Down Bay Sail

SILENT MAID takes her time sailing down to Seaside Park with a full compliment. Beautiful cool weather and good conversation.

Good Night Irene

Hurricane Irene has turned out to be a non event so far. Prolonged rain, but no high winds, so far. The Burlington river weather buoy recorded only one gust over forty with mostly 20 kt winds. No where near hurricane. I do expect lot of trash coming down river, the high tide was 10' two over the normal eight so there should be some clean up at the Red Dragon. The trench I cut, draining our back yard, has so far prevented the back porch from flooding. I figured it was easier to plant grass seed than clean up mud and wet from another house flood.

Marion Day

The tuck-up Marion is beautiful as ever. She remained stubbornly upright. Did have to bail periodically. Had a slow sail on Lake Union, Millville. Talked about shantyboats with Tom. Would like to build one to take to St. Mikes. Shantyboat that is.

ELF Again

Here is a great shot of ELF from Jenny Buck. Thanks!

ELF and VAPOR

Photo from the pasts Sunday Asbury Park Press. The Squan TriSail is a ocean race. This was Sunday's light air.

Slow Sailing

Light breeze meant slow sailing for the ELF crew. It did give us lots of chances to try out different sail combinations though. The TriSail Race Series are on the ocean in front of Bay Head and Mantoloking beaches.

Capt. Pete - Oarman

Pete & I worked on the oar project for the rowing program. Getting closer. A lot of ash shavings went into the can while the oar form is emerging from the boards.

Whaleboat Joint

The stem attached to the keel with rivets.

The Callahan Cup

TORCH & SILENT MAID were out together with the a-cats for the Callahan cup on Friday afternoon. The breeze was flaky, shifting around a bit and giving the course setters coniptions before settling down. Racing was slow but steady in the light air. It was the first time together for our skipper and crew. John Brady, John S'bach, Peter, Christian, Chuck, Nick, and I brought TORCH around the course for a second place in the regatta. Ok for a green crew. ps since I am crew, these are all between the races shots. I got in trouble for trying to shoot the action during the races. There were some great moments at the starts and marks, but they are committed to memory rather that electrons.

OLYMPIA

A visit to the cruiser OLYMPIA in 100 degree weather gave me a real feeling of thankfulness to the Navy guys that ran the iron ship. 40 officers and 400 men, most of whom shoveled coal, ash, and fed the boilers, kept her moving. We were sweating without doing any work. Can't imagine the environment crowed, hot, and not very much ventilation. The modern Navy is a lot more human friendly.

OLYMPIA is a real time capsule of life for her time; social, technological, economics, everything. Amazing ship still at Penn's Landing in Philly.

TSCA oarmaking

Three members worked on cutting, thinning, layout and shaping 4pair of oars. Leather suppliers identified for buttons and leathers. Status in order from most to least complete.
1 pr painted, ready for leathers
1 pr. being shaped and refined (this is the GF planed pair)
1 pr marked and thinned, began planing to remove more stock by blades.
1 pr cut out and thinned

Ed is laying out pattern for cutting last pair.

Unstable Weather

Sailed or rather tried to, yesterday. Left Quanset Pond via ash breeze to Pleasant Bay. Set sail and wind dropped to zero and backed with black sky. Dropped the mast, hauled the rudder & centerboard and rowed back to the pond.

This day was great. Had favorable wind to and from the pond, but couldn't make it to the outer beach. Even though URCHIN will sail in four inches of water, three and a half is just to thin to pull her three hundred pounds across. We reached a low tide beach in the marsh behind Little Sipson before running out of water. Lovely day on a very crowded beach.

The last pic is Mom's garden. Love the lavender and so do the bumbles.

New Sail

Picked up the new sail for FISH STIX today and started rigging her with Jake. He is a quick study and was very excited to be doing more marlinspike stuff. Great whipping. JSB is working hard on completing the comet and Doc on the oars. Pete, John and George worked on the garvey, new bottom paint. Jeff popped the ladybug into the river. Newt is Newt.

The last pick here is one of Jake putting epoxy on our experimental mast hoops. We were out of green oak for bending new ones and looking around the shop I found some cardboard tubes and some carbon fiber. I filament wound the tubes, Jake epoxied them, painted them, and voila we had some impromptu mast hoops. They seem to be holding up so far.

Block and Back

The week started out with no wind, then too much wind and rain, storms, then a nice sail out to block island, the skipper verifying our marks, putzing around with the dink, renting bikes, SUN, drinks at the Oar.

Good company. Fog.

Ferry, New London and sun again.

Thank you MB & ACT II!

W Races in Barnegat

This was a beautiful day sailing on a beautiful boat, SILENT MAID. We were going to the Wanamaker cup races, but a venue change kept us in the upper bay out of Mantoloking. TORCH took three firsts, we could just see the a-cats on the other side of the bridge.

Whaleboat Work

The molds are hanging out of the way in this picture, Jake is spacing guides on the bending trap for the frames (it was his last day as an intern), the last image is a bending jig for the stem & stern of the whaleboat.

The whaleboat molds and traps have been completed and one set was sent up to Rocking the Boat. The kids at RtB are going to build a whaleboat this summer. The Philly seaport provided the molds so both boats will be the same. The whale boats will be given to Mystic Seaport to outfit the MORGAN, a whaleship that is being restored now.