer into waist deep 50 degree water for anybody's boat).

We declared it the perfect day, and decided that after such an epic, we definitely deserved tortilla chips. We hit the local mexican joint, recounted the trials of our expedition, and made our way home.

Mt. Rainier came out to say "well done" and we rode off into the sunset, dreaming of our next voyage.

And this was 50 degrees in February. I can't WAIT for spring.

"Wow"

Its been a while since i actually talked about boats. Fortunately, the cold has subsided, and the rain, rain has gone to Spain. My feet, knees, and ankles have been unhappy for a few weeks due to some spraining and straining post V-town and the Cheech, and mobility has been painful and limited. Most nights were spent falling asleep in front of the wood stove with my feet in a tub of salty water. But today was sunny, 60 degrees, and I'm going sailing tomorrow. Actually, I'm helping someone "borrow a friend's" 14' lapstrake centerboard daysailer with serious leaks to go for a joyride. Glad I'm the dude with a 4wd 'bru and a trailer hitch. But, alas, tomorrow is another day...more on that later, hopefully.

Last week i switched shops to help my buddy Eric build his 12' lapstrake Grandy Skiff. Its just like ours without the centerboard and sailing rig. His shop is totally unheated except for a few sparingly used "torpedo" style propane heaters, thus helping to fulfill my "winter in the boatshop" dreams. Oh wait. That was until i lived in an icebox as a cripple for the last 2 weeks. Now i get to be cold all day at school, too. Hmmm. Not sure what i was thinking. (I wasn't thinking much, as i forgot my camera in the car for a few days. Pictures of keels and rabbets later...) 

Now i remember: the Jedi Master. A major benefit of the cold shop is that Ray Speck is the instructor. Imagine if Yoda actually spoke straight, was white,tall, and skinny. Years ago, Ray became one with the tool. He then became one with the wood. Now, we are fairly certain that he works the wood with his mind. The tool has become obsolete. This guy knows boats.

I was hacking the keel of our boat out of a 150 dollar piece of straight grained Alaskan Yellow Cedar and needed to draw the rabbet line. The rabbet is the groove along the keel that the planks fit into. (Start counting now. If someone gives you a nickel for every time i write rabbet in the next 9 months, you'll be rich.)Its also where boats always leak like hell, right before they sink to the bottom. So, I was pretty serious about making sure this line was transferred correctly from our lofting, via clear plastic (mylar), onto my grossly expensive stick of wood. So I'm ready to lay the mylar onto my stock and Yoda comes over and says,
"Yeah, it should go sort of like this..." and draws a perfectly curved line connecting the four dots i had plotted over the 10' length of my stick. I looked at him like he had just levitated an X-wing fighter. It was a perfect arc, and took him about 3 seconds. I drew the line on the other side pretty accurately, but vaguely bumpy. It only took me 5 minutes.

I then hand planed down the bottom of the keel, attempting to fair it out evenly, as it has about a quarter of an inch of rocker. Yoda apparently detected a disturbance in the force, so he came over to check on me. He leans over, sighting down my long, thin keel clamped in my bench vise.
"Oh man, you got a lotta 'wow' in there."
I said, "You mean, like, 'oh wow', that's crooked as shit?"
"Something like that. Sight down the keel, and knock of the high spots, but be careful, cause this is where you'll plane a flat spot into your curve."

Then he scampered off to Wow some other hapless fool while i sweated through the low spots. I then asked him to come back and check, cause i just couldn't see if what i was looking at was acceptable.
"I'm not sure what I'm looking at here, Ray. I'm looking for Wow and i just can't see it."
"You can't see it? Well that's cause it aint there!" I guess i got it.

Off he scurried, and i set the keel aside, confident in my leak proof bevels and the fairness of my wow-free curves. The next task on Monday will be to chase more rabbets on the keel batten, the last portion of the keel assembly.