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Electronics Arch – Blanca, 20Jul2015

Sorry for the lack of posts– things are still progressing!  Over the winter I spent some time collecting electronics like a radio, GPS antenna, etc. and I’ve finally finished their installation.

The area above the main helm where radios, etc. were originally was this big boxy thing over your head that felt dark and crowded.  It was also slowly rotting (like everything else!) and a haven for wasps.  So, like many projects that start as a small-impact evaluation– I ripped it all out.  You can see the original in this picture from 5 years ago (boxy thing with knobs to the right of the picture, up against the overhead).

Here’s what it looked like after I removed it.  Much more open feel, of course.

After a good bit of staring and imagining, I came up with a plan.  Modern electronics don’t need anywhere near the room the old thing had.  A VHF radio from the 70s might be 12″ x 18″ x 4″, and weigh 10 pounds.  Today, a much more capable radio fits in the palm of your hand and weighs 1/2 pound.  Why do I need this huge, boxy thing any more?  I decided to make an “arch” over the helm area that would fit in with the existing arches in the salon (currently with trim removed).  I used painter’s tape to try to get an idea how it would look:

This was my first foray into building something new with teak (I’d replaced some trim and trimmed out the new AC circuit panel with it, but that was all).  So a set of Forstner drill bits for nice counter-sinks were in order– darn, I had to get new tools!  The hardest part was getting the curve up against the overhead right.  Boat-builders call this “spiling.”  It involves many measurements of the curve against a (usually straight) reference piece in order to re-create the curve with a pencil line on the work piece.  I had no way to cut the gentle curve.  A hand jigsaw would be the right way to do this– darn, another new tool!  Once I had that figured out, the assembly went quickly.

I fastened PVC board up against the overhead to make a channel, just like the existing arches.  Then a teak “box” that fits up over the channel.  The box is hinged on the starboard end and fastened up with two long through-bolts that have wing-nuts on the forward side.  That way, you unfasten the wing-nuts and bolts and the whole teak box swings down to work on it.  The hole through the overhead up to the bridge (for wiring that goes up there) was aft of this new arch, so a connecting trim-board was necessary to cover that wiring.  The last piece was a wiring “chase” stanchion on the starboard end of the arch, to carry wiring from the helm up into the arch.  Fishing the wires through that was a challenge!  I ended up with a messenger line through there to make that easier in the future.  Here’s the (not quite) finished result:

The screw-holes all need bungs, and the whole thing needs to be sanded and finished, but that won’t come until all the rest of the trim-work gets the same treatment.  The radio is installed and works.  The string hanging down in front of it is the horn– I found a momentary pull switch that makes sounding the horn more fun: it’s kind of like a truck-horn where you pull down on the lanyard.  I’ll eventually have a T-handle on that lanyard.  There’s also a button on the bridge.

I had to fabricate the stanchion on the starboard end out of four pieces of teak.  Glued and clamped, then cut to shape.  That turned on quite nice, if I do say so myself!

Next up: fresh water system!

K

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summer and fall projects

Our main workboat, Roper, is on loan to the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum again this summer.  During June we will set up our second workboat for diving.  She has been named Polly, short for Polynavicular Morbus, the disorder of owning too many boats.  In July and August we will use Polly to continue searching for the vessels that were scuttled at St. George’s Island, Maryland, in late July 1776 by Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia.  Those vessels numbered between eight and 23, depending on which archival sources you like.  We have more than 20 mag and sonar anomalies to investigate in the area.  We will also have dive boat coxswain training and a field school and on-the-job training in low-visibility site mapping.

Roper will come home from Florida during the first week of September.  The rest of September and all of October will be spent mapping what may be a Civil War canal boat, and the remains of a dozen World War One wooden steamships at Widewater, Virginia, across the Potomac from Mallows Bay, Maryland, where more than 150 of their sisters were scrapped.  The Widewater work will end in time for us to return to home port and recover the mooring buoy from the U-1105 Historic Shipwreck Preserve on Hallowe’en.

If you would like to participate in any of these projects please click the “contact” button above and let us know.

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Spring work: U-1105 Historic Shipwreck Preserve, and workboat maintenance

Fetching and deploying the new mooring buoy rig on the U-1105 site

David Howe, IMH Secretary

6-7 April 2015:

Dawn Chesaek, Dean Frank, Charlie Reid, and I took Roper from Tall Timbers Marina to the Maryland DNR pier at Matapeake MD, loaded a new buoy anchor “clump” on board, and returned to Tall Timbers.  The round-trip took 24 hours.  Roper‘s big davit had no trouble lifting the clump and swinging it aboard, helped by her new super-high-tech davit turner: an 8-foot piece of 2-inch steel pipe.

18 April 2015:

The new anchor clump, nw chain, and buoy were deployed on the site, but there are a few loose ends to fix.

The clump is concrete, 30 inches square and 10 inches thick with a 3/4-inch steel staple or eye cast in it.  It weighs 800 pounds dry or 600 wet.  The chain comprises two fathoms of 3/4-inch and 20 fathoms of 1/2-inch galvanized, connected with a swivel.  It weighs about 400 pounds.

A few days ago, Lolly Vann and I slung the chain in 10-foot bights hanging outside Roper‘s port side, held by light line “stoppers” to cleats on the gunwale.

On 18 April we towed the buoy astern of Roper from Tall Timbers Marina to the site.  The marker ball that we rigged on the conning tower last year survived the winter and usefully showed the wreck’s exact location.  (We have three more balls in reserve if they are ever needed.)

Dive crew were Tom Edwards, Fred Engle, and Al Gordon  of BAREG, Sam Glover of IMH, and Doug Van Kirk (Tom Edwards’ son-in-law).  Deck crew were Captain Bobby Bowes, and Dan Lynberg and me from IMH.

When we arrived on site we brought the buoy alongside Roper.  Al and Sam dived and shackled the chain to the buoy.  We shackled the “tag line” to the staple on the clump, rigged the lifting wire from Roper‘s davit to a hook on the staple, put a “mouse” of light line across the mouth of the hook so it could not fall off, and shackled a 1,000-pound lift bag to the hook.  Then we lifted the clump, swung it overboard on the davit, and lowered it about 10 feet into the water.  Al and Sam dived to the clump and inflated the lift bag partway to ease the load on the davit as we paid out more chain and lowered the clump.

We lowered it to 40 feet, cutting the stoppers as needed.  At 40 feet we had a pelican hook connecting the chain to a heavy rope strap over Roper‘s port quarter cleat, so the chain took the weight of the clump and the lifting wire went slack.  Tom and Doug dived to the clump, deflated the lift bag, released the hook, and re-attached the hook and bag farther up the chain.  That step was necessary because Roper‘s davit wire is not quite long enough to lower the clump all the way to the river bottom.

We lowered the clump to about 80 feet, positioned the boat southeast of the U-1105, and lowered the clump all the way to the bottom.  It lies 70 to 75 feet southeast of the wreck, far enough away that the chain cannot hit the U-boat’s conning tower no matter how the buoy swings in changing currents.

The tag line was coiled on a reel.  Cap’n Bobby paid it out from Roper as the clump descended.  The line was 210 feet of 5/8″ laid Nylon, long enough to reach from the clump to the U-1105 and encircle the conning tower on the main deck.  There is no other known attachment point on the U-1105 that is strong enough.  Fred and Doug swam the tag line reel to the marker ball, descended to the wreck, and ran the line around the base of the conning tower.  They got the line around the tower but became short on gas and too cold to tie it off.  They rigged a zip tie to hold it temporarily, cut off the excess line, and brought that up with the reel.  While they were working the line, Al descended the chain and attempted to remove the lift bag and hook.  He was unable to free them, because the clump had spun on the way down and tangled the hook and bag.  We let the wire go and left the hook, bag and wire on the chain.  When Al, Doug, and Fred got back on board we returned to Tall Timbers.

Nobody got hurt, nothing broke, and the buoy and clump are on site.

19 April 2015:

Bobby, Fred, Sam, Dan, and I returned to the site.  The wind was southeasterly, gusting 20+ knots.  The sea conditions on site were choppy but adequate.  Fred and Sam dived.  They were able to tie the tag line, but the tangle of hook, bag and wire was too deep in the mud to fix, even after lifting the chain with a 500-pound lift bag.  So we made some progress, but we still need to clear the tangle and perhaps tighten the tag line.

20 April 2015:

Roper was hauled at Tall Timbers Marina for her annual refit.  We can fetch the U-1105 gear with our other boat Polly while Roper is “on the hard” or with Roper after she is launched but before 16 May when she will go to St Augustine for summer work with the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP).  Brendan Burke and Brian McNamara of LAMP will come to Tall Timbers on 21 April and spend a week or two preparing Roper for that work.

After the last season of work, Roper‘s bottom and topsides paints look fine but need another coat or two, her propeller has some dings that need repair, her zinc anodes need replacement, and her engine, electronics, and ports need some love and care.  Her aft work deck will be professionally sandblasted and coated with several layers of two-part epoxy paint.  We will also remove and re-bed her heavy davit and have all new injectors professionally installed in her Caterpillar 3208 diesel engine.

 

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2015 PLANS

IMH will have two large field projects in 2015, plus at least one 4-day field school in site mapping in low visibility, and several weekends of coxswain training.  We will also deploy a new half-ton mooring for the dive boat buoy at the U-1105 Historic Shipwreck Preserve.  For the schedule and a brief summary of the two big projects please see the attached .pdf.

As always, for more information or to sign up for fieldwork and training please click the “contact” button on our home page.

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Fall 2014 recon at Widewater VA

Attached is a summary report of our reconnaissance of wooden steamships from World War One at Widewater VA in September and October.  We will return to the site in September +/- October 2015 to continue work.  Please contact me if you would like to participate.

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Happy New Year! – Blanca, 5Jan2015

Happy New Year!  To take the edge off the winter cold, here’s a picture of the “new” diesel-fired cabin heater I installed last month. 

You can also see the rest of the companionway sole that’s been replaced.  I had to re-surface and paint the bulkhead behind the heater and install a heat-shield, as well as the flue-pipe and the thru-deck fitting.  Once I figured out how to tune it and clean the fuel lines, that baby pumps out the heat.  So no more electric space-heater.  And heat away from the dock when we need it!

I also completed the installation of a secondary 200-amp alternator on the starboard engine.  It directly feeds the house 12-volt system.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of it.  When the full-size battery box is reinstalled, it should show any pictures I take of that, so stay tuned.

On that note, I received delivery of 4 200 amp-hour 4D size AGM batteries for the house bank.  They’re monsters!  Thanks to Anthony at batterystuff.com for a great price, and free shipping (it was a holiday deal).  Free shipping on 4 125-lb batteries.  That’s huge!  I wasn’t really ready to buy them yet, but with that deal going on, I had to jump.  So now refurbishing and reinstalling the battery box and putting in the new battery bank has moved up the priority list.

There’s a similar story on the refrigerator.  I had been poring through the internet, looking for a fridge that would fit in the alcove in the galley.  We found one that was close, but would require enlarging the alcove and losing a chart-drawer that’s above it.  We bought that fridge last spring and set it up in the garage at home, with the intention of moving it to the boat when the galley is ready.  It served as a secondary “beer-fridge” in the garage all summer.  Then I found another fridge online that was the right size without modifying the alcove.  Afraid that it would be out of stock by the time the alcove is ready, I jumped on that fridge.  It’s now sitting in its box in the foyer at the house.  And darn, we’ll just have to keep the first one as a beer-fridge.  So the galley alcove refurb moves up on the priority list, too!  I’ve a new 120-volt circuit installed; all it needs now is paint and new decking for the fridge to sit on.  Then we can get rid of the tiny dorm-room fridge that’s been taking up counter space in the galley.  I’ll get pictures of that when it’s installed.

So, things move along.  I need to learn to take more pictures.  New Year’s resolution, perhaps?  Happy New Year!

 

-K