A Shipwright in Training

Well, we pulled it off! All those details piled up and culminated in an actual boat. My folks kept saying things like “that’s such a huge accomplishment,” but it rarely felt like that. It felt more like coming in every day, doing a little work, fitting one more thing in, and moving along. Kind of like how the underside of your bed can get filled with giant dust bunnies.

The last few days ended up being pretty damn hectic. We stayed late Wed and Thursday nights working on details. For instance, when we pulled the masking tape off of the rub rails after painting the deck, the assessment was unanimous: it looked like ass.

Sure, that’s a small thing, but when you’ve got rough edges like that along a smooth, sweeping line… ass.

So, lots of little careful scraping along the rub rails and the coaming, and we’re back to something nice.

We installed the centerboard, but bumped it into the bottom paint a few times in the process, leading to mars on the nice white top…

I know, who’s going to care? But still, for one day in it’s life, we wanted everything just right. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to repaint it, so we lived with it. We also decided we wanted to make little wear plates for the cross pin that holds the centerboard up… they just look more stylish and help to preserve the centerboard trunk cap over time.

We varnished the little spot where we had to relocate the outhaul cleat

And at some point we realized that we were ready to rig everything up. We did a dry run with spars only

And we were happy that we’d led all our lines properly. Peak to port is how we lead the halyards. Makes it easy to remember what’s what when you’re feeling for lines under the sail.

Putting the sail up was a breeze. The outhaul kept sticking to the track, but replacing it solved the problem immediately. Phew. One raise to check everything out, then a lower to adjust the mousing where the sail attaches to the forward edge of the gaff, and up again.

Dang. Not half bad! You can see the Herreshoff 12 1/2 behind us has her gaff-rigged sail up as well.

And within an hour, the other boats all had their sails bent on as well.

 

It’s like Dan’s House ‘O Beetle Cats… We’ve got a warehouse full of these 2006 models and they Have To Go!

At this point, most of us didn’t really feel like working any more. We were just happy to clean up and take lots of photos of our boats. I’d say there were a lot of proud parents in the shop that day. “Wait, take one from this angle now!”

We then picked them up one by one,

and dropped them in the harbor and paddled them around the pier and hauled them up on the dock for the next day’s official launching ceremony.

And that was it for the little workspace we’d called home since September.

It rained like crazy Friday night, but that was it. Launch day came up a little hazy, but it was obviously going to be a perfect day. Light wind blowing 5-10 in the harbor. Not too hot… it couldn’t have been better. 

We started the day off with a continental breakfast for the roughly 200 folks that showed for the graduation ceremony and launching.

It was a class act… fresh fruit, croissants, pound cake, decent coffee. I vote we have that every day.

Kent, the official Shipwright in Training Blog stalker showed up in person to witness the festivities and talk about his own restoration project of a vintage 1930’s Beetle Cat. He’s a great guy, and took some of the photos here. It was a treat to get to meet him.

For the graduation ceremony, we had Halsey Herreshoff, the grandson of Capt. Nat Herreshoff, president of the Herreshoff Museum, and world class sailor as the guest speaker. One of the 12 1/2’s that the 2nd years restored came from the museum, and he seemed pleased with the work they did.

He reminded us to keep our tools sharp. Good advice.

And then it was outside to launch the 12 1/2’s 

and the smaller lapstrake boats that the 2nd years finished up.

The Lawley tender

The Columbia lifeboat.

The most painful moment was witnessing Adam try to break a bottle of champagne against the bow of the 12 1/2. It took about a dozen tries and sounded horrific. WHAM! WHAM!!! He might as well have been whaling on it with a wooden mallet.

And then it was our turn. Each boat had a little bouquet on the bow, as in the tradition for a newly launched boat.

We went down the line, each launching our boats, paddling out past the mega yachts, and raising sails.

I was mostly happy that I manage to break the champagne bottle on the first shot. The secret is aim and follow-through, kids.  That’s mom talking in the background by the way…Then off we went around the harbor in perfect conditions.

No leaks. Nothing fell off. You can’t ask for much more than that. Well, a beer would have been nice.

So, next up is a couple of weeks off in Wisconsin to relax and work on little projects. For the summer I’ll be down at the Mystic Seaport Museum working in the Preservation Shipyard. It should be a great time. I’ll be working on the restoration of the fishing boat Roann.

Each of her frames weighs many times more than the whole Beetle cat. As the lead shipwright, Walt Ansel, said when I went down to interview, “Do you think you can handle heavy lifting?”We’ll find out, Walt.

So, phase one is over, but I’ll keep this little blog going over the summer. As long as it can stay moderately informative and entertaining, I’ll keep working on it!

And if you’re in the area, stop by Mystic. If you don’t already know, it’s the maritime museum that all other museums try to emulate. It’s an unbelievably rich resource.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Classes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.