A Shipwright in Training

Well, she’s launched!  The weather service gave us an 80% chance of thundershowers, but they held off most all day.  It was gray, but beautiful.  Many stories, but I need to crash.  Film at  11.  In the meantime, a few snapshots, courtesy of the one and only Ms. Holly.  She apologizes for the dot of crud on her lens.

On the trailer, ready to go over to the ramp.

Putting up a beetle cat mast to dress her.

Dressed with just some of the many flags she’s gathered during her racing career.

And finally, I got to douse her.

More later!

Tags: madcaplaunch

Madcap gets loaded onto a trailer on Friday morning, so really, there’s only one more day left to work on her.  I’ve been at the school pretty much all the time for the past 2 weeks (and at least a couple of hours after class nightly for the past 2 months) trying to get as much done as possible.  Not much energy right now (yow!  It’s 1:30 am) so let’s just do the photos.  More commentary at a later date…

Last Friday.  Setting up the stick for the MBOD (Manhasset Bay One Desigh, an Olin Stephens design) a group of 2nd years repainted.  Pretty sketchy platform there…

But it worked fine.

Jib track.  The bolt heads had to be individually bent over to sit flat on the track but also fit in a hole that angles inboard. Read the rest of this entry »

Installing the jib car track should be a simple deal.  Get track, cut to length, bolt it onto the boat.  Soooo easy.

Well, the folks who made the track we need went out of business, but, hey, lucky us!  Someone bought all their stock, and now they will sell it to us.  All we had to do is have Warren meet them at a rest area by the highway so the truck could stop on it’s way to somewhere else and drop off the 2 lengths that we needed.  “So, youse showed up?  Well my pal and I was thinkin… the price of gas bein what it is, we thinks the items you wants now cost twice as much.  Youse gots a problem with that?  That’s a nice car you gots there.  Shame if someone was to drive a truck into it and break the drivers legs or somethin, know what I mean?”

Ok, so we get 2 lengths of bronze track, a total of 20′ 2″ for over $700.

Cutting it to length was easy.  At that price, I should save the shavings.

Now, comes the fun part: shaping it.  The boat is curved, so a straight length of track stuck on it would look awful.  So, it has to be curved to match the sweep of the boat.  The curve goes side-to-side, through the thickest part of the track, so there’s no way to do it by hand.  The track is way too thick for that.  No kinks, and no mess-ups, because bronze can break if you bend it back and forth too much.  No pressure, but hey, don’t screw up.

So, I templated out the curve of the cap rail where this will go, to get the proper curve, and made up a jig to bend this sucker. 

This is the same metal bending press I used earlier for shaping the swallowtails that brace the running backstays.  In this case, the jig has to hold the track vertical, and not dent the soft bronze while it gets pressed.   Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, May 17th, Roann was relaunched after more than 3 years of steady work.  

Everyone said it, and I said it too… you can’t believe how different she looks outside when you’re used to seeing her inside.  In the shop, you never get to back up and see her completely… you only get to see sections at a time.  Outside, you can step back and see her for the big, saucy, shapely craft she is.

Who’s a pretty boat?  WHO’S a pretty boat??  You are!

Walt Ansel, the lead shipwright, described her aft end as “bodacious.”

Absolutely, Walt.  You can’t describe her without moving your hands as if you’re running them along her. Read the rest of this entry »

I got back on Monday and the toe rail transition piece was… exactly where I left it.  Warren put most of the crew on other jobs, so here we go.

Armed with (left to right) sandpaper, a good rasp, a pattern for the profile of the toe rail, a spokeshave, and sandpaper pressed up against a concave profile sanding head (the yellow sandpaper) I worked on the shape of the transition piece for about an hour.  As I started to get close, I used thin battens to make sure the inside and outside curves were fair.

It came out nicely I think. Read the rest of this entry »