The Unlikely Boat Builder

Building the Steam Box

2012-02-08T22:06:00.000-05:00

One of the great mysteries of wooden boats, for me, is wood. And I don't think I'm alone. In fact, I think it's one of the main attractions of 'modern' boat building techniques, like glued lapstrake.

Glued lapstrake boats are built using plywood for planking, and laminated wood for structural parts like the stem, keel, etc. All held together by that boon to amateur boatbuilders: epoxy.

As expensive as marine plywood is, it's not hard to find, and you don't really need to know that much about the wood inside the plywood. If you buy certified marine plywood, you can leave all the wood knowledge to the experts. They will choose the right type wood, grade it to ensure quality, and glue it up properly.

Plywood is not wood, so much as it is an industrial 'material'. And that makes it reliable, consistent, and relatively easy to understand and work with. I would not have finished Cabin Boy so quickly without it.

On the other hand, wood -- real wood -- is complicated stuff. It comes in a dizzying number of species and subspecies, each with a slightly different set of properties. Someone once said there is such a variety of wood, that it is possible to find a wood with the perfect set of properties for any conceivable application. Because of modern transportation systems, it's possible to buy a much larger variety of wood that was ever available to our boatbuilding forefathers. Paradoxically, the old growth wood that our ancestors took for granted (and used in such profligate amounts), are for all intents and purposes, difficult or impossible to find.

Olde time boatbuilders in Maine, say, depended on a relative handful of woods that were inexpensive, easy to obtain, and locally grown. Builders got to know those woods intimately, first from their experienced teachers (i.e., the builder they apprenticed with), and then through long use. Their knowledge of wood wasn't wide, but it was deep. Uproot a Maine boatbuilder of the 1800s and move him to the Pacific Northwest, and he'd have a whole lot of learning to do, before he was comfortable with the new set of trees he had to work with.

Amateur boatbuilders of today are in a triple pickle. Compared with the olde time boatbuilders, their experience is rarely wide or deep; many of the species recommended by classic boatbuilding texts are difficult to find; and it's hard to know which of the many 'exotic' species available in specialty lumber yards would be the best replacement.

To compound the problem, professional boat builders, who presumably do know a lot about wood, are as rare as old growth forests. Unless you live in one of the few communities where boatbuilding is still alive, you can't just walk down to your local boatshop and ask someone with 40 years experience.

No wonder so many boatbuilders throw up their hands and use plywood!

That isn't an option for my boomkin, though. I need to use a wood that's both super strong and easy to bend. Tom Gilmer specified hickory for the boomkin. When I first started asking around about hickory, I got conflicting advice.

The sales guy at the premier wood boutique in this neck of the woods told me flat out that hickory wasn't used on boats. Period.

Online, people told me that hickory was super strong, but probably wasn't very good for steam bending. At least, they'd never heard of it being used for bending. That got me thinking about cutting up my lumber into thinner strips, and laminating, but I really wanted to try steam bending, so couldn't give up without doing a bit of independent research.

So I was pleasantly surprised to read this in Howard Chapelle's classic text, "Boatbuilding":

"There are a number of matters that deserve attention, however. First, the woods that respond to steaming and boiling; these are generally hardwoods. Where the curvature is to be very great, rock elm, ash, and hickory (true and pecan) are the best, as they withstand great deformation. Less extreme bends can be made with white oak, beech, birch, maple, and red gum. Douglas fir and yellow pine can only be steamed or boiled to very slight curves."

I was able to confirm hickory's bending qualities by consulting my new 'bible', the US Department of Agriculture's "Wood Handbook". This thick tome is packed full of technical details that you can trust. The problem is finding or understanding what you need to know, but I'm making slow progress.

So, I guess old Tom Gilmer knew what he was doing when he specified hickory.

Anyway, my steam bending plans are back on, and I'm proceeding ahead at full speed. First up, build a steam box!

Like all steam box builders, it seems, I wanted to spend as little money as possible on mine, yet end up with a box that could be used for many future projects. Cheap pine is a good material, because it's... well, cheap, and also because pine doesn't bend much when steamed. You wouldn't want to build your steam box out of hickory, for example.

I wanted to be able to stack wood on several levels, inside the box, so I drilled holes in the side for three sets of removable 'pegs', and added cleats on the bottom, to keep wood elevated off the bottom of the box.

Holes drilled in the sides for removable pegs,
cleats on the bottom.

I also wanted a door that was easy to open and close. I've been fooling around with basic joinery, lately, and have recently built a homemade router plane. So it seemed like a good idea to use dado joints for both the closed (non-opening) end of the box, as well as for a sliding door on the opening end.

Cutting the 'sides' of the dado with a saw

I only know how to do this with hand tools, so I'm sure there's an easier faster way to make these joints.

I did it by cutting the 'sides' of the dado with a handsaw (above), and then chiseling most of the waste out of the dado with a chisel.

Then I used my router plane to finish the dado. This is not a very good picture, but underneath the plane is a narrow, 'L' shaped blade that essentially scrapes the bottom of the dado smooth.

The blade is made out of a hex wrench that I ground into a blade and sharpened. It took a bit of work to do this on my hand-turned grinding wheel, but there was no risk of loosing the temper in the steel. It works like a charm!

Home made router plane and stopped dado.
Knots just make the job more fun!

The oak for the plane came out of that scrap piece of oak that I picked up at the Mystic boatshow (free!) this summer. Same piece that has produced a number of oak cleats and blocks. I'll be sorry when I've used up the last bit of it.

At any rate, with a bit of care and elbow grease, you end up with a pretty nice dado.

End board dado'ed into bottom board.

Skipping ahead a few steps, this is what the box looks like with the pegs installed, and everything held together by clamps, for a trial assembly. Obviously, the top is not installed.

Trial assembly, looking at opening end

This is the opening end. And this is how easy it will be to open.

Ta-da!

And this is what it will look like, more or less, with the top on.

With top on

But before I can screw the whole thing together, I must install some sort of fitting in the bottom, so that I can easily attach the steam hose. I plan to use a radiator hose.

So next time, we'll look at the 'plumbing' that goes into my steam box.

Can't wait to fire it up and get some hands on experience with steaming wood.

>>> Next Episode:

A Bigger Bumpkin

2012-02-04T10:27:00.001-05:00

I'll never understand why they just don't call them 'sternsprits', as in the opposite of 'bowsprit', but they don't. They call them boomkins or bumpkins or bumkins, which sounds a bit silly to me, but I don't get to make up these words.

Anyway, they are the spars that project from the stern of a yawl to provide a mounting point for the mizzen sheet block. Ideally, it should look something like the one in the Blue Moon's plans, a portion of which is reproduced below:

Bumpkin on Blue Moon's Plans

I've never liked the bumpkin that came with my boat. The plans call for a rather slender, probably varnished spar made from hickory. Since the bumpkin is not supported from above by a stay, it needs to be a strong cantilever if you want to be able to climb out on it to put on the mizzen sail cover, for instance.

The BM's builder built them out of laminated douglas fir, instead, making up for DF's reduced strength by keeping the bumpkin 2 1/2" in diameter for it's whole length. The result was functional, but not particularly attractive, at least to my eyes.

Original Bumpkin

Even worse, the bumpkin curves in so sharply that it passes over the back of the outboard, so it is impossible to raise the outboard out of the water. This problem was made worse when I replaced the bracket in the photo above with a heavy duty bracket big enough to support my lovely Yamaha 9.9.

It was so bad, in fact, that I couldn't even get the cover off to check the oil. Since I was doing more motoring than sailing on the ICW, this was a major pain. I liked to check the oil every few days, and I changed the oil every 500 miles or so. So I eventually removed the bumpkin.

Last summer, I never did reinstall the bumpkin, since I needed to raise the motor when moored, and because I did a lot more sailing, and lifting the outboard out of the water adds at least 1/2 knot while sailing.

In short, I need a new bumpkin that meets 3 requirements, in this order:

shaped so I can raise the outboard, or remove the cover
strong enough to climb out on, when necessary (at anchor, only!)
good looking enough to improve the BM's look, rather than detract from it

To meet the first requirement, the bumpkin needs to curve around the space needed for the raised outboard. The current boomkin curves sharply in. I want the new one to curve out, and then in.

To achieve this, I first laid out the desired shape using a batten.

Bumpkin curve laid out on lofting board

The vertical 4' steel ruler shows the centerline of the boat. The horizontal piece of oak shows the transom line. The short steel ruler indicates the line of the current boomkin. The batten shows the proposed shape of the new boomkin, which provides over 4" of extra space around the outboard, which should make it possible to raise it out of the water, without removing the boomkin.

For wood, I am going to try to use hickory, as specified by Tom Gilmer. Last weekend, I bought two live-edge, air dried planks, about 2" thick from a local 'sawmill'... actually, a landscaper with a small portable sawmill. My boat building friend Roger was kind enough to help me mill them up into 2 1/2" boards, about 1/2" thick.

Milled Hickory Boards ready for laminating.
Most of the dark areas are burn marks from the circular saw. This
is hard wood!

Unfortunately, the wood isn't of the highest quality. A couple of the boards have large knots that will probably make them unusable for this project, but I should have enough wood even without them.

However, I am not sure these particular boards will bend into shape without cracking. Rather than spending a lot of time theorizing over this question, I'm just going to build a steam box and give it a try. If they crack, they crack. I didn't pay much for them, so no great loss. I'll then have to decide whether to try a better grade of hickory, or perhaps some other wood, like white oak.

But that's getting ahead of myself. Over the next week or so, I'm going to build a bending form on the table above, and build a nice steam box, which I've been wanting to build, anyway. It should be rather interesting.

I'll probably be posting fairly frequently, and don't want to send out too many emails to my subscribers, so just check back every 2-3 days if you are interested in following this project. I'll send out one more email when the project is done, if you want to wait until then to catch up.

Spring is coming fast!

>>> Next Episode: Steam Box 1

Winter Cover

2012-01-23T12:25:00.003-05:00

Last winter was the first time I had to deal with a boat (no less a wooden boat) in wet storage. I only reached Huntington on November 24th, so I didn't have much time to prepare for the onslaught of the Winter of 2010 -- the year the word 'Snowmageddon' was coined.

I blogged about it at the time, and vowed to make a winter cover for this year, to avoid having to shovel the poor Blue Moon, as we did -- seemingly on a weekly basis -- last year.

Shoveling a foot of snow off the Blue Moon
Winter 2010

The plan was to use my mom's old sewing machine to make one of those lush, full-length covers you see on some boats. However, after pricing the amount of Sunbrella I'd need, and assessing all the work involved (sewing is NOT my favorite craft), I decided to try something a bit simpler.

I found a supplier of American-made, 18oz, treated canvas and purchased a 12x12 and 8x10 tarp from Amazon. The quality of the American Canvas tarp is really outstanding, I must say. The canvas itself is thick, heavy, and treated with something or other to make it water resistant. The seams are well sewn, and the brass grommets are heavily reinforced. It's weight, I thought, would prevent it from flogging itself to death, as I've seen happen with lighter material in heavy winds. And we do get some heavy winds here, in winter.

American Canvas tarp

The 12x12 tarp has 4 grommets on each side; the 8x10 has 4 grommets on the long side and 3 on the short. There were two problems to be solved:

how to fasten the edges of the tarp to the side deck
how to suspend the tarp over the boom, so as to best shed snow

The tarps were both long enough so that I could fasten the edges to the rail. However, when it came time to install the tarps, I didn't like the idea of screwing 6 eye straps (each side) into the Blue Moon's rail. First, I didn't think they would look very good, unless I could find nice bronze ones, perhaps. Second, they would be murder on the topsides of any boat we rafted up to. I'd also have to de-rig my running backstays, but that wouldn't be too much bother.

So, as a trial, I decided to tie the tarp down inside the rail. There were plenty of places to tie it down inside.

For ribs, to hold the tarp up and out under snow load, I decided to use a trick recommended on the Wooden Boat Forum, which is to use PVC pipe. I forgot to take any pictures of this, but you can see the one test 'rib' in the photo below. I wasn't sure what size pipe to use, so I started with just one 1" rib. If it works, I'll add more later.

So, after trying various configurations of the tarps, I ended up with Configuration #1, below. I wasn't 100% happy with it. Ideally I'd like to close that gap in the middle between the two tarps, but this arrangement gave good coverage for both the cockpit and the anchor well in the bow. I decided to give it a try for the first snow.

Configuration #1 - note hoop in middle

Another problem, obviously, is the opening at the back. However the bow is pointing to the west and our prevailing winds are from the southwest, so I was hoping this opening would not let too much snow in.

Oh, the bliss of ignorance!

Over stern

This week, in mid January, we finally had our first snow, about 2 inches. Quite a difference from last year, and I'm not complaining.

After 1st snow

For the most part, the snow is on the tarp, rather than on my paint, so that is a success... Here in the east, the snow is quite dirty. It looks white, but in reality, there is a lot of grit and grime embedded in the snow. When it melts, it leaves behind a dirty residue. The primary goal of the tarps is to keep the sun and grime off my poor paint. In this regard, I'll give it a grade of Not Bad.

Where's my hoop?

However, I did get a good dusting of snow in the cockpit, and I presume in the anchor well (I didn't climb onboard to check.) I'm not sure if it was the opening, or the fact that snow can blow under the edges of the canvas. I guess I should have gotten out of bed at 2am and gone down to the boat with a flashlight to see which way the snow was blowing in, but my alarm didn't go off (yeah, right!)

A bit of snow drifted inside

However, there certainly would have been more snow in the cockpit without the cover, so I'll have to also give this a Not Bad grade.

Less successful was the PVC rib or batten. The 1" pipe just wasn't strong enough, I guess.

As soon as the snow melts off (we're due for some rain tonight), I'm going to try reconfiguring the tarps using the information gathered with this trial. For Configuration #2, I'm going to try:

thicker PVC pipe for the ribs... the thickest I can bend
2 sets of ribs, instead of just one
close up the gap between the tarps
put something over the opening at the stern... probably one of my small, home-made tarps.

I'm still not keen on putting eye straps on the rail... that will have to wait to Configuration #3, at least.

If you have any clever ideas to share, particularly about how to hold the edges of the tarp down to the rail without a bunch of eye pads, I'd love to hear them.

Spring is coming, right???

>>> Next Episode: A Bigger Bumpkin

Mark III Block Update

2012-01-17T15:29:00.002-05:00

Time for another classic "How Not To" blog: an update on my Mark III block.

I built this block back in early spring and blogged about building it here. As you may recall, I called it the Mark III because it was the third version of a block cut from glued up maple stock. This block represented the culmination of a heck of a lot of work, and I was darn proud of it.

As reported, I put it into service as my main sheet block. As such, it was shackled to a pad eye on the bridge deck of the Blue Moon. It was more or less constantly exposed to the sun and elements, but because of it's position on deck, it never simply sat in water. If it got rained on, it dried out swiftly as soon as the sun came out.

I did not varnish the maple, just gave it the linseed oil bath much recommended on the Wooden Boat Forum.

For awhile, it looked pretty good.

Brand new block

But by the end of August, I had a bumper crop of mildew growing on the block. Quite disgusting.

After one summer in the sun and rain

Even worse, one of the glue joints had failed, although the rope strop held the block together so it didn't explode under tension.

Failed glue joint

Actually, the failed joint came as no surprise. As I've mentioned since building this block, I've been studying basic woodworking, including basic joinery. This joint breaks one of the cardinal rules of glue joints: never glue to end grain.

If you study the direction of the grain in the original glued up blank, you can see that the spacers -- the small strips of wood between the larger cheeks -- are glued on their end grain. They should have been turned 90 degrees, so the glue joint would have been long grain to long grain.

Ah well. Luckily I figured this out before I started building my Mark IV oak blocks, so I was more or less expecting the joints to fail, sooner or later. The fact that they failed within one summer shows how important it is to get the joints right.

Spacers are glued on end grain

The remaining mystery was, why did the maple block grow such a good crop of mildew, when the oak blocks didn't?

The photo below was taken after a summer of use in much the same environment. It looks very much the same as it did when it was brand new.

The oak block had the same linseed oil finish, and the same rope strop. What was the difference?

No mildew on the Mark IV oak block

I asked this question on the Wooden Boat Forum, and David from Harbor Woodworks in Portland, OR was kind enough to answer it.

The answer is that maple wood contains too much food (sugar, probably) for fungus to resist. With heat and a bit of moisture, they flock to the dinner table like deadbeat relatives at Thanksgiving.

Other woods, such as teak, mahogany, black locust, cherry, walnut, white oak, sapele, and khaya don't have this problem. Which explains why the oak blocks remained mildew free.

So, if the value of a project can be measured by lessons learned, I have to count my Mark III block project as a complete success!

So many lessons... so little time!

>>> Next Episode: Winter Cover

Getting Up In The World

2012-01-14T12:49:00.002-05:00

I don't know about you, but I have a particular talent for losing halyards. I don't know how it happens, but invariably it happens fast. One minute you have a perfectly good topping lift. The next you have a coil of rope in your hands and an empty sheave, far, far above your head, spinning in the wind.

Longtime readers of this blog will remember that Helena and I have already experimented with home-made bosun's chairs. It was so much fun that Helena insisted on giving it a go.

Home Made Bosun Chair
photo jalmberg

This will look dodgy to some people, but actually it's quite safe. The seat is a very sturdy plank, and the rope that holds it up is crossed and tied under the seat. There's some extra rope coiled up and tied under the seat to keep it from catching on things, so it looks a bit messier than it is.

In the impossible case of the seat cracking, the crossed line would hold the thing together long enough to get the victim -- I mean worker -- down safely.

Add a 6x block and tackle, a safety harness attached around the mast, one halyard for the chair and another for the safety harness. Toss in a healthy dose of common sense and you are in business.

The big problem with this approach is the 6X block and tackle you need to hoist a full grown person. Even on my short-masted boat, this means threading 200 feet of line through 2 triple blocks. And you can't just thread the line any old way. Because of friction, the line has to follow a specific route through the sheaves that I can't remember without pulling out the books.

In short, the bosun chair is the best way to get to the masthead, but it's an all day project. I wanted something simpler and quicker.

The inspiration for this project came from watching a fellow sailor climb to the top of his very tall mast on an ordinary household aluminum extension ladder. Well, duh! I thought. How simple is that.

That got me thinking of ladders, but I wanted something a little more portable. Something I could stow away down below in case of emergencies far from home and ladders. Then one day, I was thumbing through my "Ashley Book of Knots", and found exactly what I was looking for.

The solution was on the very last page of the book, in fact:

Rope Ladder from Ashley Book of Knots

I could just imagine myself as that happy tar, scampering up into the rigging...

The ingredients for this project are:

enough 1/2" line to go up and down the mast, with enough left over to tie securely. I started with 100' for my 27' mast, so I had plenty
enough oak dowel stock to make the rungs. I bought 3' lengths of 1" round stock from Home Depot and cut them in half to make 18" rungs.
tarred marline for the lashings. I used #18 tarred nylon since I have several miles of it lying around
a thimble for the top.

The rope and dowel are probably oversized for strength, but you want something thick enough to hold on to. The 1/2" line and 1" rungs felt just right for my particular death grip.

I started by lashing the thimble into the middle of the line, then pre-marked the position of the 15 rungs on both parts of the 'ladder'. To do this, you need to take as much of the stretch out of the line as possible. I tied the thimble to a work bench and stretched out the two parts on the floor, parallel to each other. Then I marked off the positions of the rungs, 18" apart, on both lines.

Laying the two lines out on the floor for marking...
The stretch needs to be taken out of both lines evenly before marking.

In retrospect, I'd probably reduce the rung spacing a bit -- perhaps to 14" -- but 18" is fine.

Once the rungs were marked off, it was time to start lashing. I tried various ways to do this, but the easiest was to suspend the ladder from the ceiling and work on it standing up.

The first couple rungs

At this point, some you are probably saying, Whoa! Lashings?!?! NO WAY I'M TRUSTING MY VALUABLE 200LB CARCASS TO SOME DANG LASHINGS!

Some simple math will show it's perfectly safe. #18 tarred nylon has a breaking strength of 170 lbs. If you put 10 turns in your lashings, as I did, the lashing should be good for 3400 lbs -- enough to hold even the loudest member at the yacht club bar. (Think about it... each turn is 2 strands... one on one side, and one on the other, so 20 strands all together.)

I forgot to take a picture of this, but to prevent the rung from rolling, I used a half-round rasp to cut a shallow, round notch in each end of the rung. The line is laid in this notch, and then the line and rung are lashed together with 10 good, tight turns.

Here are front and back photos of the lashings.

Back... you can sort of see how the line is recessed into the
smooth, round notch

Front. Notice how the lashings are crossed

I used a simple cross lashing that I also found in Ashley. I suggest you find a copy in the library and study his instructions which are better than I can provide here.

As a side note, I gave all the rungs several good rubbings with linseed oil before lashing them on. They don't really need much protection, but I like the smell and look of linseed oil.

After you've got a few rungs lashed on, it gets a bit unwieldy. I found it best to keep the part I was working on hanging as straight as possible, with the rest of it out of the way.

Plenty of light and a place to hang things is essential.
Note the tape on both lines showing the rung positions

About half-way through the project, I discovered a quick and easy way to make the loose end of the rung fast to the ladder while you lash the other end. I used the famous Constrictor Knot to lash one end in place temporarily (see photo above), then lashed the other side. It's fast and easy to tie and release the constrictor knot so you can use the same bit of marline over and over again. It's impossible to lash the rung unless the other end is held steady.

Left side temporarily held by constrictor knot,
while the other side is lashed

As my work companion Port shows, this job gets a bit tedious after awhile, so some music or your favorite podcast will help pass the time. (Starboard never hangs around when work is underway...)

By the time you are done, you will have perfected your lashing skills, and if you are like me, will be raring to try it out.

On a calm summer weekday (to minimize powerboat traffic), with Helena in the chase boat, and 911 programmed into speed dial on her cell phone, I proceeded to hoist my lovely ladder up the Blue Moon's mast.

The ladder hoisted and steadied by bridle to bow

Rigging the ladder took a bit of experimentation to get right. I suppose a fit, 20-something could just climb straight up it with no problem, but I wanted it to be a bit more secure than that.

First, I discovered you want the ladder to hang at a bit of angle from the mast. This makes it a lot easier and less scary to climb. Trust me.

Taking the stretch out of the ladder

You also want to tie it down tight, to take the stretch out of it. I tied the ends down tightly in my cockpit, one on either side of the boom.

Then, to put even more tension on the ladder, and to prevent it from twisting, I lashed a kind of bridle to the ladder and tied the bridle off on the Sampson post in the bow. See the bridle in the two pictures above.

With these precautions in place, the ladder was stiff and easy to climb, even for an old geezer like me.

Getting that halyard back up again

Even with all that tension, the ladder moves in towards the mast as you go up, so you can easily reach it from the ladder.

In the photo above you can see that the halyard has also stretched, so the head of the ladder is too far below the masthead. As you take the stretch out of the system, be sure to re-tighten the halyard so the head of the ladder ends up at the masthead. A lesson for next time...

And that was that! Now that I know how to rig it, the next time, it will take about 10 minutes to hoist and secure. Very salty looking and the envy of my yacht club.

>>> Next Episode: Mark III Block Update

Painting Stem-to-Stern

2011-11-23T14:29:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time, Zeus had a really bad headache. Zeus didn't make the connection, but his headache started about 9 months after he'd had his way with a dangerously clever goddess named Metis... and swallowed her.

Health insurance being hard to come by, even for the Lord of the Universe, Zeus turned to the wily Prometheus for medical advice. (This was before Zeus had enough of Prometheus's practical jokes and chained him to a rock.)

"Oh, wily Prometheus," Zeus moaned in agony. "Tell me what's wrong with my old head."

Not one to waste time theorizing, Prometheus whacked Zeus's head with the sharp end of an axe, and thus was Athena born, springing from Zeus's forehead with a shout.

This summer, I've also been giving painful 'birth' to an idea, buy whenever I started groaning about my poor over-worked brain, I remembered Zeus. At least it wasn't that bad!

As I think I've mentioned before, I've been working on my first iPhone app. Working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week... (No, I'm not exaggerating, Helena.) Slaving away, in fact... with nary an hour for sailing or boat building.

But I'm finally done! Sent it off to the elves at Apple for what they ominously call a 'Review', and now I'm twiddling my thumbs, waiting to see if they sink it with a list of required revisions, or let it sail through, as it deserves.

A perfect time, in other words, to catch up on my blog.

Not that I've been completely idle in the boat department. The Blue Moon absolutely needed a stem to stern paint job, which I was determined to finish before the snow flew, no matter what.

The last time the Blue Moon had seen a paint brush was back in Steinhatchee, FL, where Bob (previous owner) and Helena and I had given her a pretty good scraping and painting. But a lot of sun has beaten on her poor decks since then, and cracks had begun to appear.

I had used Interlux Brightside on the BM's topsides and deck -- a mistake I now think. Brightside is a great paint, but I now think it's better suited to stable fiberglass hulls. It's a bit too shiny and brittle for the Blue Moon's 3/4" plywood deck. I thought a more traditional oil-based paint would stay a bit more flexible, and thus crack less, so I decided to try the very traditional Kirby marine paint.

I'd already used Kirby paint on my spars, this spring, and discovered that it took forever to dry in cold, damp weather. So I picked a hot, dry weather window in the middle of summer to paint the deck.

But first I had to scrape and sand, of course. Did I mention I picked a hot, dry week? Luckily, the Ketewomoke Yacht Club has a beer machine with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ice-cold dollar beers. Something that the snooty yacht club down the harbor doesn't have (ha, ha!)

Of course, once you start picking at little cracks, you somehow always end up with big cracks... And yet another row back to the club for more beer...

little cracks become big cracks...

But eventually I came to the end of the scraping and painting, and if she didn't look as good as new, she sure looked good enough.

side decks painted

The Kirby paint has a nice, rich look to it (compare it to the Brightside on the top of the deckhouse), and Kirby sent me a bag of ground pumice to use for an anti-skid additive. Hard to get more primitive -- I mean traditional -- than that!

I used Brightside again on the more stable topsides because I still had a can left, and by the end of the summer, the good old Blue Moon looked pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

Why do I never have a good picture, when I need it?

I even found time to give her bottom a couple coats of paint.

Well, heck, she deserved it...

A lot easier job than the last time!

Today is the day before Thanksgiving. The Blue Moon is still swinging on her mooring in the middle of Huntington Harbor. I'm hoping to get a few more sails in before putting her to bed for the winter. With any luck, in fact, Helena and I will be out tomorrow for a celebratory sail.

What are we celebrating?

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, my birthday, I sailed into Huntington Harbor, home from my long voyage up the coast.

Somehow, it seems so long ago... almost part of the mythic, if not very heroic, past...

Where does the time go, Prometheus? Oh... still chained to that rock, eh?

I've got another big summer project to report on... one that really helped me get 'up' in the world. More on that in a couple days. Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving!

>>> Next Episode: Getting Up In The World

Tail Block Takes Shape

2011-08-07T17:16:00.002-04:00

Dang! I don't mind making mistakes once, but after I've learned a lesson -- and even blogged about learning it -- it's quite annoying to make it again.

You will note that I very carefully marked the center of the sheave axle on my design. You can't see it in the the photo below, but I had also marked the location of the axle on one of the cheeks. But, while playing with the pieces, and noticing that I could make the block a good 1/4" smaller by pushing the spacers closer together, I moved the location of the sheave just a bit. So my carefully preserved mark was no longer useful.

Even worse, by moving the spacers together, the sheave needed to be placed just so. There wasn't enough room left inside the block for any error.

I said last time that I noticed this error right away, but now that I'm looking at the photos below, I can see that I gave myself too much credit. Clearly I was far too focused on carving my beautiful new block into shape to notice that I'd forgotten to drill the hole for the axle. Ignorance is bliss, so I will carry on in the same spirit for a bit longer...

After giving the epoxy a good 24 hours to dry, I trimmed up the new block on my trusty (and rusty) bandsaw. I was immensely pleased to compare it with my Mark I block. Clearly, progress had been made.

Rough trimming on Bandsaw

The only shaping I planned to do was to round the corners off, all around. This block would live under my boom, so I didn't want any sharp corners that could dent my skull. Again, there might be a better way to do this, but my new sanding board made quick and easy work of the job.

There must be a more scientific way to do this, right???

In the process of doing all this sanding, with many different grades of sand paper, I ended up with a pile of full sheets, half-sheets, and slightly used sheets of sand paper. Sorting through the pile to find the right size and grade needed quickly got old, but suddenly all those years of working in an office came in handy.

I found an old accordion file, made up a few labels with '60', 80', '100'... all the way up to ''400', and, voila, created a very convenient sandpaper file system. You have no idea how happy this little 'invention' made me. Quite embarrassing.

A brilliant idea, if I do say so myself!

Right around that happy moment, I must have discovered my missing axle hole. It is not recorded what I said, but I'm pretty sure it was something salty.

At any rate, there was nothing for it but to eyeball the location, and try my luck with my drill press. I must have been due a bit of luck, because, as you can see from the photo below, I was dead on.

Final check for fit before assembly

Then it was time for the fun bit -- finishing. I had been using the procedure much loved on the Wooden Boat Forum, which is to plunge the block into a linseed oil bath and leave it there for a few days. But I'd been reading an excellent basic woodworking book, Anthony Guidice's The Seven Essentials of Woodworking, which recommended a different procedure that made a lot of sense to me.

In short, you essentially paint the piece with three coats of linseed oil. For the first coat, you thin the linseed oil with mineral spirits. The second and third coats are applied full strength. Let dry for 24 hours between coats.

Since I hadn't seen any evidence that linseed oil 'penetrates' the wood if left in a bath for several days, I reasoned that the oil bath was equivalent to one coat. Three coats sounded better, so I figured it was worth a try. I'll try to remember to blog about the results in the fall.

At any rate, there is nothing more fun that applying that first coat of linseed oil, and seeing the color spring out. I also love the smell of linseed oil. Odd, I know!

The first of 3 coats of linseed oil... what a color!

After three days, it was time to turn to rope work. I wanted this block for a kind of tail block, under my boom. It would be an important part of my outhaul/reefing tackle, as illustrated in Tom Cunliffe's book.

For the block end, I just spliced in an eye and secured the block in the eye with tarred nylon. Easy peasy.

For the hook end, I had to learn a new splice -- the shackle splice -- but the only tricky bit was the crown knot that starts the splice off. I used the description in Brian Toss's The Complete Rigger's Apprentice: Tools and Techniques for Modern and Traditional Rigging, page 82.

The result looked pretty rugged to me. The little tufts are just the ends of the splice. I now prefer to leave the ends just cut off, rather than melting them, as some people do. I don't like the feel of the hard little ends, and don't see how they make a splice any stronger.

Assembled block with tail.

Here's a close-up shot of the block. Notice how the sheave is recessed into the bottom spacer. The opening is plenty big enough for 3/8" line, and would handle 1/2" line in a pinch.

These are, by far, the best glue joints I've ever made, and the sheave fits perfectly into the slot. Practice makes perfect?

Finally, some joinery I can be proud of.
Perfect glue joints, perfect fit.

A final comparison with the Mark I block... No comparison!

Size comparison -- a big improvement!

And here's the tackle installed under the Blue Moon's boom. The Blue Moon's main is small enough so I only need a 2:1 tackle, instead of the 3:1 shown in Tom's book.

With 2 oak cheek blocks on either side of the boom for the reefing tackle, and the new outhaul tackle, all run with 3/8" line, I now have total confidence in my sail controls. Unfortunately, it's August on Long Island Sound, and the wind is on summer vacation. I went out in the biggest wind we've had for awhile, but it was only 20 knots... not much of a test. Will have to wait for October or November to do a real test. Stay tuned...

Installed on the boom as part of the outhaul tackle.
I must remember to untie my reef points after lowering sail... I always forget.

If you remember the oak boom cleat I made a while back, here it is, an important part of the system.

Tied off to oak boom cleat...
Strong!

And that's it! My next project on the Blue Moon is to repaint the deck. Painting isn't very exciting, but you never know when you're going to learn something new...

>>> Next Episode: Painting Stem-to-Stern

Micro Joinery

2011-08-07T10:51:00.006-04:00

I started off yesterday by lamenting my lack of woodworking knowledge. This is no joke. I have done just enough woodworking to realize how little I know, and how difficult it will be to accumulate the kind of experience that 'real' woodworkers have.

For instance, in building my first few blocks (including more than a few that ended up on the scrap pile), I discovered how difficult it is to keep a flat surface flat while sanding or planing it. No matter how careful I was, I invariably ended up with a rounded surface (high in the middle with low spots on the edges) or a slanting surface (higher on one end than the other), or some even more complexly distorted surface. Anything but flat!

This makes it all but impossible to make good glue joints, which demand two flat surfaces, face to face.

I had been using thickened epoxy to fill the rolling gaps between the spacers and cheeks, but that kind of slap-dash approach didn't seem right to me this time... Surely it wasn't impossible to get two small bits of wood to match up perfectly. I was determined to discover this woodworking secret.

However, the first challenge was to extract two rough cheeks, and two rough spacers -- with the right grain dictions -- from the slab of white oak on my work bench. This wasn't too difficult. The slab was 10/8" thick, so I thought I could cut three 3/8" thick cheeks from one piece, allowing some loss from sawing.

I didn't take photos of this process, but here is the result: a roughly-square block, after the one 3/8" slice has been already been take off on the bandsaw. It only remains to re-saw this into two pieces that will become the cheeks.

A roughly square block

Even my less-than-professional quality bandsaw (that's putting a kind spin on it) is more than capable of doing the job quickly and neatly.

Re-sawn into two cheeks

I also cut out two spacers of the right size and grain orientation. Because I'd made my previous blocks from finished boards, the grain in the spacers always had to be up and down. This created an end-grain glue joint, which as even I know, is almost the worst kind of glue joint (the worst being end-grain to end-grain.)

From the photo below, it looks like these roughly cut pieces are already flat. They are in fact close, but being freshly sawn, they need to be sanded smooth before assembly. This is where my previous efforts had turned nearly-flat bits of wood into smoothly-humped bits of wood. Very frustrating.

Spacer cut for a long-grain to long-grain glue joint

To solve this problem, I build a kind of sanding platform out of a piece of marine plywood and a strip of oak. I varnished it to make it easy to stick tape to (and because I think varnishing is fun.)

My flat-sanding jig

My basic idea was to tape sandpaper to the platform, using double-sided scotch tape, and just rub the piece on the flat sand paper. The theory was it would be impossible to round off the edges using this simple technique, and in fact, it worked perfectly!

The key to flat sanding: move piece, not sand paper!

The purpose of the oak strip was to make it easy to sand small pieces, like the spacers, while keeping the faces 90 degrees to each other. This was another problem I'd had... when sanding with a sanding block, it is all to easy to end up with slanting faces.

By holding the piece against the rail and rubbing the piece up and down the rail, I was able to sand the piece while keeping the edges square to each other.

Keeping small pieces square

Finally, it's important that the two spacers be the same height, for obvious reasons. I'd already ruined several spacers by sanding a bit off this one, then a bit off the other, trying to make them the same size, but ending up with two toothpicks.

By holding the two spacers pressed together, it was easy to sand them both at the same time, thus guaranteeing two spacers of the same height.

Two spacers exactly the same size! Wow!

I'm sure real woodworkers have a more efficient way of doing this, but this approach didn't require the purchase of any new equipment (I'm determined to make these blocks for as nearly free as possible) or sophisticated techniques. With some double-sided tape and various grades of big-box sand paper, I ended up with smooth, square, and flat cheeks and spacers.

Whew!

Here's how the bits look when laid together for fit. I discovered I could actually make the block a bit smaller than I had planned, so the cheeks are a little long.

I cut the recess in the bottom spacer and the rope-groove in the top spacer using my micro-plane rasps, as shown in a previous blog post.

How the pieces fit together

By this time, I had a lot of work invested in those small pieces, so I was strangely reluctant to glue them together, less I make some fatal mistake. But after much dithering, I gathered my courage and took the final step.

The moment of truth...

And here is the assembly, glued up. It's really difficult to put clamps on such a small assembly without moving something out of line, so rather than use clamps, I just put a 5 lb. pig of lead on top of the whole thing (with saran wrap in-between). This gives moderate clamping pressure, without the risk of ruining the assembly at the last moment.

At least, that was the theory. Only time would tell. But as I was gazing admiringly at this tiny bit of woodwork, I realized I'd made one potentially serious mistake...

>>> Next Episode: Tail Block Takes Shape

Mark III Block

2011-08-06T11:16:00.004-04:00

The whole theme of this blog is "an unhandy man's attempts to build and sail small wooden boats", so my latest revelation is nothing new, but every time I re-discover this fact, it strikes me with increasing force: boat building is woodworking.

And I know so little about it.

For example, I've set my heart of building a new set of wooden blocks for the Blue Moon. They look simple, but building a block involves a vast array of skills, from wood working, to choosing the right goops, to intricate rope work.

My first attempt was functional, but a bit too big and clunky to actually use on a small boat, so I started on the block-maker's perennial quest to build smaller...

Mark I Block

The Mark II block used the same size blank as the Mark I, but I trimmed various bits off to make it smaller. The result was small enough to actually use, and it is currently installed on the Blue Moon as my main sheet block.

Mark II Block

But, after completing the Mark II block, I knew enough to realize that the blanks I'd been cutting off from the 'master', below, were too big. I hated to throw away the wood and work, but I needed to try something different to get the block I wanted.

'Master' for Mark I and II blocks

I also didn't like the maple I'd used to build my first 2 blocks. Call me shallow, but I just didn't like the way they looked. In my mind, blocks should be darker in color, with more pronounced grain. More meaty looking, in other words.

In the interim, I'd also built a set of oak cheek blocks. I loved the look of those, so was pretty much fixed on building my next block from oak.

Luckily, I picked up a beautiful scrap of white oak at the Wooden Boat Show in Mystic this year. The cost was right -- free -- and I could practically see a complete set of oak blocks and cleats hidden beneath it's rough, grey surface.

The raw material -- white oak

The shop supervisor, Port (you'll never guess our other cat's name), was skeptical at first, but after I'd planed off the top layer, she was pleased to see the gleaming color and grain of oak. So I had the raw materials for my project. Now I just needed a better design.

I had a number of new ideas for the Mark III:

The cheeks would be thinner. The 3/4" thick cheeks on the Mark I and II blocks were total overkill.
The spacers would have the right grain orientation, so the glue joints would be long grain to long grain, instead of long grain to end grain.
The whole block would be scaled around the size rope I planned to use: 3/8".
The sheave would be recessed into the bottom spacer.

Re: point #4, I'd had the chance to inspect a number of blocks at Mystic, and discovered one old relic that had an important design feature: the sheave was recessed into the bottom spacer a bit. Not enough to weaken the spacer, but enough to make the block a bit smaller. I liked that idea.

I decided not to do too much shaping of the cheeks, as I'd done with the Mark II. All that trimming and smoothing is quite time consuming and I was hoping the new block would be small enough, even if I didn't drastically slice it's corners off.

With all that in mind, I drew up the following design:

Mark II design

The dotted lines indicate where the spacers are cut away for the sheave (below) and the line (above). If this is hard to visualize, don't worry, there are plenty of pictures coming.

I had my oak, my design, and a bit more experience than the last time, so I was ready to go.

Now, if only I could figure out how to cut the basic pieces out of that rough oak plank...

>>> Next Episode: Micro Joinery

Beefy Boats

2011-06-28T15:25:00.004-04:00

Not much time for blogging, lately -- I've actually had to work for a living this spring, dang it! Luckily, I've been doing some iPhone/iPad software development, which is almost as interesting as building and sailing small wooden boats.

Almost.

I've devoted my few spare hours to beefing up the Blue Moon's running-rigging. The goal is to make all the working bits both strong and functional. Since I've never done anything like this before, its been a voyage of discovery, captained by the great Tom Cunliffe via his book Hand, Reef And Steer.

The picture below (from Google Books) shows the general direction I've been aiming at.

From Tom Cunliffe's "Hand, Reef, and Steer"

I was never happy with the Blue Moon's reefing gear, which always seemed a bit flimsy for her big mainsail. It never actually failed on me, but during a blustery night passage on the west coast of Florida, it did worry me, so I've been looking forward to beefing it up.

Tom's basic idea is to use two cheek blocks, one on each side of the boom. The reefing line goes up through one of the blocks, through the reef cringle in the sail, and back down through the other block.

The advantage is that you can always work on the windward side of the boom, by dead-ending the leeward end of the line. Not only is it easier to work on the windward side, the sail doesn't get pulled down into the block, as it can when you are pulling down on the leeward side.

It's all explained in Tom's book, which you can sample above. A must-have book for traditional boat lovers.

Of course, I'd never made a cheek block, but it didn't seem too difficult, so I just jumped in with both feet. Always the best way to learn something, I think!

I started by checking out the only cheek blocks I could see with my own two eyes: the reefing blocks on the Christine -- the historic boat I volunteer on (when I have the time!)

Like most cheek blocks I've seen in pictures, hers have no inside cheek -- the pin goes right into the boom.

I didn't like the idea of drilling a hole -- even a shallow hole -- in my boom, so I decided to use a thin, but strong, inside cheek. To get it, I had to tackle my very first re-sawing job!

Re-sawing is cutting a thicker board to get two thinner boards. I wasn't sure my bandsaw was up to the job, but in fact, it had no problem cutting through the white oak:


My first re-sawing attempt (all photos jalmberg)

Here below are my 4 cheeks: two fat outside cheeks, and two thin inside cheeks.

The cheeks

The next problem was the spacers. I'd already figured out how to do this. Just cut out the 4 spacers (for two blocks), clamp them together, and both sides until they are all the same thickness.

Getting all the spacers the same height

Then it was time to pull out the epoxy and glue up the blanks. I used thickened West Systems epoxy, again left over from Cabin Boy.

The only thing tricky here is to not clamp them too hard, and to clean up the dripped and squeezed out epoxy *before* it dries. Particularly on the inside, where it is mighty difficult to get off, after it dries (ask me how I know that.)

Note the plastic wrap to keep everything from sticking together.

Glued up blanks, plus an over-eager sheave

My first plan was to shape the cheek blocks into ovals, but after making the rough cut, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have enough 'meat' left on the ends for 4 screws. It looked fine on the drawings, and maybe there was enough room -- just -- but it didn't look right to me, so this one ended up in the Unlikely Boat Builder's Museum of Instructive Failures.

I glued up another blank to replace the failure.

First attempt... Fail!

Ah well. That experience taught me a good lesson: drill your holes before starting to shape the block. That will help tame your natural eagerness to trim, trim, trim.

Drill the holes, first... Drill the holes, first... Drill...

Even without much trimming, the finished block looked pretty nice, I think. Here are all the bits and pieces cut out and finished, just before assembly.

To cover the end of the pin, I used one of those Canadian dimes with the Bluenose Schooner on the reverse side. Sorry, Canada! It's your fault for minting the perfect coin for the job!

Ready for assembly

I've included two goops in this photo for a good reason: I have suddenly awoken to the importance of goops in a proper boat shop.

First, I must take back my previous 'idea' about using linseed oil as the main lubricant in my blocks. This, in hind sight, was a pathetically naive idea that someone should have called me on. Unless you want to oil your blocks every few days, you need to grease them with a heavy-duty water proof marine grease. The stuff they use on boat trailer axles will do fine. You can find it in any automotive store.

Second, I am done, done, done!, with those modern bedding compounds (3M 4200, etc.) that come in tubes. Sure they work great, but I never need more than a dab of the stuff at a time. There's nothing more aggravating than to open up a $17 tube of 4200, knowing that the next time I need it, the whole tube will be a solid mass, no matter how tightly I close it up and wrap it.

The traditional bedding compound is slower to dry, but stays fresh in the can for at least a year, I'm told. A dab here, a dab there, and you only pay a few cents per dab, rather than $17/dab.

An expensive lesson that took me far too long to learn.

Anyway, here are the two assembled cheek blocks, glistening with their linseed oil finish.

The final products

And here they are, bedded down and screwed into the boom, one on each side. I had a chance to try them out the other day, and I must say they made the job of reefing so much easier, and a lot more fun!

As I said, you dead-end the leeward end of the reefing line with a figure-8 knot, and then haul down on the windward end. I can either tie the end off on my new, oak boom cleat (not in photo, alas), or in a real blow, I could use the outhaul tackle to pull it down.

Beefy rigging system, installed on boom

So, another small improvement, done!

Speaking of beefy boats, I spotted a very nice wooden boat in Huntington Harbor the other day, and rowed over to say hello to her owner, Bob.

She's a John Atkin "Vixen", and a real beauty she is. Of course, William Atkin had his first boat shop in Huntington, a long time ago, so Bob and I had a great chat about Atkin history.

Another Vixen just completed a circumnavigation, with two small children onboard, and I was happy to speak briefly with her busy young owners at the Wooden Boat Show, this weekend. A beefy boat, indeed.

A real beefy boat -- John Atkin's "Vixen"...

...at home in Huntington Harbor

Next Episode: Mark III Block

How Big A Boat?

2011-05-20T11:53:00.004-04:00

One of the eternal questions that every sailor faces is, how big a boat should I own?

Generally, the answer is, as big as you think you can afford (and maybe a bit more!)

This makes sense for plastic boat sailors, whose boats are essentially frozen in time, but I think there's a better formula for wooden boat builder/sailors: small enough so that you can improve the boat a bit faster than it deteriorates.

This means, not so small that its too easy to keep the boat in pristine condition (what's the fun in that, for a boat builder?), and not so big that you can't keep up with both basic maintenance and interesting improvements.

Thus, optimal boat-size must depend on the owner's time, resources, and skill. Only time will tell if the Blue Moon is the right size boat for Helena and me, but so far, we're doing all right.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, my focus this spring has been on improving and strengthening the BM's running rigging -- the lines (ropes) and other equipment used to control her sails.

Among other improvements, I've replaced her motley assortment of old and worn-out lines with new ones. In particular, I have banned all those colored yacht-braids that grated on me all last summer. I know they are strong and popular, but they just don't go with the BM's traditional look.

Yacht Braid

I've replaced them with Hempex -- the best, I think, of the new traditional-look synthetics. It's strong, feels good in the hand, and is easy to splice. And cheaper!

Hempex 3-strand

I've also been building blocks to replace the plastic ones that also don't quite fit the BM's look.

I should say, I've been learning to build blocks, because block building turns out to require a vast array of skills. But with some help from the guys on the WoodenBoat Forum, and the amazingly useful Ashley's Book of Knots, I'm gradually 'getting it'.

Version 1
Grommet too long; thimble too big/ugly; seizing all wrong.


Version 2 Grommet seized under tension -- better, but still too long.

Version 3
Grommet shorter, but still a bit too long; better thimble,
'interesting' seizing.

Version 4
'Mark II' block (rounded, instead of square), grommet finally the
right size, vastly improved seizing.

I was happy enough with the 'Mark II' block that I installed it on the BM's deck as my main sheet turning block.

I've also been completely replacing the absolutely wretched and dangerous hardware installed on the BM's boom for the outhaul and reefing lines. That re-fit deserves it's own blog post, but I'm so excited about one part of it that I must mention it today: wooden cleats!

When I was painting my spars, I removed all the old hardware and vowed not to reinstall any of it. But what to replace it with?

One thing I needed was a boom cleat for the outhaul tackle -- just a short but sturdy cleat that would fit on the boom. I removed an old plastic one that was covered with paint: serviceable but ugly. I looked at bronze ones, but they were a bit pricey.

I kept reading that wooden cleats were strong, cheap, and easy to build, so decided to give it a try.

I started by making a pattern. I had no idea what I was doing, so just started with some basic shapes. The two circles are 1/2" in diameter -- chosen so that the cleat would be able to handle 3/8" rope with no problem.

Cleat Pattern

I cut the cleat out of some scrap wood left over from Cabin Boy's stem.


Pattern laid on stock

I left the circles un-cut-out on the pattern so I could mark the center of the holes, accurately.

Before cutting out the cleat, I drilled the holes on my incredibly useful drill press. How did I ever live before getting it?

Pre-drilling holes

After that, it was fairly simple to cut out the pattern on my bandsaw, although it would have been almost as simple to cut it out with a handsaw.

Cut-out blank on left; shaped and sanded cleat on right

The stock was actually thick enough so that I ended up with two blanks after cutting out the pattern, which is handy.

Once the blank was cut out, it was again fairly easy to round the edges with a variety of rasps, including my micro-plane rasps, which I still love.

A bit of sanding, and a coat of linseed oil and, voila!, a beautiful looking boom cleat!

Oiled cleat before drilling mounting holes

This cleat was so much fun to make that I've decided to replace all the plastic cleats on the Blue Moon with lovely oak ones.

And that's what I mean by 'gradual improvements'.

>> Next Episode: Beefy Boat

Department of 'Duh!'

2011-04-18T14:17:00.011-04:00

Last week I called my new Delta drill press the "Pride of the UnlikelyBoatBuilder's Power Tool Fleet". That got me thinking, because the pride of any boat builder's tool fleet should be his or her bandsaw. It's the perfect tool for many jobs, and practically indispensable for cutting out those long, curvy planks.

I say practically indispensable, because I did indeed dispense with my bandsaw when cutting Cabin Boy's planks, for a variety of reasons.

And lately, my bandsaw and I have not been on speaking terms. Maybe it was me dissing it in a public forum, or maybe the poor machine was just getting old, or maybe I just didn't know how to use it, but, bottom line, it would not cut a straight line. No matter how carefully I tried to guide it, it would veer off at an angle, usually ruining whatever piece I was working on.

Eventually, in frustration, I banned the former Pride of the Fleet to a dark corner of my shop, until it repented the error of its ways.

Then I started my wooden block project.

Now, making wooden blocks is pretty complicated, as we shall see, but I was making good progress with a Japanese pullsaw that made beautiful cuts exactly where I wanted them.

But a little voice kept nagging at me, saying, "Wow, this would be a whole lot easier with a bandsaw!"

I decided to give old Buff one more chance.

Cutting Cabin Boy's Transom, on a happier day, long ago
photo jalmberg

My bandsaw, by the way, is an old Buffalo 3-wheeler. Helena picked it out of a neighbor's garbage, and I fixed a switch, bought replacement blades, and generally cleaned it up. Once refurbished, it worked reasonably well. Until it turned ornery on me.

After moving it to my work bench, I tried a few test cuts on scraps of 3/4" maple.

Once again, it made crooked cuts, bogged down, and even burned the wood, producing clouds of smoke.

"What a piece of junk," I thought.

Then I had another thought... what if?

I'd had a whole year's experience with woodworking since banning my bandsaw. That included lots of experience with dull tools. Could it be that simple?

Since the Buffalo uses an odd-size blade, I'd had to buy replacements from a shop that made them up special. It was such a hassle that I'd bought 3 of them, just in case I had to replace the first one.

Just in case...

I stripped off the old blade, replaced it with a brand new one, adjusted the tension, and tried another test cut.

This time, the old workhorse cut through that maple like it was made of butter. No smoking, no bogging down, no crooked, veering cuts.

That's when the title for this week's blog popped into my head: The Department of 'Duh!'. Did I think bandsaw blades were immortal? What was I thinking?

It just proves that some lessons are worth learning over and over again. In this case: It's a poor worker who blames his tools.

So old Buff is back on his pedestal: Pride of the UnlikelyBoatBuilder's Power Tool Fleet, once again.

Sorry Delt.

I'm on a mission to upgrade the Blue Moon's running rigging with stout, salty-looking gear. As I have time and money, I'm replacing yacht braid with 3-strand, and plastic blocks with lovely wooden ones.

That's the vision, anyway. I'd never made a wooden block, but I was ready to try.

I used as my guide, Derek Water's tutorial on Duckworks.com. I won't repeat the tutorial here, but will talk about troubles I ran into, and one significant addition I made.

I started with the sheaves, because they seemed to be the most difficult bit.

As Derek suggests, I cut out the blanks using my drill press and the best hole cutter I could buy at my local Big Box -- a Milwalkee.

It turned out beautifully machined blanks. Unfortunately, the pilot drill was only 1/4" and I needed a 3/8" hole for the axle. Even with a drill press, my first attempt to expand the axle hole ended up slightly off-center. I eventually mastered the trick, but have ordered a 3/8" drill bit with 1/4" shaft, so I can drill the right size pilot hole at the same time I make the blank.

It was much easier, and more fun, to cut the groove in the sheave. As Derek suggests in his tutorial, I turned the sheave with my drill press and cut the groove with a Microplane rasp. It took less time to do it than to explain it.

Sheaves: generations 1-4
photo

Again, as Derek suggested, I glued up a long box, from which blanks could be cut. This box is big enough for 10 blocks. I used hard Maple, and epoxy.

Glued up stock for 10 blocks
photo jalmberg

The trickiest part was making up the spacers -- the short strips of wood between the cheek blocks. These spacers need to be the right size -- just a bit thicker than the sheaves -- and dead flat.

It took me several tries to get these spacers right. In fact, they were so hard to make that I stopped long enough to get old Buff working again.

In the end, I cut them a bit over-sized in the bandsaw, then clamped them together, and planed them to the right size as a unit. That way, they both ended up the same size.

Making an even set of spacers
photo jalmberg

Once the long box was glued up, I cut off a blank and began shaping it.

First, I used the bandsaw, freehand, to trim off the edges.

One blank, sawed off from the mother ship,
edges trimmed off
photo jalmberg

Then I used a block plane, rasp, and sandpaper to smooth and round the edges. I used several sized Microplane rasps to cut the various grooves needed for the strop and line.

I'm sure there's a scientific way to do this, but I just did it by eye. It wasn't hard.

Smoothing corners; cutting grooves
photo jalmberg

Once done with the shaping, I dropped the sheave and shell into a bath of boiled linseed oil and left them overnight to soak. That's not really long enough, but I was in a bit of a hurry.

Linseed Oil Soak
photo jalmberg

They emerged looking smooth, oily, and gorgeous.

Liberally oiled block
photo jalmberg

Here's me, showing off my product photography skills. All the bits, ready for assembly:

Pieces of Block before Assembly
photo jalmberg

I mentioned awhile back that I'd mastered the art of grommet making -- one of the many small skills you need to make rope-stropped blocks. Again, I recommend Brian Toss's tutorial in "The Rigger's Apprentice" if you haven't learned how to make these, yet.

It took me several tries to get the seizing right. The trick, as I learned from experienced block makers on Wooden Boat Forum, is to seize the block and thimble in the strop under a full working load. This takes any stretch out of the strop so the block doesn't pop out at midnight in the middle of a gale.

I put tension on the strop by stretching it as tight as I could between two trees, using another block and tackle. I had at least a few hundred pounds of tension on it.

You wouldn't think you'd be able to draw the two parts of the strop together with a bit of waxed twine, but it was fairly easy. I wound the seizing twine on a primitive shuttle (laying on ground in photo below.) The shuttle made it easier to make all the wraps, and allowed me to haul the racking turns good and tight.

The strop ends up hard as a rock.


Seizing under pressure photo jalmberg

And here's my first finished block. Well, I say finished, but its really not. I've decided the strop is too long, and I want to use a round thimble, rather than a teardrop shaped one.

But that's for another day. For now, I'm going to say 'good enough'!

(almost) finished block
photo

In case you are wondering, the wooden sheave turns beautifully on the bronze pin. I'm sure it will require a bit more maintenance than an oil-impregnated plastic one, or one with bronze bearings, but for now it works great. I'll oil it with linseed oil, and it ever distorts from pressure, it will be easy to replace it with a plastic or bronze sheave.

Or, I could just make a new one!

Which just goes to show, if you're smart enough to change your bandsaw blade on a regular basis, you're probably smart enough to make a rope-stropped block.

Duh!

>>> Next Episode: How Big a Boat?

First Metalworking Job

2011-04-11T19:57:00.012-04:00

I've said before that sailing and boatbuilding are both pursuits that require you to know a million different small skills. One boatbuilding skill that I haven't had a chance to practice much before is metal working.

I've been spending the spring reworking all my running rigging (the lines that control the sails) so that it's both convenient to use, and extremely robust. I've also been doing a bit of archeology on my spars to uncover evidence of how the Blue Moon was originally built & rigged.

I've had my spars off the boat all spring and been working on them, so I've had lots of time to get up close and personal with them. It's amazing how much information you can learn about a boat's builder -- and subsequent owners -- by doing a little 'digging'.

For example, I've always assumed that the original color of the spars was beige... the lighter color in this picture:


The Multi-Colored Spars photo jalmberg

I assumed this because both the main and mizzen booms are a darker brown color (bottom spar in photo above), and the paint on those spars is in the worst shape. Because of the way the paint has worn on the booms, it looks like the color underneath is that beige color. Thus, my assumption that someone, for some reason, had slapped some dark brown paint over the beige.

Wrong-O. Under the beige paint was that brown paint, and under the brown paint was a very hard white epoxy paint.

It was that white epoxy paint that killed my varnishing plans. Last weekend, I borrowed a heat gun to see if heat and a scraper could remove the paint that had thwarted my miracle paint remover.

The heat gun did remove both the beige and brown paint, and pretty briskly, too, but had no impact on the white epoxy paint, underneath.


Heat Gun Meets Epoxy Paint; Paint Wins photo jalmberg

In the photo, it looks like I'm down to bare wood. It looks like you can see the grain in the wood. But in fact, what you are seeing is the surface of the thin white epoxy paint, which is rippled over the grain. There is still brown paint down in the 'valleys' of the ripples.

I say that heat had little or no effect on the epoxy, but really, I didn't push it as far as I might have. In one test spot, I left the gun on one spot for a bit, until the wood under the epoxy turned black -- I could see it visibly darken under the thin coat of paint. When I saw that, I gave up on the whole idea of varnishing.

Instead, I decided to give the spars a good clean up, fill in all the screw holes, sand and scrape them smooth, and give them a couple coats of good Kirby paint.

Well scraped, sanded, and almost ready for painting
photo jalmberg

I took all the hardware off, except for the gaff leather. That is held on with copper tacks, and I'm afraid if I take it off, it will be difficult to tack it back on again, since I'll have to reuse the tack holes. I worry that the tacks won't hold as well as they are now.

There must be a solution to this problem, but it has defeated me for the moment. If you know how to remove the leather without causing a bunch of problems, please share your knowledge below in the comments section.

I learned a lot about the Blue Moon's builder and subsequent owners from removing the outhaul sheave on the main boom.


Well-gunked sheave photo jalmberg

It literally took me 30 seconds to remove the sheave. Then why, oh why, did a previous owner leave it in when he painted the spar beige?

I admire the determined way the painter jammed his paint brush down the hole, trying to get paint in there, but wouldn't it have been easier/neater to just remove the sheave?

The sheave is an interesting one. It's galvanized iron with bronze rollers inside. They are crudded up from not being cleaned since 1996, but after a night's soak in kerosene and a good oiling, they are running and looking fine.

It was while removing this sheave that I had my metalworking brain storm.

I'd been wondering how to attach a topping lift to the end of the main boom. Again, there is no fitting for this line, and as far as I can tell, there never was. But a topping lift is practically mandatory for a big gaff mainsail. I don't know how you'd manage the sail without one.

Actually, I don't need to imagine it, because I struggled without a topping lift for about 5 days, back in north-west Florida. Then I just tied the darn thing around the end of the boom and said, that will do!

And it did, for about 1500 miles, but it was really in the way of the rest of the rigging. I needed a better, stronger attachment point. But what?

Finally, it hit me. A stainless steel tang bolted to the end of the mast, using the outhaul sheave axle bolt!

I happened to have some 1/8" SS bar that I bought to make steel-stropped wooden blocks, and I have my new Delta drill press ($75 on eBay -- whoo-whoo!), that I also bought for my block-making project. With a hacksaw, a few files, and a bit of oil for drilling, I was all set.


Pride of the UnlikelyBoatBuilder's Power Tool Fleet photo jalmberg

I've discovered all sorts of uses for this drill press, including turning wooden sheaves (more on that in a later blog post), but it's really essential for making holes in SS. I've tried it with a hand-held drill, and it just doesn't work.

Anyway, in short order, I had a quite usable tang, nicely rounded and smoothed so it won't catch or tear anything.

Topping-lift tang with shackle attached.
photo jalmberg

The sheave bolt will go through the bottom hole, attaching it to the side of the mast, out of the way of the outhaul line, and the topping lift will clip on to the shackle.

So there you have it. A perfect solution with a few tools, a couple inches of material, and some elbow grease. And another check on my boatbuilder's skill list. No one else will even notice this little fitting, but every time I top up the end of my boom, I will smile just a little bit.

>>> Next Episode: Department of Duh!

Women With Ideas

2011-04-04T09:33:00.011-04:00

Where would men be without women with big ideas?

Before I moved the Blue Moon from winter dock to summer mooring, I removed most of her spars for painting. Since the weather was cold and miserable, I put them in my basement 'shop' to prep them. I was showing them off to Helena -- who was nice enough to pretend interest -- when she got that special gleam in her eye.

"... they don't really need much," I was saying. "Just a bit of paint and..."

"They sure would look nice varnished," she said, wistfully.

I patiently explained how, yes, they would look nice, but varnishing the spars was probably impossible. It was certainly impossible to remove all that oil-based paint down to bare wood. And it was definitely impossible to keep up with all that varnishing, every year, without fail...

But it was too late. The seed was planted and I off on a mission to see if the impossible could be accomplished, yet again.

The first question was, how to remove several layers of extremely hard enamel paint. Some research turned up two options:

heat gun & scraper
miracle paint remover

I'm a skeptic when it comes to miracle potions, but several people on the Wooden Boat forum sweared by a certain 2-part paint remover. The first part is a kind of goopy paste that you slather over the paint. Then you just wait while it 'cooks'.

When you can easily scrape down to the bare wood, the magic is 'done', and the paint should slide off with the gentle application of a paint scraper.

The second part is a liquid that removes the paint residue from the grain and generally cleans up the wood.

It sounded too good to be true, but if it worked, it would make the job a snap.

I should know by now, whenever I use the word 'snap'...

The stuff was far too smelly to use indoors, so I needed to work outside. Unfortunately, this spring has been exceptionally cold, with regular lashings of rain and snow. Luckily, we had an unused concrete patio that I think was built by the Romans, and neglected ever since. I just happened to have a party tent that fit over it...

My new varnishing shop
photo jalmberg

Fully equipped
photo jalmberg

After sweeping out the leaves and erecting the tent, I whipped up a couple of saw horses, covered the mossy bricks with plastic tarps, and carried out my spars.

My new varnishing shed was ready for work!

The weather was still on the cold side, but the seller of goop said it would work down to the 30s, albeit slower than at higher temperatures. To give it a fair chance, I picked a sunny day in the high 40s.


Mainsail Gaff - sorely in need of TLC photo jalmberg

Breaking my usual habit of diving into the deep end, I tried the goop on a small test patch. My poor mainsail gaff was the obvious candidate. Someone, at some point, had given this one particular spar an extra layer of dark brown paint. It was obviously an experiment gone cruelly wrong, since the other spars had been spared the mistreatment. But the lumpy brown paint was now peeling off in places and would have to be removed, one way or the other.

So, as directed, I applied a thick layer of the goop and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Thinking the thick layer wasn't quite thick enough, I added some more about an hour into the experiment, and then waited again. Waited all day, in fact.

I'm sorry to say, the paint remover experiment was a complete bust. Some of the dark brown paint did soften enough to scrape away, but the light brown enamel paint underneath seemed impervious to the treatment.

I assume the miracle goop can indeed perform magic on the right kind of paint, under the right circumstances, but it failed on my paint, in my weather.

Prime sailing weather being imminent, I've decided to punt on the varnishing idea, for now. I'm going to use my new painting shed to spruce up my spars, get them re-installed on the Blue Moon with my new 'software' fittings, and go sailing.

In July or August, when the wind leaves Long Island Sound for a holiday, I may try again. Perhaps warmer temperatures will do the trick. Or maybe using a heat gun in 95 degree weather will be fun.

Until then, paint will have to be 'good enough'!

>>> Next Episode: Metalworking

Huntington Harbor, 2011

2011-04-01T14:38:00.006-04:00

It's officially spring here in New York, although you would hardly guess it from the weather. Nevertheless, as early as it is in the season, I am already behind in my chores.

One chore that could not be put off was moving the Blue Moon from her winter quarters in the town marina to her new mooring.

I'd been hoping for a mild winter, even fantasized about a New Years Day sail. Instead, we were treated to an exceptionally cold and snowy winter.

Ye olde homestead half-buried in snow
photo jalmberg

More fun than digging out the driveway was digging out the Blue Moon. Add to to-do list: make full-length winter cover.

Chris & Lauren helping with the digging
photo jalmberg

I'd never kept a boat in water all winter long, so was a bit worried when Huntington Harbor froze up for the first time in years. The marina had a bubbler system, but when the mercury dipped well below freezing for a few weeks in a row, it could hardly keep up.

Floating in slush
photo jalmberg

For awhile, it looked like the Blue Moon was surrounded by ice and was sure to be crushed to bits. Until you poked the 'ice' with a boat hook and discovered it had the consistency of a very thick Slushy. The harbor was frozen solid, but the bubblers in the marina did their job.

Since this was the worst winter in recorded history (most snow, ever, in January), I figure we've been through the worst that Nature can throw at us.

And, yes, I know that is just the sort of hubris that Nature loves to prove wrong! I should just shut up about it.

Anyway, faster than expected, it was time to move out of the winter slip and onto the summer mooring.

The still-empty Huntington Harbor
photo jalmberg

I may be slightly biased, but I'm sure she's the prettiest boat in Huntington Harbor.

You might be wondering where her boom, gaff, mizzen, & other spars are.

In one word: varnish. More on that saga, later! In the meantime, Happy Spring!

>>> Next Episode: Women with Ideas

Mizzen Mystery... One Solution

2011-03-21T16:31:00.020-04:00

Last time, I complained about a mystery that has plagued me and at least one of the Blue Moon's former owners: how to hoist and control a sail when the mast, boom, and yard are essentially bare poles?

As usual, there isn't any mystery for experienced builder/sailors -- i.e., for those few, those happy few, for whom the lost arts of the wooden boat sailors are not lost.

But for the rest of us, this voyage into the past must be one of discovery.

Oddly enough, the standard boat building texts aren't much help. They all explain how to make spars, but are strangely silent on the subject of attaching them together. Chapelle's "Boatbuilding" at least explains why: "The details of rigging have been covered in many books; it is too specialized a matter to be discussed here."

The 'many books' that Chapelle assumed to be in every sailor's basic library are now forgotten and out of print, but the answers are preserved in some of the specialized books written by traditional boat lovers, riggers, and sailmakers.

In particular, there is a drawing in Brian Toss's "Rigger's Apprentice", that shows practically everything I was looking for. If you have this book, it's on page 208.

Not to keep you in suspense, the solution I was looking for is the common rope grommet. At least they used to be common.

Rope Grommet at top of Mizzen Mast
photo jalmberg

A grommet is simply a piece of rope that has been spliced into a loop. An incredibly useful loop.

For example, if you seize a thimble in one end of the grommet, as illustrated in the photo above, it's easy to hang one over the 'shoulders' of the mizzen mast (over the shroud eyes, so it can't slide down.) Shackle on a block, and the problem of how to hoist your sail without mast hardware is solved.

Compare this stout and sturdy bit of rigging to the plastic cheekblock that tried to replace it. Which would you rather bet your life on?

Close up of grommet with a thimble seized into one end
photo jalmberg

You can use the same sort of grommet to hang a sheet block off the boom. The easiest way to keep it from sliding around is to seize it tightly to the boom. You could also use thumb cleats or eye straps screwed into the top of the boom, but I don't want to make any more holes in my spars unless they are absolutely necessary.

When researching rope grommets on the Wooden Boat forum, I got the impression that it was very difficult to spice a grommet. Not true. I learned how to do it in an hour, while watching American Idol last week (my guilty pleasure.)

My first effort wasn't perfectly shaped, but it certainly was strong -- probably at least 98% as strong as the rope itself.


Red dots show where I plan to use rope grommets.

So, rope grommets -- with blocks shackled to their ends -- will allow me to both raise and control my mizzen. But there still remained the mystery of how to keep the whole kit-and-kaboodle from falling into Long Island Sound every time I slack off on the halyard.

That, I think, is where those two missing eye straps come in.

I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure those eyestraps were part of a lazyjack/topping lift system. I found something very like it in Emiliano Marino's Sailmaker's Apprentice:

Topping lift/lazyjack system

The upper part of the lazyjack is a line, fixed at it's middle to the top of the mast. At each end of the line, thimbles are spliced in to allow the lower parts, or legs, to run freely.

The legs are just another line. It's tied to the boom at (1), led up the back side of the sail through the eye (2) and back down to the boom, where it passes through the aft eye strap (3). It then goes up the front side of the sail, through the eye (4), and back down to the boom (5).

Instead of being tied off, the line is led along the boom through fairleads into the cockpit where it is tied off to a cleat (6). You can pull on this line to tighten up the system to make it work like a topping lift, or slack it off for sailing.

Since the strap eyes are on the bottom of the boom, and just hold the leg line in place, the topping lift will be as strong as the line and spars.

Pretty clever, these old timers, eh?

Finally, how to keep the yard -- the 11' pole laced to the top of the sail -- under control while I raise and lower the sail. As I said, this baby swings around like a bucking battering ram in a breeze. The lazyjacks will help, but it needs something more.

Hint of a parrel line in plans
plans by Tom Gilmer

Again, the plans hint at the solution. Notice the line across the mast, where the mast and yard cross. I'm sure this line was all Tom Gilmer needed to draw to suggest a parrel line to his readers in the 1940s, when such things were common.

What's a parrel line? According to Wikipedia, it's "A movable loop or collar, used to fasten a yard or gaff to its respective mast. Parrel still allows the spar to be raised or lowered and swivel around the mast. Can be made of wire or rope and fitted with beads to reduce friction."

Loop? Rope? Sounds like the perfect job for yet another grommet!

So, that's my solution to the Mystery of the Blue Moon. It's not the only one, of course. There are many correct solutions to this puzzle. But it's a satisfying one that fits all the clues left by the Blue Moon's original builder, whoever he was. More importantly, it should tame my mizzen and turn it into a useful sail that can be quickly raised and lowered without a fuss.

I can't wait to give it a try!

>> Next Episode: Huntington Harbor

Mystery of the Blue Moon

2011-03-17T12:13:00.014-04:00

For my entire 2000 mile cruise around Florida and up the east coast of the US, I was never satisfied with the way the Blue Moon's sails were rigged. The staysail, for instance, didn't self-tack without adjustment. The mainsheet was awkward to use. And the mizzen was downright dangerous!

Blue Moon
Sails, from left to right: mizzen, main, staysail, jib
topsail above the main
drawing Tom Gilmer

Being new to gaffers and wooden boats, I blamed myself. I figured I just didn't know how to use the gear properly. But gradually I began to suspect the problem went deeper than that.

And now I'm convinced the Blue Moon was rigged all wrong!

For example, let's just look at the worst offender: the mizzen. Referring to the drawing above, the mizzen is the left-most sail -- the one hanging 8' off the Blue Moon's stern.

It looks pretty small, right? Just one of the cute little sails that give the Blue Moon it's character.

The sail itself is 50 square feet, about the same size as Vintage's mainsail. The mast is about 14' tall, the boom 8' long, and the yard 11'.

This type of sail is called a standing lug sail, which has a reputation for being powerful and easy to use.

So what's the problem? Check out the mizzen spars, which I have taken off the boat for painting.

Mizzen spars
From right to left: Mast (14'), Boom (8'), Yard (11')
photo jalmberg

Notice anything odd? There are virtually no fittings on these spars, except for a couple of small, plastic blocks that have obviously been added fairly recently. There is a 1.5" cheek block at the top of the mast, and a turning block hanging from the boom (not visible in photo.)

Otherwise, the only fittings are the 'shoulders' at the top of the mast, and holes drilled at each end of the boom and yard.

I believe the Blue Moon was built by a builder named Randy Hill down in NC. I've never met Mr. Hill, though I would love to. I haven't been able to track him down, so far. But Mr. Hill knew a thing or two about wooden boats. He knew how to build them strong, and he knew how to rig them simply, without a lot of shiny geegaws screwed into the spars.

But somehow his knowledge was not passed down through all the Blue Moon's owners.

Blue Moon's Mizzen - click for closer look
drawing Tom Gilmer

Someone, at some point, looked at this set of mizzen spars and asked, "How the heck do you hoist up the sail?" and "Where does the dangburn sheet go???"

Let's look at the halyard first. The halyard is the rope used to pull the sail to the top of the mast. To do this, the halyard is led from the cockpit, up through some sort of block at the top of the mast, and down to the top of the sail, where it is tied off. To hoist, you just pull on the loose end of the halyard.

But how was this done before the plastic cheek block was installed?

A mystery.

Next, lets look at the mizzen sheet. You can see from the diagram above that the Blue Moon's mizzen sheet is a simple affair. Just a rope attached to the end of the boom, led through a turning block on the boomkin, back up through another turning block on the boom, and into the cockpit. Could not be simpler.

But again, there is no hardware on the boom. No place to tie off the sheet. No turning block. How was the sheet set up before someone screwed a tiny plastic turning block into the boom?

Another mystery.

What is my problem with these small plastic blocks? Simply put, they are unsafe. The two 1.5" screws holding the cheekblock to the top of the mast pulled out in a fairly light wind. That's how much power this 'small' sail can generate.

And thank King Neptune that they pulled out when they did. Even in a light breeze, it was a heck of a job to pull the yard, sail, and boom, plus a bunch of tangled rope, out of the water and back into the cockpit. I'd hate to think what would have happened if it pulled out on a dark night, offshore.

I screwed the cheekblock back into the mast after the first disaster, but never had the nerve to try it again.

There are other problems. Suppose the halyard was set up more securely. What happens when you let the sail down?

Think about it. The only thing holding up the yard, sail, and boom is the halyard. When you slack off on the halyard, the boom drops down onto the boomkin, the sail comes down behind it and starts to drag in the water. Finally the 11' yard comes down, swinging around, uncontrolled, threatening to drag the sail, you, and whoever happens to be hanging onto your feet, down to Davy Jones' locker.

Supposing you don't get dragged overboard, how do you get sail ties around all that stuff when it's hanging off the back of the boat, out of reach?

Another mystery.

I have some clues: four small holes drilled into the bottom of the boom, and two small footprints in the paint.

Mystery holes drilled into the bottom of the boom
photo jalmberg

What were these holes for? I believe there were two pad eyes attached to the bottom of the boom, roughly dividing the boom into thirds.


Pad eyes photo Jamestown Distributors

My first thought was that they were for attaching the end of the sheet and the turning block, but they are in the wrong place for that. The plans show the end of the sheet tied off to the end of the boom, with the turning block close to the middle. But these pad eyes were installed 1/3rd of the distance from either end.

Mizzen boom setup
diagram jalmberg

More importantly, I can't see the conservative Mr. Hill depending on four short screws to control all the force generated by the mizzen sail. If he did attach the mizzen sheet to the boom with pad eyes, they would also tend to pull out just when you needed them most. Not the kind of strong and simple construction that he seemed to favor.

So what were those pad eyes for? And how did he hoist and sheet the mizzen without any hardware?

That's what puzzled me and at least one other Blue Moon owner. But I think I've finally solved the mystery...

To be continued

>>> Next Episode: Mystery solved!

Helena standing at the bottom of an inlet in Cornwall.
The ocean comes back and floats the boats half-hidden behind her.
photo jalmberg

Learn the Rules Before Playing the Game!

2011-03-02T16:10:00.019-05:00

I always say I don't know how to do something until I'm done. This is because of a technique that I learned writing software.

In the olden days (say, the 1980s) software 'engineers', as we were called back then, would study a problem exhaustively, devise a strategy to solve it, create a rigid 'waterfall' project plan, and 'engineer' a program.

This engineering approach to software development failed miserably. Turns out, building software isn't like building a bridge. It's more like writing music. You start out with an idea and plink out a few notes on the piano. If you like them, you keep them. If not, you plink out a few more and keep going until you have a whole song.

In other words, you start writing the song without really knowing where you are going or how you are going to get there. You confidently proceed as though you know the song will turn out in the end and somehow, magically, it does! At least most of the time.

In the software world, that's called the 'Agile' method, and that's how software's been written for the last 10 years or so.

From long habit, I used the agile method when I built Cabin Boy. As anyone who's read my Cabin Boy blog can attest, I had no idea what I was doing when I started. I just confidently proceeded as though everything would turn out in the end, and it did!


Cabin Boy on Launch Day how clean!

It even worked when lofting Cabin Boy, even though I gradually came to understand that I had done a really lousy job lofting Cabin Boy's plans.

This confident, proceed-as-though-you-know-what-you-are-doing approach doesn't work for everything, though. For example, if you wanted to win a chess game from an even mediocre player, it would be a really bad idea to sit down at the board without knowing the rules, first.

You couldn't just say to yourself, "well, I know how to move the pawns, so I'll just move all of those while learning how to move the rest of the pieces."

By the time you moved half your pawns and learned how to move your knights, the game would be over. You'd have to start a new game from the beginning and try again.

The agile approach doesn't work for lofting a round bottom boat, either. I know, because I tried.

Learning by doing...
photo jalmberg

I read a bit in my boat building books (BBBs), but after reading a few paragraphs, I had no idea what they were saying, so I figured, "Well, I know enough to get started. I'll learn by doing and it will all work out, somehow!"

I laid down a few lines (which took hours), but soon reached the end of my knowledge. No problem! I just picked up the BBBs again to see what the next step was.

Whoops! Turns out those lines weren't quite right because of something new I learned.

So I erased them, re-drew them with my new knowledge, and got a bit further before -- hours later -- I had to stop and pick up the books again.

Oh, heck! Turns out those lines were completely wrong!

Oh well. Pull out the eraser. More erasing; more drawing; more wasted time...

To make a long story short, it wasn't working. Well, it was, but it would have taken all year, plus a dozen erasers and pencils to finish. Plus my lofting board was only 3/4" thick. It would be thinner than the iPad2 by the time I finished with it.

Only thing that comes close to a wooden boat for beauty...
(I said 'thing', Helena!)
photo Apple

So I stopped, put down my drawing tools, commandeered the dining room table for a week, and figured out how to loft.

In other words, I learned all the rules before starting the game.

And that's the lesson for today: don't even think about trying to loft a round bottom boat -- even a very small one -- without knowing all the rules, first.

Learn-by-doing doesn't work for lofting.
Learn-by-studying does! But I didn't say it was easy!
photo jalmberg

Easier said than done, because all of the BBBs -- without exception -- do a really bad job at explaining lofting. It's all there, especially in my 'Bible', Greg Rossel's "Building Small Boats", but it's rough going.

I wonder how many people today actually know how to loft a round-bottom boat from traditonal plans, like those of William Atkin?

Let's find out. There are about 1500 people reading this blog on a regular basis. Please rate your own lofting skills. Don't be afraid to say 'No clue!' No one will know it's you.

Update: Obviously, I drastically under-estimated the amount of time needed to build a complicated little boat like Vintage! Since there are a ton of things I want to build for the Blue Moon this summer (2011), I've decided to suspend this project until the Fall of 2011. To be continued...

Wrong Foot

2011-02-23T16:24:00.009-05:00

So far as I can tell, the Greeks didn't have a God of deadlines. Neither did the Romans, nor the Norse.

I find this strange, since in the current age, Deadline is a god, or should I say goddess, since Deadline is a female god, if there ever was one.

But where did she come from? Who were her parents? Bulfinch is silent on the subject.

In fact, meticulous and deep research into this question has only turned up one quote from the ancients that can rightly be called wise. It was uttered by Caesar Augustus, first and greatest Emperor of Rome, thorn in the side of Anthony and Cleopatra, and namesake for the 8th month of the year.

No one could call Augustus a timid man, yet what did this veritable god-among-men have to say on the subject of deadlines?

"Make haste cautiously."

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus
Emperor of the Roman Empire
for 40 years

Make haste cautiously... You have to hand it to the Romans. They had things figured out.

After painting this nugget of recovered wisdom on my workshop wall, I decided that I'd gotten my Vintage project off on the wrong foot by setting a deadline.

Frankly, I don't know if I'll be able to finish Vintage before the Wooden Boat Show in June. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

I do know that my incautious haste has taken all the fun out of the project, so I'm dropping it; forgetting it; condemning it to the dustbin of history. I am no longer on a deadline.

Whew.

As a practical matter, this whole lofting business makes a mockery of deadlines, anyway. Just one example proves my point: I've been wearing out erasers faster than pencils.

In fact, this afternoon I'm headed down to my local artist's supply store to take delivery of a new batch of erasers. I had them ordered specially from Germany, because they're supposed to be more durable than the Chinese ones that everybody stocks. We'll see.

So, starting again. Not quite from scratch, but remembering what this is supposed to be about: Fun. And craftsmanship. Neither of which Deadline has any respect for.

The Greeks did have a goddess of craftsmanship: Athena. Not coincidentally, she was also the goddess of civilization, wisdom, strength, strategy, justice and skill. All of which are required for lofting.

Athena saying bah! to deadlines, by Rudolph Tegner

I think I'll stick with Athena, and ditch Deadline.

More soon!

>>> Next Episode: Learn the rules before playing the game!

Battered by Battens

2011-02-09T09:19:00.006-05:00

Battens are one of those things that professional boat builders take for granted, I think. They've seen them since their first apprentice days, know what they look like, their different sizes, which batten is right for which curve, and on and on.

Not so for we poor amateurs trying to learn boat building out of books. I must admit they are still a bit of a mystery to me. Such a simple tool. So important. So easy to break!

Perfectly nice batten (1" x 3/4") meets the wrong curve
photo jalmberg

What is a batten? It's just a long piece of clear grained wood -- i.e. no knot holes that create a weak spot. You use it in lofting to recreate the long curves of the sheer line or buttock lines on your lofting board by bending it around a few strategically placed nails.

I got away with some really crude battens when building Cabin Boy because Cabin Boy didn't have any difficult curves. Vintage does. Lots of them.

In fact, you could say that Vintage is nothing more than a set of curves with wood wrapped around them.

Vintage - a set of curves with wood wrapped around them.
diagram Atkin Boat Plans

I knew battens would be important for this build, so I wanted to make a few really good ones. The problem is, what size? The boat building books are irritatingly vague and contradictory on this subject. Robert M. Steward in "Small Boat Construction" says it best: "Like a lot of boat building operations, accumulated experience will aid materially in the selection of batten sizes."

Experience gained, presumably, by breaking lots and lots of battens.

The battens themselves aren't much help. As far as I've been able to tell so far, they don't give any warning. No creaking or complaining as you bend them around a too-tight curve. Just a sudden crack! and they give up the ghost.

1/2" x 3/4" batten... still too big to get around that buttock curve
photo jalmberg

One thing the boat builders do agree on is that battens should be the stiffest, largest batten that you can bend around the curve. As Steward says "Start with the battens on the heavy side until you get the hang of it, ripping the strips narrower as needed."

So, I started by buying a 12' length of clear white pine, one of the woods recommended for battens.

I ripped two fairly heavy battens from it, using my brand new Skilsaw. Yes, I finally broke down and bought one specifically to make ripping these battens a fairly easy job. I bought the model recommended by Tom Hill, the Model 77, because -- unlike every other circular saw -- it has the blade on the left side of the saw. This allows you to see where you are cutting without leaning over the saw. It's also very easy to adjust.

Skilsaw Mag 77 -- the right tool for the job
(if you don't have room for a table saw)
photo jalmberg

I also took the advice to paint my new battens black, to make it easier to see the curve against the white background.

My largest batten -- 1 1/2" x 3/4" -- had no problems curving around Vintage's sheer line. It was quite stiff, but didn't break.

Batten curving sweetly around the bottom of the sheer plank
photo jalmberg

The problem came with the much more drastic buttock lines. What's a buttock line?

Sorry, couldn't resist the obvious joke.
Kim Kardashian photo

No, no. They are the two lines that swoop upwards from the bottom of the boat to the sheer line.

Profile View

Well, after two battens gave up the ghost for the cause of accumulated experience, I gave up and went to bed. Will try again today with 1/4" battens.

Oh, and I'm not sure that black paint was a such good idea... it tends to rub off on the lofting board as you try to wrestle the batten into position. I certainly won't bother painting a batten black until it proves itself up to the job!

>>> Next Episode: Wrong Foot

The Grid

2011-02-07T17:26:00.003-05:00

So what is a lofting board for? For lofting, of course.

Lofting is the process of blowing up the relatively small-scale plans you get from your naval architect (in my case, from William Atkin), into full size plans.

This process is thought to be so complicated that many modern architects supply full-size plans to eliminate the need for lofting. Just roll out the plans and start building. But if you don't know how to loft, you can't build about 98% of boats, because full-size plans aren't available.

Plus, you miss out on all the fun of lofting, which really is a kind of relaxing exercise, once you have all your hair torn out.

The white-washed lofting board is simply a big, stable drawing surface. Just a big piece of paper, really. Once you've got that ready, it's time to start lofting.

And the first step is to draw the grid. Actually, 3 grids -- one for each standard 'view':


The three standard views, from top to bottom: body plan, profile, half-breadth

I will be lofting the profile and half-breadth views on my main lofting board, and lofting the body plan on a separate board.

Note the grid of horizontal and vertical lines under the curves in the three views. This grid is the first thing you must loft, or blow up to full size. And it must be accurate if the full-sized plans are to be accurate.

When I was about half-way through my Cabin Boy project, I lamented that, in retrospect, I realized I did a lousy job lofting Cabin Boy's plans. That caused two problems:

1. the boat I built probably wasn't exactly Cabin Boy. It was a boat that was very close to Cabin Boy's shape, but not exactly.

2. it made it much more difficult to build, since the various pieces I built, based on my lofted plans, didn't fit together as precisely as they should have. This forced me to trim each piece so it would fit -- a time consuming process.

That didn't prevent Cabin Boy from floating or even performing fantastically. In fact, after 2000 miles of abuse -- including 2 months bottom up on a dock in Jacksonville, FL under the July and August sun, when it was too hot for me -- he never leaked a drop and followed behind the Blue Moon like a faithful servant.

But that lousy lofting job did cause me a whole lot of grief during the building.

So I am determined to get the lofting right this time. Vintage is much too complicated to build without a good set of plans. I must have plans I can depend on.

The first step in lofting is to draw a basic grid of horizontal Baseline (for profile view), Centerline (for half-breadth view) and vertical Station Lines.

Basic Grid
diagram jalmberg

This isn't too hard to do, but you have to be willing to erase lines that aren't exactly right. There's lots of ways you can go wrong, unfortunately, so you just have to keep measuring, drawing, remeasuring, erasing and re-drawing until you get it exactly right.

Except for the Baseline, which is the first line you draw, I probably erased and redrew every line at least twice. You just have to be willing to do that to build a boat accurately.

That's why the call it fun!

Don't forget to wear your knee pads!
photo jalmberg

Here's one thing I learned: always use the same ruler to measure with. Believe it or not, not all rulers are exactly the same. You can drive yourself crazy by using two rulers that don't quite match up.

I learn things the hard way, so you don't have to!

>>> Next Episode: Battered by Battens

Lofting Board

2011-02-05T09:07:00.003-05:00

Now that I've cut out the two pieces of my lofting board, it's time to assemble it into one 3/4" x 4' x 13' surface. I also want to white-wash it.

The boat building books (BBBs) discuss lots of ways to assemble the lofting board. Probably the best way is to screw the various panels down on the floor. I didn't want to do this because I didn't want to drill holes in my floor, and also I wanted to be able to move the board if needed, or even lean it up against the wall to get it out of the way.

So I ended up using metal straps to hold the two sheets of plywood together. I could probably use a third in the middle, but it would be in the way a bit, so I'll leave it off unless I decide I really need it.

The two sheets of plywood are held together
by two strong metal straps. Here's one of them after painting.
photo jalmberg

I also painted the lofting board with a quick coat of white acrylic paint. I didn't do this when lofting Cabin Boy and I regretted it. Pencil lines stand out better against the white background, but more importantly, so do the battens. I think having dark battens against a white background will make it easier to see if the line is fair or not.

Anyway, it only took a few minutes to roll on a quick coat, so it's definitely worth the effort.

13' lofting board, with it's own space, but out of
the way of the main build area.
photo jalmberg

Now that I'm looking at my basement wall in the photo, I'm thinking I should have slapped some paint on it, too!

Finally, I decided to set up a simple bookkeeping system to track the amount of time and money I spend on the build. I’ve broken it down into several categories, such as time spent building the jig, tools, and the boat itself. Also time spent shopping, building, blogging, etc.

Same with the money. I’ll track how much I spend building the jig, and the boat, buying tools, etc.

This isn't a business, but I think it will be interesting to see how much time and money I spend on this project.

Tomorrow, I want to see if I can cut some good battens. Battens are very important boat building tools that help you turn a small number of points on your lofting board into long smooth curves.

They were a real problem with Cabin Boy. I never really had battens I was satisfied with. This time, I'm going to make myself some good ones.

>>> Next Episode: The Grid

Building the Atkin Dinghy "Vintage"

2011-02-04T11:32:00.005-05:00

Okay! It's finally time to get started on this winter's build!

The goal is to build the William Atkin designed Vintage in time for the "I Built It Myself" show at the Wooden Boat Show in Mystic, CT.

Why Vintage? Several reasons.

First, I think it's time I tackled a round-bottom boat. Again, I think this is a project that is way above my current skill level, but I'm a real believer in the adage that people can do more than they think they can. Just because I doubt my ability to build such a complicated boat, is no reason to not do it.

Sounds weird, right? Ah well.

William Atkin Vintage
10' round-bottom lapstrake

Second, I want to do a lot of cruising with Helena & family in the Blue Moon over the next few summers. Good old Cabin Boy is perfect for one person, and will carry two if I install the forward thwart to balance the load, but three would be really pushing it. Since the Blue Moon is too small to carry a dinghy on deck, I don't think it matters whether I drag a 8' or 10' dinghy, so might as well be comfortable with the 10' Vintage.

Third, I really like the Atkin designs and Pat Atkin is a great help, and I happen to live in the town that William Atkin got his start in, back in 1906. So for me, it makes sense to stick with the Atkins.

Fourth, I'd like to see if I can find ways to make these very traditional designs more accessible to rank-amateur builders like me. It seems to me that a lot of people are building simpler boats because they think something as complicated as Vintage is too hard for them. If I can find ways to simplify the build, that might make it easier for others to build these beautiful boats.

Hey, if a duffer like me can build it, anyone can!

But the winter is slipping away fast! Helena convinced me to set up a simple project plan to keep me on track. Good thing she did, because it helped me get in a more 'business-like' frame of mind. This should help keep me focused. I tend to get distracted by interesting side issues like cutting my own lumber from county forest land. Interesting, but not compatible with my schedule!

I should be able to make the show deadline, but must get cracking, because there's a lot to do!

The first step was to set up a decent work space. It's the same basement space I used to build Cabin Boy, but then it was a bit of a cluttered mess. I decided to start fresh with a completely empty room, except for some shelves and benches.

Building space, after passing cat inspection
photo jalmberg

Other end, with 'Thinking Chair' ready to go
photo jalmberg

I already received the plans from Pat, so the next step was to build a lofting board.

For Cabin Boy, I used 1/4" plywood. I found this to be too thin to hold the nails needed for bending battens for curves, so decided to go with 3/4" plywood. I found a couple good quality sheets at HD for $25 each. A steal.

Since I needed a 13' board, I needed to cut one of the sheets. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I thought I could use my jigsaw by clamping a kind of fence to the board, but that idea failed miserably! Each time I cut (and I tried several times) the line would veer off to the left. Why???

I thought maybe the clamped jig was moving, but obviously it wasn't.

Finally I figured out that the blade was bending to the left. Why always to the left, I don’t know, but it did.


The wrong tool for the job photo jalmberg

That taught me two things: you can’t use a jig saw for this type of cutting (maybe that’s why boat builders don’t like jigsaws?), and it pays to make test cuts on scrap lumber! Doh!

Well, no harm done.

The jigsaw was my only power saw, so it was time to break out the hand saws. I tried several different approaches, but what finally worked was cutting the sheet vertically with a Japanese pull saw. This made a clean, accurate, 90 degree cut with very little effort.

The all-purpose Japanese pull saw
photo jalmberg

So the pull saw saved me again, but my next job is to rip a couple 13' battens from 3/4" clear pine. It's clear I need a better tool for this job.

>>> Next Episode: Lofting Board

East River Adventure

2011-01-31T19:19:00.013-05:00

08:30 - just passed under the Verrazano-Narrow Bridge. SOG (speed over ground) about 6 knots. Thought we'd be doing more than that by now. Still pretty foggy. Lots of big ships anchored up ahead. Fingers crossed!

* * *

Once you go under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, you enter New York's Upper Bay. I would call it the lower part of New York Harbor. It's much narrower than the vast Lower Bay, just a mile or two wide, with the main channel being about a mile wide.

NY's Upper Bay
(click for larger image)
screen capture from Navionics iPad app, an excellent GPS chart plotter

I expected it to look all industrial, with monster ships running up and down the channel. But it looked surprisingly pastoral, with trees in their autumn colors, the occasional white church spire poking above the tree line, and some substantial houses on the shore line.

The ship traffic was also lighter and easier to deal with than I feared. I stayed out of the ship channel, of course, keeping between the red buoys and the Brooklyn shore. A large ship passed by about every 10 minutes. Some were going north, others south, but they moved at a more stately speed in the Upper Bay and I was far enough out of the channel that I could enjoy watching them go by.

I was monitoring Channel 13, as recommended. This is the channel used by the big guys to coordinate their movements with each other. There was a lot of efficient-sounding chatter on this channel, back and forth between the captains of the big ships, tugs, barges, ferries, etc. Frankly, I couldn't make head or tails out of it, and I was glad none of them were talking to (or even noticing) me. I just stayed out of every one's way, as best I could.

Tug headed down the Narrows, and the New Jersey shore.
photo jalmberg

Starting from the southern tip of the Bay Ridge Flats (see chart above), and going north, the main channel serves essentially as an anchorage. There were dozens of large ships anchored there, with smaller boats buzzing around in the water between them. I skirted along the western edge of the Bay Ridge Flats, between these shallows and the busy rows of anchored ships. This kept me out of the main action, but worried enough that I forgot to take any pictures of this fascinating scene.

Besides, I was much more interested in the scene to the north, where the fog had finally lifted off the southern end, at least, of Manhattan Island.

Manhattan Island, with yet another ferry speeding directly for me!
photo jalmberg

A short while later, we cruised past Lady Liberty, looking surprisingly small and vulnerable in the morning light. That accounts, maybe, for the 150 yard permanent security zone around her. Don't even think of getting too close to this girl.

Statue of Liberty
photo jalmberg

When you reach the southern end of Governor's Island, you have a choice of either the main channel to the west, or the Buttermilk Channel to the east. I chose the Buttermilk because it took me out of the main traffic and seemed a bit more protected from the northerly breeze.

Governor's Island got it's name when New York was a British colony. The island, being just a mile south of Manhattan, and close to the anchorage for the British fleet, was reserved for the use of the royal governor.

Even back then it was location, location, location.

The British Fleet in the Lower Bay
wikimedia commons

The island was occupied by the American Continental Army at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. General Israel Putnam fortified the island with earthworks and 40 cannon. The island played an important part in the Battle of Long Island, keeping the British Fleet out of the East River, covering General Washington's retreat across that river, from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Retreat at Long Island by J.C. Armytage (1820-1897)
depicting Washington personally directing the retreat
across the East River on the night of August 29, 1776
wikimedia commons

The British soon recaptured Governor's Island and held it until the end of the war.

Historic Governor's Island
photo jalmberg

Coming out of the Buttermilk Channel, we finally got our first good view of Manhattan. It was close to 9:30 and the fog had finally burned off. In fact, it was turning into a gorgeous day.

Even better, we were finally entering the lower end of the East River. But it was getting late, we were still only doing 6 knots, and Hell Gate was a bit more than 6 nm away. I was starting to get seriously worried.

But the view was terrific!

The Battery and Lower Manhattan
photo jalmberg

East River, from Brooklyn Bridge to Rikers Island
screenshot Navionics iPad App

As we entered the East River, proper, the current began to speed up. By the time we cruised under the fabulous Brooklyn Bridge, we were doing 6.5 knots. Better, but it would still be close to 10:30 before we hit Hell Gate. That was cutting it a bit too close, even for me.

Brooklyn Bridge
photo jalmberg

The lower reaches of the East River are actually spanned by 3 historic suspension bridges. If you are ever in New York City, you can impress the locals by remembering their names. Just remember 'BMW': Brooklyn, Manhattan, and (the hard one) Williamsburg.

Each, in turn, was the longest suspension bridge in the world, when they opened.

I always find it amazing that the Brooklyn bridge opened in 1867 -- when the only traffic were horse carts, pedestrians, and streetcars.

I was glad not to be stuck in the morning rush-hour traffic that clogged the bridge as I sailed underneath it.

Manhattan Bridge
photo jalmberg

Williamsburg Bridge
photo wikimedia commons (forgot to take the pic!)

Once past the Williamsburg, we had a great view of Midtown and the Empire State Building.

We were also approaching the southern end of the almost 2 mile long Roosevelt Island. Since Roosevelt Island sat right in the middle of the East River, and squeezed it into two narrow channels, I expected the current to pick up appreciably.

Midtown Manhattan and Empire State Building
photo jalmberg

Roosevelt Island did not disappoint. I took the recommended western channel and we were soon doing 7 or 7.5 knots. That was more like it!

We'd made such good time, in fact, that it was just 10:15 when we cruised past the Blackwell Island Lighthouse that marked the end of Roosevelt Island... and the beginning of Hell Gate.

We still had the current with us and, assuming we survived the standing waves, whirlpools, and sea serpents of Hell Gate, we were clearly going to make it!

Blackwell Island Lighthouse - built 1872
photo jalmberg

Happily for me -- unhappily for the sake of drama -- there weren't any standing waves, whirlpools, or sea serpents. In fact, infamous Hell Gate was more or less a millpond.

Was one swirly bit that I took a picture of (see below), but that was pretty much it. By sheer luck, we'd hit Hell Gate about a half-hour before slack water -- probably about as calm as Hell Gate gets. I was NOT complaining.

Hell Gate, close to Slack Water
photo jalmberg

In fact, I whooped for joy. Hell Gate was the last major obstacle between me and home, and I was now past it. All the tension of the last few days seemed to fall away, to be replaced by a huge sense of relief. I'd made it!

I turned around and took a celebratory photo of Cabin Boy, who'd also braved and survived Hell Gate. He looked suitably proud.

Cabin Boy, on the happy side of Hell Gate
photo jalmberg

As I snapped this photo, my joy was clipped short by the loud toot of a ship's horn. Spinning around, I could see the bow of a rather large ship approaching from the north. Dang!

The ship was about halfway between the two bridges in the photo below and moving fast. I was between Mill Rock Island (the island on the left of the photo), and the RFK Bridge -- on the wrong side of the channel!

My hand twitched on the tiller, momentarily heading us for the right side of the channel, but then common sense took command. There was no way I was going to cut across the bow of that ship. At the speed he was going, he would be under the RFK Bridge and making his turn around the bend into Hell Gate in 30 seconds or less. Turning for the right side of the channel would put us directly in his path.

So, I steered even more towards the 'wrong' side of the channel. By sheer luck, I was probably in the safest position possible. To hit me, the ship would have to run up on the shoals of the Hog Back. You can see the shallow water over Hog Back, in the picture below.

Instead of endangering me, the last remaining rocks of Hell Gate had actually protected me. Luck was with me still.

Hell Gate from overhead
Google Maps

A minute late, the ship was past me and through Hell Gate, and I was telling myself, in no uncertain terms, "Okay, don't get cocky, dude!" We still had a long way to go.

Then I broke out a Blue Moon beer. I deserved it!

With attention thus enhanced by experience, we got through the rest of the East River. We passed depressing Riker's Island, home to some 14,000 or so unhappy souls, at least one of whom, I'm sure, has a bumper sticker in his cell that says "I'd rather be sailing".

And then we passed under the Whitestone Bridge, and finally saw the sight that I'd been anticipating for at least 1000 miles: the Throgs Neck Bridge, and the beginning of Long Island Sound.

Throgs Neck Bridge, with Long Island Sound, beyond
photo jalmberg

For months, I'd been urging myself forward, thinking, "If only I can get to beautiful, deep Long Island Sound...", as if no storm or trouble ever ruffled its broad waters. I knew this was not the case, but slowly the Sound had become idealized in my mind as the most perfect sailing water in the world, and I longed to reach it.

And for once, King Neptune hadn't prepared an ironic twist for my story. When I sailed under the Throgs Neck Bridge, I wasn't met by a horrific line squall, or an out of control container ship, or even an uncharted rock.

In fact, I was met by the placid inland sea of my dreams.

Long Island Sound... finally!
photo jalmberg

And best of all, it was still early in the day -- barely noon. There was still more than 20 nm between me and home, but I thought I might be able to just make it home.

And if not, no matter! One of the beautiful aspects of Long Island Sound is that there is a terrific, easy to enter harbor, every 5 miles or so along the coast! If I couldn't make it all the way to Huntington Harbor, I could surely make it to Oyster Bay, which had several blissful anchorages.

I was home free!

But two things drove me on: First, the window of good weather that I'd been enjoying since Manasquan (only 2 days ago!) was due to slam shut that very night with a vengeance. I might be stuck in Oyster Bay for several days, which would be okay, but I'd rather not.

And second, I still wanted to prove Helena wrong and arrive home before Thanksgiving... even if it was just one day before!

So we pressed on at all speed, and even seemed to get a lift from the current, even though we should have had some against us. Perhaps a final gift from King Neptune.

We quickly passed City Island -- the historic home of New York City boat builders that I would have loved to see... must get back there this summer! And then Manhasset Bay and Hempstead Bay seemingly flew by.

Then there was a long stretch to Oyster Bay. I put Helmo back in command and went below to hot up some soup and make a sandwich. I poked my head up out of the companion way every couple of minutes, but I had the whole Sound to myself.

By the time we reached the entrance to Oyster Bay, the day was growing long. It was late November and the day's were short. I hesitated for a moment, thinking, "should I press my luck?" But only for a moment. These were my home waters. I'd sailed into Huntington Harbor many times in the dark. I had the one necessary ingrediant for completing my sail, even in the dark: local knowledge!

I urged my trusty Yamaha up to full speed -- surely this was the time for the final push.

And as we left Oyster Bay behind, I called Helena.

"I'm going to make it home tonight," I said.

"Really?" she said -- I had kept her expectations low, just in case. "When? It's getting dark, isn't it?"

"Probably about an hour."

And oddly enough, I didn't want that last hour to end. As we cruised down the coast of Lloyd Neck, our wake a wide V behind us in the dying light, it was hard to accept the fact that my once-in-a-lifetime cruise was coming to an end. We'd gone through a lot, the three of us -- me, the Blue Moon, and good old Cabin Boy. It certainly had been a Big Adventure.

I was sorry to see it end.

But then we were headed down Huntington Bay behind a fishing boat, passing the big red #8 buoy that had marked the turning point of so many races, and in towards the historic old lighthouse that marked the entrance to Huntington Harbor, where William Atkin had had his first boat shop, back in the day.

We were home.

Entrance to Huntington Harbor
photo jalmberg

As I slowly cruised down the narrow harbor, I spotted a little black car on the harbor road, with Helena waving beside it. She'd come down as far as she could to get a first look at us.

Then, a little while later, as I slowly backed the Blue Moon into her winter slip for the first time, Helena was on the dock to take my line.

I stepped off the boat and kissed her.

"I told you we'd make it before Thanksgiving," I said.

Her eyes sparkled. "Happy birthday, darling."

In all the rush and worry, I'd forgotten. It was my birthday. And a nice birthday present it was, too.

>>> Next Project: Building the William Atkin skiff "Vintage"

Race To Hell Gate

2011-01-27T14:22:00.004-05:00

24 Nov 2010 -- Out of my bunk at 5:05 am. Still dark. Can't see the lights of the Verrazano Bridge, which were clearly visible last night. Must be some fog up there. Made myself a good breakfast of hot oatmeal, boiled eggs, and an apple. Not sure when I'll have another chance to eat today. Sunrise supposed to be around 7 am, but I intend to be underway before 6. Hope I've left enough time to make Hell Gate before the tide turns.

* * *

Before hitting my bunk last night, I'd carefully planned the day's voyage using all the information I had available. That included a cruising guide, a few iPhone apps that plotted tides and currents, several online bulletin board discussions on 'running Hell Gate', a complete set of paper charts, and an up-to-date copy of Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book.

Even though I'm a computer guy, I must confess that I am not comfortable using computer apps as my sole source of navigation information. Long experience with computers tells me that 1) they are occasionally wrong (even NOAA warns about this) and, more importantly, 2) it is oh so easy to misinterpret them, particularly when you are tired. That is, computer systems are highly subject to operator error, even when the operator is an expert.

So, like a good reporter, I like to confirm the story told by my computer with at least one non-computer source. That might sound redundant, or even paranoid to some, but confirming my navigation with a second source of data gives me an extra dose of confidence. And sometimes confidence in what you are doing makes all the difference in an emergency. There's nothing more dangerous than panicky second-guessing.

In this situation, I had an excellent source of information in the form of the Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book. This book, ubiquitous on the northeast coast of the US, traces its roots back to the 1850s when George Eldridge self-published a Pilot for Vineyard Sound. At the time, the number of ships sailing through Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds was second only to the English Channel, and no other information was available.

His son added tide and current tables (based on his own measurements) for the same area in the 1870s, and then gradually added coverage of tides and currents up and down the east coast. It quickly became the indispensable book for professional and amateur mariners on the east coast.

My cruising guide and the folks on the computer bulletin boards agreed that the best time to start up the East River was 1 hour after low water at the Battery (right near the mouth of the river), or around 4:30 am. Since Hell Gate was approximately 6 nm up the river, that would put me in Hell Gate at around 5:30 am. That was the ideal.

However, after studying the Eldridge current tables and maps, it seemed clear to me that it would be just barely possible to squeak past Hell Gate as late as 10 am. By 11 am the tide would turn, and by noon the current would be flooding against me, but if I could just squeak through by 10...

This went against all conventional wisdom, but it looked possible to me.

Just one problem: Hell Gate was 24 nm from my anchorage in Sandy Hook. If I sailed at 6 am -- an hour before dawn -- I'd have to average 6 knots over the whole course to make it. The Blue Moon can only do 5.5 knots under her own power. To make it on time, I'd need some current behind me.

Last night, that didn't seem a problem. I should have the current with me the whole way. Surely I'd average at least 6 knots. No problem.

But in the cold dark morning, with a light northerly breeze already setting in, I started to worry. Would I make it? There was no place to anchor in the East River, or even in NY Harbor. If I didn't make it, it would be a long sail back to a safe anchorage. I had to make it.

After a hurried breakfast of hot oatmeal, boiled eggs, and apple, I rigged my battery-powered array of running lights (small, battery powered LEDs clipped into my old brass sidelights, another LED hoisted to the masthead for a steaming light, and my cabin light slung over the stern), and steamed out of the anchorage just before 6 am.

It was still dark and I remembered why I'd been reluctant to make an earlier start. I didn't mind picking out, with my flashlight, the numerous crab pots and flags in Sandy Hook Bay (what are all those flags for???), but I really wanted some light for crossing New York Harbor. According to all the cruising guides, New York Harbor was thick with barely submerged shipping containers, logs, and dead bodies. It sounded like a nautical obstacle course, and I wanted to be able to see what I was hitting.

The 4 nm cruise up Sandy Hook Bay was quiet and easy. I had the whole bay to myself, except for a few die-hard fishermen and an ominous looking Coast Guard cutter that ran a slow, parallel course for a couple miles. You see these Homeland Security ships on patrol now in all big-ish US harbors. I'd even been stopped by one when entering a port from offshore in Florida. But today I was in a hurry and didn't want to stop for a chat. I double-checked my running lights to make sure they were in order, and held my course. After a while, the cutter seemed to lose interest. It veered off in another direction.

But meanwhile, I'd been making just 5 knots. Not only did I not have the current with me, I seemed to have a 1/2 knot or so against me. As I entered NY's Lower Bay, with young Dawn's rose-red fingers just showing in the east, I was behind schedule.

Sandy Hook Bay and Lower Bay
click for larger image

The 8 nm long Lower Bay is open to Atlantic swells from the east and criss-crossed with major big-ship traffic lanes with names like Swash Channel and Ambrose Channel. I followed the Chapel Hill Channel north, staying just outside the red buoys. This didn't seem to help. A steady stream of high-speed ferries buzzed back and forth between New York and New Jersey, and it didn't seem to matter whether I was in the channel or outside it. Wherever I was, they wanted to be.

High-speed commuter ferries
photo jalmberg

All the big-boy traffic seemed to be in the Ambrose Channel, which is the main connector between the Atlantic and the Upper Bay. I stayed well away from them, but still found their speed disconcerting. You'd look over your stern and see nothing; a few minutes later, there'd be a ship full of Toyotas or Wiis or whatever a mile away; in another few minutes, it would be past and out of sight.

At least it seemed that fast.

Fast container ship
photo jalmberg

Half-way up the Bay, I still couldn't see the towers of the massive Verrazano Narrows Bridge that I was aiming for. The bridge -- and New York City beyond it -- were still hidden in fog. One of the terrors that bedeviled early sailors on the East River was fog.

But, trusting that the fog would burn off before I arrived, I kept going. And finally it did retreat a bit to the north, revealing the bridge that I'd driven over so many times. I couldn't believe I'd soon be sailing underneath it.

Verrazano Narrows Bridge finally emerging from the fog.
The city of 8 million people still hidden behind it...
photo jalmberg

As the flood squeezed through the Narrows under the bridge, it picked up speed and as I passed under the Verrazano, we were finally making 6 knots. But by then we'd covered half the distance to Hell Gate. It was already 8:30, and we were well behind schedule.

>>> Next Episode: East River Adventure