Sea Stories 1

Traversing The Whale
26 42.75 N 077 13.26 W

Libby is taking Tarwathie through The Whale. While she's doing that, I have time to sit here and blog.

We met some wonderful people at the Leeward Yacht Club. First was Art on Conch Pearl. Next was Don, Trisha and their daughter Cheryl on Road to the Isles. All of them were from Nova Scotia and all have been sailing for many years. For 20 years, Don was captain of Canada's "tall ship." Cheryl writes cruising guides. We own a copy of her Down East Circle Route guide to the Saint Lawrence/Nova Scotia regions.

Bob and Art have been buddies for 25 years. They have loads and loads of sailing stories. Books full of stories I'll bet. We heard just a few.

Most interesting was about how Bob and his family build their boat, Road to the Isles. The boat is 62 feet long, a Herreshoff design, made of steel and she displaces 30 tons. They built it in a boat yard on the Saint Johns River in Florida. Libby and I and several others were sitting around in Bob's cockpit having drinks, when I asked Bob, "How do you build a boat like this out of steel?" Well, that was exactly the right question. Bob became really animated. He stood up and began lecturing for the whole group within earshot. He did it very well. It only took 15 minutes. The whole group of us sat mesmerized the whole time.

They started with drawings of Herreshoff's design. Then they lofted it. That means transferring the drawings of the frame cross sections to full size pencil marks on sheets of plywood. Then the plywood was cut and used as a template to cut steel frames from plate. The frames were then mounted in place, held by forms and stringers. At that point, the skeleton form of the boat was formed. The whole thing was then used to make wooden molds of the hull plate sections, piece by piece.

There was a free welding course being taught at a nearby high school vocational department. The school boys weren't interested, so it was open to the public. Both Don and Cheryl went to the course. Cheryl earned her welder certification there. Don chose for class projects building of water tanks, fuel tanks and miscellaneous stainless steel gadgets he would need for the boat. The school provided all the materials for class projects free. Even the instructor pitched in to help so they also got free labor. Quite a deal.

They ordered 15 tons of steel plate. When it came, they picked up each sheet one at a time to see which way the natural bend was. You see,at the factory the steel is rolled up, and it retains a memory. The plates prefer to bend more in one direction than the other. Then they cut the pieces out, and took them all to a machine shop. For only $178 the shop rolled each piece until it conformed to the wooden mold. They had help from the boat yard owner to select whick place on which plate to cut the pieces from. When they were done, there was only one wheelbarrow of scrap left from the 15 tons of steel. That's remarkably little waste.

After that, the newly certified Cheryl did all the welding. Soon they had a complete yacht. I can testify that she's really beautiful and solid as a rock.

By the time Don finished with his story, I was all fired up. "Let's go build a steel boat of our own Libby," I said. Well that idea didn't last long, but it served as testament to Don't story telling skills.

I'll post more Art and Don story some other day.