The schooner Sassafrass

A varnishing adventure

2009-04-23T08:47:00.001-07:00

The cabin sides were my first vertical varnishing venture. I varnished the tongue and groove for our cabin top in the summer while the wood was all laying flat. I must say it spoiled me and falsely led me to believe that varnishing, in spite of what I'd heard, was no big deal.

Vertical varnishing in 32 degree weather is something I do not recommend undertaking. You must keep in my mind, while you read about my debacle, that I am a novice and had no idea what I was doing.

Thinking that reading the can was about all I needed to know to tackle the cabin sides, especially after my successful tongue and groove experience, I commenced. The can told me that thinning wasn't recommended so I skipped that along with taking notice of how cold it was. I put on a coat and it looked great. I returned the next day and there were runs all over. I figured I would have to stay and brush it out once after I coated it, so I did it again. Needless to say it was the same the next day. I wish I could tell you that I stopped after this, but I wanted this project finished before my hubby returned from Alaska, so the stupidity continued.

I should have prefaced this by saying that I had put a couple of coats of sealer on in warmer weather and that went without a hitch. I continued to roll and tip varnish that kept weeping until my husband came home. The worst coat went on while he was in town, fortunately, so he got to take out the orbital sander and remove a few of my dripping awful coats of shame. I finally realized it was not my application process but the fact that the varnish wasn't going to dry in freezing temperatures.

You can scoff at me all you want, but I felt I had to lay it all out there for you. This was just one of many stupid things I have done while taking on this behemoth of a project. I must say that once it warmed up I made it look perfect. Oh alright maybe not perfect, but certainly something I could be proud of.

Stay tuned for my next blunder.

A tribute to Ula

2009-02-24T08:13:00.001-08:00

I wanted to post a picture of my sweet dog Ula. We lost her at the tender age of two years old to what we can only assume was Pug encephalitis. The vet's had never really seen anything like it.

It's going to be a huge adjustment living without her. Ula was always a surprise to people at the park because she looked like a pug baby but was really half pug and half boston terrier along with being a runt. The thing that surprised people was her love for a frisbee. Pugs just don't chase frisbees, but Ula was a frisbee and ball loving girl. She loved to go camping and frequent the local dog park. A favorite activity of hers was to stand at the edge of the water, lake or sea, and bark and bark at the waves and ripples. I must admit I found this annoying at the time but would love to hear her barking at it now.

Ula left behind my five year old daughter who is still coming to terms with what death means and our three year old cat Nemo who shared a special relationship with the dog. Nemo was always the first one to put Ula back in line when she was barking or misbehaving.

We really loved you Ula bops, and miss you so much. What a wonderful addition to our family you were, nothing will replace you in our hearts and you will be remembered forever.

2009-02-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to the Blu sparrow for winning our contest.

GIVE AWAY #2

2009-02-16T19:21:00.000-08:00

It's give away time again. This is your chance to win the lovely earrings pictured here. All you have to do is visit my shop." Burgandy" look at the items and tell me which product photograph is the most alluring and why. I have been working on my pictures and I need to know what you find the most appealing. Remember that it's not about your favorite piece of jewelry, although feel free to mention that if you'd like, but your favorite photograph. Don't forget to leave contact info, and good luck. The winner will be randomly chosen on Sunday, February 22nd by my lovely five year old daughter. If you were not previously following my blog follow me now and mention it in your comment. You will get another entry to win!

Cabin sides

2009-02-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

Here is a shot of the new cabin side clamped into position. We had it built out of a wood called Silver Bali. There is a great company called the Kwai project that harvests unusual hardwoods from Suriname. They are working on getting their boat set up so that they can transport goods completely under sail. As it is we ordered a freight container full of raw silver bali. We shared the load with a couple of other boat building operations to save money. We love the look of it and it is a wonderfully useful tropical hardwood. We had the wood milled locally and were very pleased with it.

Comfort cruising tips #1

2009-02-12T15:53:00.001-08:00

Cocktail at Sunset
Originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk

Remember to befriend the folks on powerboats, they have ice!

This may seem like strange advice, but there does seem to be a divide between us sailors and the power boaters. Probably the main reason for this is that a destination that may take us a few days is simply a matter of hours for them so they are always "ahead of us". Remember that not only are they cruisers too, but they probably enjoy the evening libations just as much as you, and they usually have ice. That's the one thing I can say most of us cruisers seem to be lacking. Those freezers just take to much power. Offer to have them over for tapas and cocktails, they will will more than likely provide the cubes.

Preparation

2009-02-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

There is so much more to creating an aesthetic cabin top than you might think. When I first saw our boat I loved the lines of the hull and the overall effect that a schooner seems to have. Jake opened my eyes to see more.

Our cabin top originally was built of vertical planks and once pointed out to me I realized they were in fact quite unsightly and did the boat no justice whatsoever. The other thing to take into consideration is what is called the sheer. If you look at the boat from the side it is not a straight line from bow to stern, there is in fact a dip and this is called the sheer. The cabin top itself should follow the sheer of the boat to create smooth lines. Both of these reasons along with a couple of others were enough for us to decide the cabin top had to be replaced.

In the above picture the boat is being prepared for the construction of the new cabin top. The vertical planking that is in place allows for the shipwrights to create a template with the appropriate sheer for the boat.

Cruising tip for the galley #1

2009-01-28T20:06:00.000-08:00

A common and reasonable concern for all cruisers is provisioning for long passages and for the unexpected. The best tip I ever read was "there is food everywhere you go". Ok that makes sense, unless you want to get extremely literal and we are not going to do that. So in spite of the excellent, "there is food everywhere", I have a tidbit of advice. If you are cruising to to Mexico or central or south america and you love to cook with coconut milk as I do, then bring it with you. Unless of course you want to make it from scratch. Um... I 'm willing to learn but for the time being I want it ready to roll.

Now I know most of you are thinking, what in the world is she talking about, she wants me to take coconut milk to the land of coconuts, loony. Well to my great disappointment there is coconut milk to be found but it is all sweetened, the kind of awful honey colored syrupy stuff that you would use to make an umbrella drink. Now I am not condemning colorful cocktails with cute adornments, I just don't want that crap in my curry or my peanut sauce or my carrot soup, etc.

Had I known before I left San Diego for Cabo, I would have filled the foc'sle with cans of coconut milk. I must say it is probably fortunate I didn't know because we were surely short on space to begin with. I have recently discovered that in some asian markets they sell packets of powdered coconut milk. They are brilliant as they don't take up nearly the amount of space as a can and weigh much less. Never mind the fact that if you are an obsessive compulsive, and fear that you might need 50 or 60 of them to get you through all of your asian cooking impulses, they are less expensive than cans and a heck of a lot easier to hide from your hubby.

* Directions for milking a coconut can be found online.

A clean slate

2009-01-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

There is something magical about a series of pictures making a process appear to have happened with the snap of a finger. The removal of our cabin top obviously didn't happen that way, but this pic says"VOILA" everything is ready to move forward now.

This was to be the start of construction, and it was a pleasure to be thinking about putting material into the boat instead of removing them. There was still a lot of preparing for the actual construction of the new top at this point though.

The large wood beam that the ladder is leaning against is called the carlin as you can see there are carlins on both sides of the boat. These pieces of wood actually had to be pulled back into their original position before we could begin. When the cabin top was removed it was discovered that they were actually starting to move inwards and lose their integral shape.

Boat handling

2009-01-25T10:56:00.000-08:00

Even at 11 months old, Violet took her boat handling lessons very seriously. We were in Chemela, Mexico when this was taken and it brings back so many memories. Pictures like this remind me of why we are rebuilding this schooner with the intention of sailing all over the world on it.

I really believe the value of raising our child to learn practical life skills, and to allow herself to become immersed in different cultures or lifestyles, will be invaluable to her future. I am looking forward to simplifying our lives once again. To purge the unecessary nesting objects I feel inclined to absorb into my space when I am in one place for to long, to disconnect from the pace of the city and to see the stars in all their glory.

Tagged for life

2009-01-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

I'VE BEEN TAGGED! Here are some random facts about me.

I've been tagged by Jude and I'm going to continue the game.

Each blogger has to reveal 7(8 according to some) random facts about themselves.

People who are tagged have to post the rules.

At the end I have to choose 7/8 people to tag.

I then need to leave a comment for each person who has been tagged, telling them they are "it".

The "tagee" then needs to leave a comment for the person who tagged them to read your list.

1) Although I love the sea, sailing and scuba diving in particular. I hate sand. Hate it!

2) My poop smells like roses.

3) I snore and cuss like a sailor.

4) My biological mother was a nun.

5) My feet are simply enormous, a size 11.

6) My father was a famous cinematographer in his day.

7) I have recovered a body from 80 feet of water.

8) I was almost a debutante in L.A.

* Only one of these statements is not true!

3magpies

unstrungsisters

G's luxury watch blog

Shine your hineysoap co.

I like pretty

Gone to the dogs

Sophismpress

2009-01-24T16:49:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Jen Consalvo for winning my give away.

Thank you everyone who participated.

Scarfing

2009-01-23T06:49:00.000-08:00

Coming from Los Angeles, I always believed scarfing to be eating really quickly. For example, I scarfed down my breakfast before going to varnish the boat. When I found out we had to scarf the mast I felt unprepared. Fortunately the guys over at Jensens on Lake Union "scarfed" the mast for us. Scarfing is the joining of another piece of wood.

I must say I really wimped out on the mast and had them varnish it too. I did some sanding and paint removing on the wind tunnel that they call their dock, and while I can see that the tarp in this picture is obviously not being tousled by the wind, you can be assured that the wind , it did bite. They were able to achieve a beautiful mirror perfect finish that I have yet to achieve, so it was really worth it.

2009-01-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

This is a lay out our Naval architect Tad Roberts put together with us. He's up in Gabriola island outside of Nanaimo. We had the pleasure of going up there to have a meeting with him.

Working with him has been a wonderful experience. Despite his usual yacht work he was more than happy to deal with us, the regular folk, and get this project into a visual context for us.

As you can see we have a pilot house drawn in, but that will be one of the last items on our agenda. We have a lot of work to do before getting to that point and moving aboard takes priority.

GIVE AWAY #1

2009-01-17T08:07:00.001-08:00

I am having my very first give away. If you would like to win this bracelet simply go to my etsy shop, you can see the widget to the right, and pick out your favorite item. Come back to this post and leave me a comment telling me what your favorite item was and why. Make sure you leave some kind of contact info so I can let you know you've won.

I plan on having a monthly give away so if you don't win this time you'll have another chance just check back in.

Gentleman feel free to enter, because your lady is sure to love this. Winner will be randomly chosen on January 24th.

The cover

2009-01-16T10:35:00.001-08:00

I realize this picture may not seem that exciting to any of you , but for me this was a moment in time I will never forget. The moment when we would have the cabin top removed. Serious demolition was about to begin. Before we could remove the cabin top we had to protect the boat from Seattle's ever present rainy days, and Jake came up with that pvc cover all on his lonesome. I don't know how he erected that thing all by himself but he did.

We were now putting her in Baketun and Thomas's hands. We did what we could but for the construction of the new cabin top we wanted the pro's to do it. They were incredible to work with and we would recommend them to anyone who needs the support of a shipwright.

Relocation

2009-01-13T11:24:00.001-08:00

This is a picture of me with Joe Baketun as we move the boat from our slip on Lake Union to Baketun and Thomas of Ballard to have a new cabin top put on. Jake is on board with us somewhere. This was a huge moment for us because this was the point where the last of the demolition was going to take place and we were going to make the turnaround and start actual new construction. It was a long haul to get to this point.

For those of you not familiar with Seattle, that is gas works park in the top left corner. I love taking my daughter there, so the dog and I can chase her around as she rides her bike all over the pathways. This park has such great ambience as it is so popular with kite fliers, you can see all the boats sailing on the lake and the sea planes are always buzzing overhead.

The unveiling

2009-01-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

After removing all of the old paint I was amazed at how great the wood looked. It was worth the days of scraping all of the paint off with a scraper and heat gun and then the sanding through the remainder of the paint with a variety of grits, and I must say it took some grit.

You can't really tell here but some of those planks run the entire length of the boat. Can you imagine 50' long planking. Incredible. There is still some debate as to the species of wood that was used to build her.

We were told by Worth that she was apitong and we went with that for a long time until an expert on apitong told us, while it may be some sort of subspecies it was not apitong. We know that it is constructed of a tropical hardwood that is very rot resistant and likes to eat through sandpaper, but other than that we go with what our shipwrights at Baketun and Thomas of Ballard tell us. "This is cowabunga wood".

Sanding as a lifestyle

2009-01-10T20:02:00.001-08:00

I have done a lot of unexpected things in my life, but one thing I can assure you of is that I never anticipated what I call sanding as a life style. Sanding is not up there on my list of favorite activities but I can guarantee any wood boat owner does a lot of it, especially if they rip out the entire interior of their boat.

As proud new wooden boat owners we have received both solicited and unsolicited advice, in fact we get a lot of that just being sailors. We went back and forth trying to decide between a traditional pine soup or a red lead paint for our bilge and the interior of the hull. During the time we thought we were going to go for the traditional soup we started to remove the old paint completely. We removed probably 70% of the interior paint before deciding we were going to red lead her instead.

We have definitely had some minor bumps in the road and have wasted a fair bit of time doing things that in retrospect were totally unnecessary. I suppose there were other things I could have been doing besides taking it all down to bare wood but what is done is done. Jake sanding the decks to bare wood on the other hand was not an option. That was one of the first things to get done since sliding all over the place wasn't ideal.

The unsettling day of stepping.

2009-01-08T09:42:00.000-08:00

This was one of the most eventful days of our endeavor. We motored the boat over to Ballard to have our masts removed. A fairly straight forward procedure when you have the pros do it. The main mast was removed without a hitch, with the exception that it took so long to do it there was not enough time left in the work day to remove the foremast. This being said we motored the boat back to our slip and while I went up to the house Jake, my husband, and our friend Troy tied her up and got her settled back into the slip.

Around this time quite a wind storm blew itself in for the evening and that was when Troy and the rest of us discovered that the only thing holding the foremast up was the rig, which had been removed. Our foremast is a solid piece of mahogany, weighing in at about 800 lbs. and when it came down and hit Troy there were some amazing forces at work protecting him.

The mast sort of glanced and rolled off of his shoulder and then slammed into his leg. He was not by any means unscathed, but he was alright. A huge shock and a big bruise along with a lovely mast, that we gave him to build into his house, were all he walked away with.

I posted previously about Jake and Troy hand chipping out a lot of concrete ballast. With this in mind we realized that the foremast had previously been embedded in this concrete and a prior owner had probably simply cut the mast off to remove it at some point and then basically just pinned it back together and covered it with a mast band. The rig held it in place. Fortunately when Worth brought the boat up from California he never raised the sails. The amazing part of this story is that no one was seriously injured and no boats in our marina were struck when the mast came down. It came down sort of onto Troy, then onto the deck and then kind of hung off of the deck. Phew!

A new view

2009-01-07T10:19:00.001-08:00

This is definitely skipping ahead, but I wanted to give a view of what she likes like with a brand new cabin top and paint job. Can't wait to get that mast up and have the other one built, but that's another story!

We are of course riding so high out of the water because she's just an empty shell. You can see huge barrels of water that are helping weigh the bow down. We have since put in about 1200 lbs of lead pigs but we are still riding high. Our naval architect had a laugh and told us to stop adding ballast to an empty boat. Wait until you fill it with your stuff and then see how many pigs you'll need. Sound advice if you ask me.

Contemplation

2009-01-07T09:29:00.001-08:00

This picture was taken from the bow looking aft. My husband, Jake, Is contemplating how he is going to remove the steel fuel tanks. I didn't have anything to do with this part of the project nor did I have much to do with the removal of 1600 pounds of concrete ballast. Jake hand chiseled the majority of this concrete out by hand, afraid that using even a small jack hammer would simply shake the planks apart. We couldn't have done this without the help of our great friend Troy! He spent a lot of time hand chiseling too. Thanks Troy. I did remove a few buckets of rubble, but I was not involved in the hand chiseling, and for that I am grateful.

Demolition begins

2009-01-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of our forward cabin after we expedited the process of the existing tongue and grooves journey to the floor. Everywhere you see a little rust spot, a nail or staple had to be removed. For some unknown reason there were little nails and staples all over the boat. The removal was a two day process in itself. The plywood ceiling that had been installed did not allow for any air flow so the walls were slick with mold. I think I was sneezing for the entire eight months we lived aboard, before we moved off to complete demolition.

For a window of understanding

2009-01-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post this picture of what the interior looked like before we got started so that you could understand why we would gut this boat and start over. We called her the ply wood palace for just that reason. Her interior was completely put together with plywood. Not very solid and not very attractive. She was not a blue water vessel by any stretch.

To share a bit of her history with you , I will start by telling you about Worth Brown. Worth was 98 years old when we purchased what was then called Island Trader from him. He had purchased this boat when he was 90 years old to live out the last years of his life in. If you can imagine, after he purchased her, he brought her up the coast from California to Seattle, Washington. If you google Worth you will discover that he was a ship wright and designed race winning boats in his prime!

When we bought Island Trader we were currently residing in Mexico aboard our 36' Tiburon Ketch and were not in a huge hurry to move aboard Island Trader so we told Worth to go ahead and stay aboard for a few months. His daughter and son in law were eager to move him to Florida where they were planning to live out their retirement. Worth passed away the day before he was to move off of the boat. We are still not certain wether he passed on the boat or not but we do know he didn't want to leave her, and if we have the spirit of a ship wright residing aboard then we have something very special indeed.

There was a bit of lore connected to her and when we moved aboard our fellow marina neighbors were happy to share her legend with us, we have not been able to get any concrete evidence of her history other than Worth's ownership. Apparently she was commissioned in Saigon by a naval officer, and then purposefully sunk in the harbor during the war to prevent her any damage. No better way to preserve a wood boat than immerse her completely in salt water.

Stage one.. When we bought the boat

2008-12-29T09:05:00.000-08:00

This is how our schooner looked when we bought her. The cabin top had almost no sheer and was built using vertical planking. We realized early on that we were going to have to replace it. I will admit that we did not realize the extent of refitting that would be required until we moved aboard.

We moved aboard three months after purchasing and that was an eye opener indeed. The forward cabin dropped pieces of tongue and groove to expose cotton batting falling out of the deck. The previous owners love affair with a staple gun became painfully apparent. Walking on our enamel painted decks created an experience not unlike ice skating. The mold that was hiding in abundance behind the plywood walls assaulted me with it's sneeze inducing properties, and yet a love affair was born.