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.

Sunday Morning Haiku

Towering Cedar
Snow swirls outside my window-
dancing like a child.



Tiny orange flame
quivers under my tinder,
praying the wet wood catches.



Rolling clouds, my breath
filling the wood stove like smoke.
trembling with the flame.



Shiny crescent falls
chopping, chopping--oh!
thumb flies free once more.



raindrops clinging to
the thin branch like silver seeds.
Each a tiny world.



Cedar spears the sky.
Grain a river of arrows.
Dreaming of boat wood.


The snow is gone. The rain has returned. Tomorrow, I finally get to build a boat.

The White Silence

"And men who have shared their bed with death know when the call is sounded. Mason was terribly crushed. The most cursory examination revealed it. His right arm, leg, and back, were broken; his limbs were paralyzed from the hips; and the likelihood of internal injuries was large. An occasional moan was his only sign of life.
No hope; nothing to be done. The pitiless night crept slowly by, — Ruth's portion, the despairing stoicism of her race, and Malemute Kid adding new lines to his face of bronze. In fact, Mason suffered least of all, for he spent his time in Eastern Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountains, living over the scenes of his childhood. And most pathetic was the melody of his long-forgotten Southern vernacular, as he raved of swimming-holes and coon-hunts and watermelon raids. It was as Greek to Ruth, but the Kid understood and felt, — felt as only one can feel who has been shut out for years from all that civilization means." 

Jack London
The White Silence

I finally got my Jack London Experience. No, i wasn't nearly killed by a falling cedar, or devoured by my dogs (though I've got a weather eye on Cap'n Wayne-o's dog, Honey) but i have been cooped up in the HH for about 5 days. Saturday and Sunday were a usual weekend of errands and volunteer boat work, Monday was a holiday, and Tuesday i felt like i was fighting off the flu, so i opted to take a sick day. You know i feel like crap when i don't want to build a boat. Turns out, it snowed 5 inches Tuesday, and school let out at 11am. Then it was cancelled today. And, unless the Pacific Northwest is hit with an unscheduled solar flare, it sure as hell ain't melting tonight.

I'm sure the ceiling is 6 inches lower than it was yesterday, the snow covered trees are considerably closer to the windows, and if i sit very still, all i can hear is the natural ringing in my ears. White Silence. Thank God "Redrum" hasn't crossed my mind till just now.

Also, i have reached a new personal cleanliness threshold.
This was definitively the longest i have ever gone in my entire life without a shower. 5 days. Strangely, i didn't smell that bad. Just a little like smoked, wet dog. Or, what i imagine smoked, wet dog to smell like. I took the 'bru out for a snowy test drive, as she's only ever seen an inch or two once in Knoxville. She goes great, but doesn't stop very well. I went to my pal Eric's house for a near spiritual showering experience. I was truly at one with every bubble, every drop of water. I'm fairly certain this was also the first time in a week my core body temperature has been over 45 degrees F.

My smoky dog aroma, as well as my sub-standard body temp can be attributed to the "real dry" half cord of wood i gave some mountainous jackass a hundred dollars for. This huge Craigslist lumberjack said this wood had been down for at least a year, and i believe it was: down in a snowdrift on the top of a mountain waiting for him and his deadwood permit to collect, cut, and split it. It's wet'r'n hell and I'm pissed. I have been feeding that damn stove kindling, not logs, but kindling every 20 minutes for 5 days.

I also never really worried about not having hot water, until i had to wash dishes when it was 39 degrees inside my house. I don't have a thermometer, but my toothpaste is nearly solid when it comes out of the tube in the morning; I'm guessing I'm close.


After the epic struggle for heat is over, the fire is actually burning, and the dishes are clean, its quite cosy in the HH. The "simple life" is simple, it just requires extremely repetitive tasks to meet basic survival needs. I guess that's what old school Zen masters call "chopping firewood and carrying water" as Farmer Brenden says. At least my water comes out of a faucet. And, I kind of signed up for this. I have always wanted to experience this kind of alone-mess, and I'm very thankful for the opportunity and wherewithal to intentionally carve out a space for it in my life.


I'm going to finish this post, and meditate on becoming one with the White Silence.

"V-town" and the "Cheech"

I know this has very little to do with boats, but this post will attempt to catalog the Taylor Family Christmas and New Year's misadventures in Ole Meheeco. I promise to throw in a couple of boat pictures just for good measure.

Atop the temple at Coba

Christmas break began with a Whiskey Plank party the last day of school, followed by a winter Solstice bonfire on the commune. The last plank of a boat is called the Whiskey Plank, the fastening of which is celebrated by pouring a shot of booze on the boat, and many, many shots into the builders. I opted for the sparkling cider that was offered to the underage students. This was wise, as i was flying out the next day, and planes already make me want to puke, no whiskey required.

I arrived in Baltimore around midnight to be welcomed home by a flurry of furry wiggling, sniggling, snaggling, waggling chaos. The puppy dogs were extremely glad to see me. I honestly thought they were going to lick my face off. It was touch and go for a minute there on the sidewalk outside. Christmas was packed with multiple present openings to meet every one's varied schedules, a trip to the emergency room at 2am for my father in law's kidney stone,(or "pet rock" as we began to call it), and a trip to the Maritime museum on the eastern shore.

Post licking nap

Then came the adventure.

Our 7 person party consisted of Sarah, her dad John and his friend Mike, her brother Drew, her sister Rachel, and Rachel's partner Mully. We were at the airport at 5:30, and in Cancun by mid morning. Plane travel was uneventful, and then we tried to claim our reserved rental car. I should say, we and every American tourist on the planet. It only took 2 hours, and only cost $50 dollars a day extra for the Mexican insurance they never mentioned. A sign of dastardly deeds and snaky dealings to come. We then changed the sole American 20 dollar bill sarah had, bought 2 potato chips and a bottle of water, and had enough left over for half a stick of gum. We decided we'd hit an ATM at a gas station and get pesos directly rather than paying astronomical rates at the airport, and bolted out of tourist hell.

Onto a barren, never ending stretch of highway through the jungle without a single gas station. Not one. Glad the rental car only halfway filled the tank for us. Bastards.

never ending jungle

We then stopped at a tourist info center with bathrooms, lazy policemen, dust, and a few languid iguanas. We asked where we could get gas. When i say "we" i mean "I" attempted (in my 4 year old child words) to ask where to get gas. They pointed at the cops lounging in the shade by their pimpin' police truck. I asked the cops, and they said to pull around. We did. Then they pointed at some highway workers  200 yards away. So we pulled over there. A dude with a plastic gas can sold us half a liter of gas for about 15 bucks. We had plenty of American cash, and sarah's left over pesos.
I said, "How much does it cost. A lot, huh?"
My pal grinned at me.
"Oh, yeeees."
I poor mouthed him and gave him a collection of pesos, and the 2 American dollars i had. I smiled, he smiled. I lied, he knew i was lying, poorly, and in Spanish. We got enough petrol to get down the road, and felt pretty lucky about it. We finally fueled up in V-town, on gas as well as beans, rice, and fried bananas.

Cathedral in Merida

First stop was Valladolid. Which is pronounced "vee-dilauded". Actually, it is not. This is one of the hundreds of bastardized Spanish pronunciations i heard over the course of our 10 days south of the border. Valladolid eventually settled out as "V-town" and Chichen Itza, the Toltec archaeological site became known as "the Cheech". Mully and i were the heavy hitters in the language department, and we decided that between the two of us, we made mostly a whole Mexican. I also realized that i have no neural receptors for context clues. A Mexican could be screaming at me to get out of the way of a speeding bus (which is not unheard of in the land of speedy, stinky diesel machines) and i would be conjugating the verb "mover" to try and determine exactly what they were saying, as the vehicle flattened me. Once i told a woman at the grocery store that Sarah needed something to make her hair more "lucky". I mixed up suerte and suave. Suave means soft. We were trying to buy conditioner. The woman looked at me like i was retarded, kindly and compassionate, but confused at my rare affliction. Mully asked the dude at the Oxxo, (Mexican 7-11) for "a bag of the water, hard, and very cold". He forgot the word for ice. They figured it out. They are quite good with the context clues.

The Cheech

Over the course of our visit to Valladolid, Merida, Playa Carmen, and Ux-mal we went on adventure tours which included zip lining, rappelling, swimming in underground rivers, as well as hanging out with real live Mayans. We also went snorkeling with big, scary-ass manta rays and barracudas, and ate dinner in a 4 star restaurant inside a cave. We saw thousands of Gucci princesses, and countless plastic breasts on the beach. I read an article in the newspaper about the gross number of tiny bikinis on in Playa Carmen. I can corroborate these allegations. Ridiculous. 

On New Year's Eve we couldn't figure out why the hotel next door drug about 100 sofas onto the beach and lit a throng of tiki torches. It looked like Survivor Manhattan Island. 10pm, no one's at the party. 11 pm, still no one. The ball dropped, and so did we, only to be awoken at 2 am to pumpin' bass and our new pal, affectionately termed "Dieter," strutting around the beach like a peacock in a white linen shirt and thong speedo. He and the posse rocked the Casbah till 8am the next morning. I must confess to fantasies of throwing a handful of sand onto the DJ's turntable and wandering off, claiming not to speak Mexicoan.

Fish Tacos after snorkeling

We went to the Cheech, Coba, and Tulum and saw many ruins from different periods, in different settings, in varying stages of reconstruction or dereliction. We were able to climb the temple at Coba, allegedly the last year anyone will be able to climb any of Mexico's archaeological sites. Because the world's going to end in 2012. The Mayans predicted it, and their calendar is pretty freakin impressive. So go climb the rock pile while you still can.

Swanky ocean front ruins

languid iguana

I made it back to Cancun in time to catch my plane, and spent about 16 hours getting back to my hobbit hole. It was a cold, snaggwaggle-less return, but i was very glad to be back. I had Sunday to take care of my beeswax and get ready for school to start. Day one was today, and I'm already lofting another boat. Kinda makes me wish i was haggling for gasoline with a gold toothed Mexican on the side of a jungle highway.