A Shipwright in Training

It’s a little strange to head back to school without buying school supplies. Just to get in the general spirit of things, I bought a new box of sharpies (1001 uses) and that felt strangely wonderful. Now I want to find things to mark.

I almost didn’t return for the 2nd year due to financial concerns. It’s a long story, but refinancing my house ended up costing more than I’d realized and it just didn’t look like I could realistically swing another year of tuition plus limited income. The folks at IYRS were able to help out substantially with scholarship money, and I’ll be working 20 hrs / week on the Aurora during the winter doing various improvements, and general boat maintenance so that should help make ends meet. So, it’s back for the final year. I’m looking forward to having more time to practice the things I was learning last year.

We started out the first week with a quick safety review, a little test on our knowledge of shop safety rules, and an opportunity to show off our woodworking chops and mastery of safety concepts by cutting out a push stick from a pattern. Be still my beating heart. I know, I know, safety is very important. Honest, I’m right there with you when it comes to wanting to work in a shop staffed by conscientious, responsible folks. I play guitar, and I value each and every one of my fingers as well, but it seems that there should be a way to test our safety acumen in a way that doesn’t feel so contrived and basic. Anyone out there actually had a positive experience with a safety program?

After showing that we are up to the task of operating heavy machinery, it was time to get into actual boat-related work. The past 3 days have been spent talking about and actually surveying some of the boats that are hanging out in front of the school waiting to be restored. Now we’re talkin!

Here’s Carina, a 1940 Phil Rhodes design. I chose to survey her because she’s unlike any boat I’ve ever been on before. She’s big, 46′ 4″, and was designed to race on big water as well as provide a comfortable living space for folks doing extended cruising. She was hauled out in 1997, and her last owner tried to restore her, but was eventually overwhelmed by the scope of the project. So, we got her.

That happens a lot, by the way. People become enamored by a boat - the term is “boatstruck” - and go into a restoration project with a vision of success that requires a significant selective distortion of the facts to sustain it. Initially, the vision appears perfectly reasonable to the boatstruck person, and folks who counsel caution are written off as pessimists, faithless scardey cats, or plebeians who simply don’t understand the nobility of the mission. At some point, reality intrudes into this insular little world, and the sheer enormity of the task they’ve taken on begins to take hold. The healthy response to this cold slap with a live tuna is to consult with impartial folks who know a thing or 2 about boats and finances. In other words, bring in the faithless, passionless Cretans you’ve previously written off as human speed bumps on true love’s highway. It’s Don Quixote checking in with his therapist. The unhealthy response is to blame everyone but yourself for the fix you’re in, and begin flailing about like an addict in search of a fix. This is where people start losing serious money, friends, spouses, respect, and all sense of perspective. At some point, though, IYRS starts looking like a noble way out, and we get the call to please take this boat and find a good foster home for her. If the boat is important enough, we say yes.

Carina was important enough. She’s won some famous races including the Detroit-Mackinac and Newport - Bermuda races. She came in 2nd in the Fastnet race. Unfortunately, she has some big, big issues these days.

See that line of damage going down from waterline behind the poppet? Here’s a close up.

Welcome to the power of electricity. What you’re looking at here is called delignification. That’s a big word to describe the loss of lignin in wood. Lignin is the glue that holds wood fibers together. Lose the lignin, and you lose everything. I can poke a ball point pen through the 1″ thick mahogany plank here. So, what’s this stuff about electricity? Let’s look inside the boat.

See that bronze strap running down from the upper right? There are a couple of those guys built into the boat to help stiffen the hull. They’re electrically connected to each other and every other major metal part in the boat with heavy gauge copper wire. This process is called bonding and it’s designed to make sure that any stray current travels equally throughout the boat. Salt water is an excellent electrical conductor, and if your boat’s metal parts aren’t all connected together (the theory goes), then current will flow through the water between dissimilar metals. This process is called galvanism or electrolysis depending on who you talk to. When the current does flow, one metal gives up its electrons, and essentially is eaten up. This is what happens in a battery. When that metal is near wood, the electrons passing through the wood tear apart the lignin.

I know, it’s complicated. Here’s a few places to read up more about it.

Here’s what you need to know for the purposes of this example: the electrons streaming from Carina’s bronze strapping out through the salt water shot through the wooden planking and eventually destroyed it. That’s why you see most of the damage below the water line.

Carina’s last owner stripped out the inside of the boat, took off the deck, sistered in new frames where the previous frames had broken, and was in the process of replacing the deck beams when he gave up. Here’s some sistered frames:

You can see cracked frames just above the stringers. The new frames are through-bolted to the planks. What you can’t see in this photo is that the new frames are oak laminates, and they are all coming apart. Very discouraging.

Inside, the boat is stripped, and pretty much trashed. It appears to have been left out in the open for a long time.

Very sad.

The last owner kept the interior paneling, stove, and all manner of other deck hardware. It’s all in storage here, but it’s still in rough shape.

What you basically have now is a good lead keel with a pile of sticks on top of it. This is what a total restoration looks like, and essentially you’re talking about building a brand new boat with a few of the old parts for sentimental reasons.

Restoration isn’t all glamor and hanging in the hot tub with Julia Roberts, kids.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 10:23 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.