So Sad Summer is Over

Took in the canvas, bailed the boats, pulled the sneakbox and the railbird for winter dry storage. Pulled the masts from the Garvey. Taking the wedges from the sneakbox.

Look Mom, I Can See Myself

Well, at least that what I am trying for. Sanding and scraping lead to lots of reflective thinking. Hours by yourself doing repetitive motions. Sometimes I sing real loud with the radio, mostly though I replay videos in my head and time travel.

2nd Day of Trailer Fixing

What is it about trailer lights? It seems like they work for only the first day you hook them up and may not even that long when someone clips you in the parking lot. The little gremlins (opposite of Brownies) get in there and break the wires inside the insulation, or burn out the bulbs, or corrode the fittings.
Lucky for me, this girl has a trailer light fixer who doesn't complain much. He gets his rewards.

Hours Scraping

Spent most of today scraping green epoxy for that super high gloss. Prairie Home Companion was good company except for the cowboy stuff.

SeaSteading

Masses of ships parked because of world recession. There have been ships parked in the Delaware all summer. See 70.8% blog
Daily Mail - Anchored ships
ghost ship cities

Sanding and Epoxy

Sanded, still fairing.
Put a coat of low viscosity epoxy on SPARTINA today. It is cold, so the epoxy should level out better. I also used a slow kicker. Went home to warm up. My diploma came in the mail. It is huge, 320 square inches.

TOP PRIORITY

She is back in the shop. Most of her original parts are there. She has some 10year old masking tape to start sanding off. Got to see some great old photos of the construction. These three tuck-ups (TOP PRIORITY, TOFU, and ARTEMIS)were built by John Brady on the barge almost twenty-five years ago. TOFU became Marion Brewington which is now owned by the Del Val TSCA. The other two were supposed to be the Edwin Brownlee and ... Joeseph Leiner. ARTEMIS was never renamed since she went directly to her owner. She is in the ISM small boat collection now.
There are two rigs for this boat. A racing rig which will need a new mast and gaff, and a pleasure sprit rig. One year, an Ohio tuck-up won the constitution cup with a sprit rig because she was lighter, only carrying two crew members.

Smokestack

Silent Maid has a nice little diesel stove made by Wallace. It has a ceramic cook top when the lid is open and acts as a cabin heater when the lid is down. A squirrel cage blower forces air over the cook top to heat the air. I've used it to dry things out and it does warm the cabin well when the companionway hatches are closed.
John made a beautiful cover for the vent stack by gluing up a birdsmouth tube from 1/4" mahogany and giving it an "S" curve by clamping it to a scribed pattern before the epoxy kicked.

Sharpie Keel

Silent Maid left today in the remanents of a NorthEaster. She was towed, instead of sailed, by HURRICANE, her owners workboat.
See Henry in the Chesapeake on Silent Maid's FaceBook page.

I spent the morning making a keel plank for the sharpie. Charles rough cut and planed it yesterday. I measured and recut it and jointed the sides straight. Dave was trimming the centerboard slot yesterday with the router.
TSCA members are invited to come work on the ISM tuckup on Monday nights 5-8pm and some weekends starting with Oct. 26. Skip the first Monday in Nov. Then call me and let me know you are coming. I'll send out an email to TSCA members.

Sanding SPARTINA

Paid rent (mowed) and spent a couple hours sanding the Core Sound 17. Still fairing the hull. One more coat of epoxy, now that it is cooler, it should smooth out more before kicking.

Silent Maid Takes Her Leave

Heading back down to the Chesapeake, We spend the day restowing. She gets the ship's linens, pillows and cushions back out of dry storage. I made a short spliced line for the forward hatch so Henry could have his sail tie back.

Wheel

Spiffed up the varnish on SILENT MAID's hull and her wheel.

Used the RAILBIRD skiff to get down to the water line where the anchor (port) and a crab pot (starboard) dinged the hull.

Seattle Fishing Boats

Mostly steel some wooden ones, we were guests of STEEL TIGER. Check out their ample engine room.

Sharpie

This is the boat that the summer student's started a year ago. Charles was making the bedlogs and curved parts for the centerboard case. This boat would make a fine project for the MSSD program at Phila U.

MASCF 27

St. Michael's, MD
Saturday I spent judging beautiful boats and speaking with their owners. What a privilege to get to meet a bunch a great folks. This was a very different year from me. I was more on the other side of the event. We didn't camp this year since we had the luxury suite on SILENT MAID, berthed on the crab shack dock. We got a fast cruise (and baptism) on EDMEE S. the seaport's log canoe.

video

To see some absolutely beautiful images of three year's of MASCFs look at Eye in Hand
Here's one of me taken by Barry.
Here is a melonseed blog inspired (maybe) by a MASCF.