Blog

We finally got to Mystic Seaport in August.  We spent two days walking around the museum.  What a great place!  I highly recommend a visit.

The designer of Ballena Blanca, Philip L. Rhodes, had a long and distinguished career designing everything from dinghies up to cargo ships.  When he died in the early ’70s, his family donated his entire collection of ships plans and design notes to the Mystic Seaport museum.

For Blanca, his design #816 “Discoverer”, they had a folder with about 50 pages of notes, with everything: hull-speed calculations, equipment model numbers, etc.  I can’t understand most of it (things like calculations of the flexibility and strength of fiberglass panels, for example), but I got a copy of every page, in case I need the information some day.

They also had 18 large sheets of ship’s plans.  Copies of those were more expensive, so I didn’t copy things like wiring diagrams (which I’m redoing from scratch anyway), or the cast iron keel profile.  I did get 6 important sheets copied:

• Inboard Cutaway
• Profile and Cross Sections
• Structural Laying Down Plan
• Deck Plan
• Rigging Schedule
• Mast and Boom

 

Also, I had the staff at Mystic make me a decorative copy of the all-importand Sail Plan.  We’re going to have it framed and hang it over the mantle!

Next up: starboard engine update!

-K

This week I finally found a source for an I-beam to make a lifting rig for the old generator and starboard engine.  I’d found the rest of the gear for hoisting (chain hoist, beam trolley, etc.) for a reasonable price (yay, Harbor Freight!).

So I took Friday off work to add a work-day at the boat, and meet the delivery.  Some lumber, and a 15 foot, 15 pounds-per-foot, 4 inch by 8 inch steel beam.  That’s 225 pounds for those of you keeping score.  Six hours later, I had a “swing-set” assembled that reached from the forward end of the pilot-house, almost to the transom. 

I was able to move the beam over the transom by myself a bit at a time, work on it on the deck (it balanced nicely on the threshold of the salon), and lift each end onto my shoulder to fit it into the “A”-frame end supports.  Got the bruises on my shoulders to prove it!

Then, opened the hatches, hooked up the hoist, and had the generator mobile.

The trolley made it simple to slide it out the door and onto the back deck.  No more big lump of non-functional generator in my hold! 

One of the denizens here at Tall Timbers (we all call him Fiberglass Mike) has a crane-truck, and he offered to pluck the generator off the deck for me.  We chatted at lunch-time before he left to get the crane– turns out he’s selling it soon, so he might not be able to help me with the starboard engine if/when I need to pull it.  No time like the present!  Especially since once the lift rig was done, it only took me about 20 minutes to move the generator.

So while he was gone fetching the crane, I unmounted the starboard engine and made sure it was free and ready to move.  Mike plucked the generator from the deck, and a half-hour later, the starboard engine, too.  It’s sitting on-shore just behind the boat, waiting for me to decide how to move forward.  (Sorry, but I don’t have any pictures of that, since other people were helping and I didn’t want to scurry around with a camera while hauling away on the lifting chain, etc.)

The boat sits high out of the water, and lists to port now, since I just removed about a ton of steel from her gut. That’ll change once the engine goes back in and I fill some fuel tanks and water tanks.

So, major progress!  I’ve got a line on a guy who can help rebuild that engine for me, so it doesn’t take until Christmas. Next up– engine controls on the bridge, and steering.

Fair winds,

Kirk