Marlinspike #37

Winter 2022/23

Number 37

ADVENTURESS

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MICHAEL RUTSTEIN

Mind the Gap Subscribers to this publication may have noticed that our print dates are a bit, well... irregular. We always publish when we say we will, but we do not follow a strict quarterly schedule. Our print dates are bunched around the sailing season, with a long gap over the winter — a gap which we are about to enter.

“Mind the gap!” as they say in the UK. The gap also allows my wife and I to resume cruising, which finally seems possible again. Those of you who follow the magazine on social media can expect to see lots of Boats, Bars and Beaches from the Bahamas and the Gulf of Mexico this winter. We’ll be back in March to bang out our spring issue — always full of news and events. But not job listings, because why? Because everyone is hiring.

We could fill the magazine with nothing but job listings. Want a job in this industry? Call up the boat you want to work for this spring. Tell them to make you an offer!

Returning to the gap, though — thank goodness for it! Here in New England, where the weather was relentlessly sunny this summer and days off were few and far between, the gap is most welcome. Those of us who are on the boats and providing the programs day-in and day-out... giving the same safety talk and answering the same questions and telling the same stories until we start to feel like a jukebox... we need the gap, to recover our wits and recharge for another season.

The gap is also a great time to take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going — to ask ourselves if we’re still learning and growing in our current situation, or if it is time to sail new boats, navigate new seas, and meet new shipmates.

And if it is time to make a change... be sure to give us a call. Because like everyone else, we’re hiring!

MARLINSPIKE MAGAZINE Winter 2022/23 • Number 37 Michael Rutstein, Publisher Marlinspike is published quarterly for $29

by Pennant Publications, Inc., 98 Washington Square #1 Salem, MA 01970 Cover Photo: Jan Anderson Postmaster: send address changes to Marlinspike 98 Washington Square #1, Salem, MA 01970 Copyright 2023 by Pennant Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

Phone (978) 594-6510 E-Mail Marlinspike1812@gmail.com

Fair Winds,

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Michael Rutstein, Publisher

4 b Adventuress

28 b Making a Custom Knife

Was there any chance that COVID could stop her?

Step by step with Med Chandler of Ships Coy Forge

12 b What on earth is a Necropsy?

The Sylvina W. Beal’s “first hull” is dismantled in Essex

16 b Far from Home The volunteer-run Bill of Rights sails on in Chula Vista

22 b Sailing the Sullivan... ...and rebuilding the Roseway; WOS gets busy

34 b 40 b 44 b 46 b 47 b

Boats, Bars & Beaches Boatyards Name That Boat Show Us Your Spike Show Us Your Tattoo

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Ad

JAN ANDERSON

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dventuress The 1913 Rice Brothers schooner has pivoted many times now: from Arctic exploration to pilotage to sail training.

Was there really any chance that COVID could stop her?

Marlinspike chatted with Sound Experience Executive Director Catherine Collins in November, at the conclusion of Adventuress’ successful 2022 sailing season.

Marlinspike: I know Adventuress was built for an Arctic expedition, but she doesn’t really give you that rugged feel that Bowdoin or Ernestina do. She is a beautiful vessel — but maybe a bit yachty for the high latitudes?

Catherine Collins: She is a beautiful vessel! She was indeed built by a man named John Borden, who wanted to go to the Arctic to hunt with his friends, and the Museum of Natural History in New York City got word of it. They reached out to Borden and asked, “Can we send along our naturalist, Roy Chapman Andrews?”

Andrews went on to discover the first dinosaur eggs, in Mongolia, so he’s a really interesting character. He was responsible for the whale exhibits at the museum. And they needed one more whale, a bowhead whale. So Roy Chapman Andrews joined up with Borden and headed to the Arctic.

But luckily for Adventuress, they were late [laughs]. The pack ice came in and she didn’t get there. Other vessels that were on time got frozen in and had a terrible time. And they didn’t get the bowhead whale specimen. Still, Andrews did some seminal research. They dropped him off on the Pribiloff Islands and he did seal research, which actually ended up being pretty important.

You are entirely right. Adventuress was a terrible vessel for Arctic exploration. She was built as a yacht. Our Ship Committee chair, David Jackson, who’s also a marine surveyor, he and I went to the Peabody Essex Museum and there’s a file and books with photos on Adventuress and her building. We got to see designer B.B. MarlinspikeMagazine.com

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Crowninshield’s communications with the yard that built her, Rice Brothers, in East Boothbay, Maine.

She was sold the next year to the San Francisco Bar Pilots, where she was the Belle of the Ball. They bought her for her gas engine, which actually ended up being a problem when she caught fire in the summer of 1915. They had to scuttle her and that’s where she lost her gaff rig and ended up getting cut down. Still, she was very functional. The pilots always believed there was something special about her, even when they sold her in 1952 to Doc Freeman, who owned a chandlery and brought her to Seattle to sell her. She came up to Seattle that winter and started her life here both as a private vessel and then a youth training vessel.

MS: There’s a great sepia-tone photo on your Facebook page of Adventuress rigged as a staysail schooner with “CGR672” on her bow and “PILOT” on this big house that they built. Do you know what she was being used for during the war?

CC: Every vessel that the Navy could commandeer was used to patrol the West Coast during the war, and she was one of them. We don't have a lot of information about that.

MS: You said that in 1952 she moved on from the San Francisco Bar Pilots. Tell us a little bit about how the schooner got launched into sail training as a vocation.

CC: Doc Freeman owned a chandlery here; he was from a well-known tugboat-operating family. He purchased her and brought her up here in 1952. It was an epic voyage. The sails blew out and the engine almost didn’t make it. Anyway, she limped her way through the shipping canal into Lake Union, and she was pretty rough-looking. Freeman fixed her up a little bit and sold her and then she had a couple private owners.

Then in 1963 woman by the name of Ernestine Bennett started using Adventuress for Girl Scouts programs. That was the first documented time where kids came on and learned how to sail.

There may have been earlier times that, but we don’t have the stories on that. Ernestine Bennett ended up becoming the Godmother of Restoration for this ship. She and her husband, Stan, with his resources and her commitment, transformed Adventuress back into her spectacular gaff-rigged 1913 glory. And she’s credited with pushing our state and federal historic preservation entities to make Adventuress a National Historic Landmark.

Adventuress is one of only two National Historic Landmark sailing vessels that is still an active USCG-licensed commercial vessel on the West Coast. The other one is the Alma in San Francisco.

That designation is the gift that 6

Ernestine Bennett left me when it came to fully restoring the ship over the past 12 or 13 years, because you get a lot of attention as an NHL. When you go to the federal government for a Save America’s Treasures grant, the fact that you’re an NHL gives you a leg up. We got some match funding, then got Save America’s Treasures funding for the match, and then on top of that it was matched by state funding. So it became this process whereby you start with your incredibly generous private donors, then you go to whatever federal or state grants are available, and then you bring those things as matches — each gift leverages the next, or each grant leverages the next.

But it was Ernestine Bennett who made the commitment to get Adventuress named a National Historic Landmark. That was not easy. I have since served a couple terms on the Governor’s Advisory Council for Historic Preservation here in Washington State. I’ve seen the files and the letters that she wrote to make that happen. Those preservationist folks save everything [laughs].

MS: Tell us how Adventuress went from Ernestine Bennett to Sound Experience.

CC: I’m not the foremost expert on that transition, but… Youth Adventure was Ernestine’s organization: sail training for kids. As Ernestine got older, she was looking to hand Adventuress off to the next organization that would care for her. I’m sure it was emotionally difficult for her to do this, but it was time. And a couple of folks from the Seattle area, Morley Horder and his then-wife Barbara Wyatt…

Morley was a former captain of Clearwater and he wanted to bring that mission, to inspire stewards of our marine environment here in the Puget Sound area, just as they have done with Clearwater on the Hudson River.

He started Sound Experience as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) education organization, and started chartering Adventuress for programs. And that’s how Ernestine got to know them

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and become more comfortable with the idea that perhaps they could take on the vessel. So there was a transition over to Sound Experience, which took sail training but then added environmental education in this stewardship.

What I like about that is it shows the evolution of her mission, still dedicated to youth and the development of young people, but also transitioning to what’s needed at the time. That’s still needed today as we align our curriculum with next-generation science standards and support schools to bring these concepts to life for kids, inspiring kids to look into science careers.

And there’s also such a need to inspire kids to consider maritime careers.

MS: What’s the COI you’re working with these days? How many kids can you take out? What are your manning requirements?

CC: We sail with about 11 paid crew members, we call them professional crew and educators: captain, mate, second mate, galley coordinator, deck educators, engineer.

MS: That’s a lot of folks. Is that required by your COI, or is that the way you run the boat?

CC: It’s not required, it’s the crew complement system we are comfortable with, that allows us to do this work with excellence. It is an expensive model, but it’s needed if you’re considering the safety of the kids and all aboard. It’s also a heavy lift with regard to financial sustainability and operating model. There’s no question about that.

It ends up being a fundraising game. The importance of operational fundraising becomes much more prominent, to be able to staff the schooner at this level. But to us, that’s what quality looks like.

MS: Before we began rolling tape, we talked about the hiring crunch that everybody in our industry is experiencing.

Where are your deckhands and officers coming from? Are you able to advance people through your organization?

CC: It’s changing a bit, but both our captains started on Adventuress and went to other places for a while and are

back. And they’re amazing! They’re our next generation of captains. That’s the ideal, both for cultural understanding of the organization and how things work here and what we’re all going for collectively. They’re the leadership on board; they, with the mate, are really leading everything that we do.

Once they push off from the dock, it’s all them. So it’s great that they come often from within.

We also have crew members who have never been aboard, and then come and join us. One thing that happened during COVID… normally people fly across the country to work here. But during COVID, because we were doing what we call consecutive day programs, people weren’t living on the boat for that first year. Our crew members were mostly local.

What is exciting is that during COVID, we started focusing more on building partnerships which have resulted in us working more deeply in our local communities, with kids whose communities really want them to have this experience. And now we’re starting to move some of these kids into internship roles, which diversifies our staffing even more.

We know there’s an issue with diversity and with equity that we’re working to resolve, as are all of our fellow tall-ship friends. Our programs are meeting the need of populations and communities that really want to belong on the water and want to come together on the water and wanna sail together. An example of that, and this is where some of our crew are coming from or coming for, is our commitment to LGBTQ and trans and gender non-binary youth programming, working in partnership with the Pride Foundation and other organizations like Trans Families and Olympic Pride, where we bring young people together who need a safe place to be with people they can connect to, and shipmates that they have things in common with. And so it becomes a safe place, a place where these young people want to come back as crew members and learn even more.

We’re also working with Seattle Public Schools and with skill centers and we’re starting to see some of these kids who are graduating high school come back and work for us. This is really cool as well. So they’ve come out on a week long

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“We had some people join our community recently, retired naval architects, great project managers.

In pretty short order, people came to the table with the $60,000 we needed to be able to return the topmasts to Adventuress.

Haven Boatworks is contributing labor and materials to the building of hollow topmasts.

It is an extraordinary gift to this ship and mission.”

— Catherine Collins

E T BECKER

program where they get credit for career and technical education programming, and then a couple here or there want to come back. They’ve experienced what it feels like to be a crew member and they love it and they’re like, “I want more of that. I want more skills development. I want to learn and I want to teach.”

It’s really heartening to see. There was one kid recently who brought her dad on a member sail and she’s like, “I’m applying next year. I want to work for you guys. I want to come do more of this.”

MS: The people who are sailing your boat and providing programming, are they the same people who are maintaining your boat?

CC: Yes. We do a lot of maintenance during the sailing season, in addition to the winter months, November through February.

MS: You touched on all the restoration work that you did pre-COVID. What kind of shape is the schooner in today? Are there more big projects on the horizon?

CC: Everything was restored, at a cost of about $2.3 million, which actually in today’s dollars isn’t that much! We finished with a million-dollar deck. Thankfully that was finished a year before COVID hit. We were very fortunate to be able to finish the restoration. The one thing we didn’t do is put back on the topmasts. We are working on that now.

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She’s in extraordinary shape right now. It’s really something. It is an incredible success story for the team that got this done. I’m super proud. She’s in incredible shape.

What’s gonna happen this winter… now our schools and your youth groups are starting to come back. We’re not thriving yet programmatically, but we’re looking really positive. And we know next year’s going to be even better. So we’re thinking about getting the topmasts back. What needs to happen?

We had some people join our community recently, retired naval architects, great project managers. In pretty short order, people came to the table with the $60,000 we needed to be able to return the topmasts to Adventuress.

Haven Boatworks is contributing labor and materials to the building of hollow topmasts. It is an extraordinary gift to this ship and mission.

We are currently working with the Coast Guard on ballasting and stability. We have incredible support from these naval architects who have done all the calculations and are working with the Coast Guard. It’s not a done deal, but we’re really hoping that we can bring back the topmasts this winter. It’s going to be a very big party in the spring!

It really is the icing on the cake. She doesn’t look right without her topmasts. It’s quite a story that this ship has got the love and the support of the larger community and the professionals in the community, such as the yard that we worked with to completely restore the ship. I know they’re really proud of that — Haven Boatworks in Port Townsend — and we’re so grateful to them.

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MS: The hollow topmasts — is that a feature that she previously had, or is that a project you’ve undertaken to reduce weight aloft and improve stability?

CC: It’s new. But I am not the expert on this [laughs].

Right now we’re waiting to see what the Coast Guard thinks. We’ve got our fingers crossed and hope that it works out for this winter. I think when we haul out in December and start working on this, it definitely could be a cool update for Marlinspike. This is a super geek-out kind of project. We have the incredible support of Glosten Naval Architects to do this project. We really can’t thank them enough. I think it was a 300-page document they put together on stability calculations.

MS: Let’s switch gears and talk about COVID. When the pandemic shut everything down in the spring of 2020, it caught all of us flat-footed. I remember being on zoom meetings with you and with other Executive Directors in the industry, and people saying things like, “My business model is burnt to the waterline” and “I don’t know how we’re going to go on.”

And yet here we all are, two and a half years later.

What helped Sound Experience make it through COVID and come out the other side?

CC: This incredible core team that’s here — four staff members and two captains — just kept doing it. Whether “it” was virtual programming, or maintenance by yourself in the winter on the ship in a cold, dark winter with nobody else to work with… they just powered through it.

On the financial side, we had some donors say, “Look, I’m going to give you the money now that I was going to leave in my will for you, because you need it now.” And that was super humbling and unbelievable.

We got PPP loans, we kept paying our bills, and we started to come out the other side in 2021. Initially, we had to pay — as I think we all did — all our school deposits back. It was an incredibly painful time, an uncertain time.

I’ve never experienced that kind of uncertainty in a nonprofit or business situation, ever. There was a lot of miracle in getting through that. I still can’t believe we did. What I know is that our operating budget was cut in half overnight, but we got through it, thanks to our community.

MS: Did you ever think, “There’s no way I’m still sitting in this chair six months from now”?

CC: Oh! Every day! Every month I’d be like, “Well, we did it. We got through this month. So, what’s around the corner?” We couldn’t see around the corner, had no idea what might come next. So there was a whole heck of a lot of faith.

And we took advantage of every tool out there. One of them was going down to four days a week and taking advantage of a generous unemployment-sharing situation

with the State that we were able to tap into. We used every possible tool, from federal support to grants to PPP money.

And the really cool thing is that if this hadn’t happened, we would not be in such trusted partnership with organizations that really want us to serve their kids now.

And the communities that we’re in, whether it’s South Everett, just north of Seattle, or communities in Tacoma or in Seattle, everybody’s like, “Wow, you’re still here.”

Our attitude was always, “Yeah, we’re here for you, ‘cause we know that this is really hard and we’re gonna be here for you when this is over. And we’re here for you now.

What do you need?”

That’s what we led out with in 2021 as we came back: those community partnerships. We raised grant money, people were generous. It’s all about relationships. People know and trust us, they trust us with their kids. It’s a big deal!

God, I’m getting emotional [laughs].

MS: Talk a little bit about your partners and your programs. You’ve already mentioned some of the many programs you guys run. You have a lot of irons in the fire!

CC: We have day programs and we have overnight programs. The overnight are by far the most powerful, because it’s a journey, it’s a voyage and it takes a while for shipmates to come together.

We have flexibility in what we do and deliver. I would say that every program is pretty much custom, with certain elements that are always there. Whether it’s shipboard skills, deck skills, engineering skills, system skills… this is a testament to our shipboard crew and captains, but we can do everything from skills development that results in high school credit to building community for populations of kids that may not be welcomed in other places in the same way.

For all of it, the ship is our teacher. Whatever element is needed, this is the power of experiential education, and good experiential educators know what tool to use, what resource to bring. And so it can be a boatload of fifth graders as part of an outdoor school initiative here in Washington. There is an initiative underway where every fifth and sixth graders in the state we hope we’ll be able to have a chance at a weeklong outdoor school. We qualify and work in that environment as well as in a public high school environment. And occasionally private schools will bring their kids out for a week. We do a number of Waldorf School programs.

We have an education team in our office, four staff members dedicated to working with schools and with partners. That’s where we’re growing. We’re going to be adding infrastructure on partnership development as well as fundraising. Because you can’t do this without a lot of resources.

MS: Tell us about the Adventuress Cup. CC: Ah! We had grown, over a period of 12 or 13

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years, this incredible gala that we had every fall for 300 people. We’d raise over $200,000 a year. Major auction, major gala, everybody loved it, wear your finest! And all of that came to a crashing halt in 2020. There were no galas, no regattas, nothing going on.

But I have this brother who’s just brilliant and he is the CEO of the Pan-Mass Challenge; it’s the largest bike fundraiser in the country and raises tens of millions each year for Cancer research. I went to my really smart brother and said, “Do you think we could replicate a peer-to-peer fundraiser? Like the Pan-Mass Challenge, but on the water, with boats?”

And he said, “Yeah.” So I got him together with my team and we talked about it and said, “Well, we could have some in-person boats and we could also do it online. What would that take?” My brilliant team member, Jenny Huntley, found a system to do it, found the back-office system to make it work. And we implemented it.

Over the past three years, it’s grown more online than it has in person, because once COVID was over, people started doing their in-person races again. The on-the water portion became a little bit more challenging to fill. But in 2020 nobody else was out there, all the races had shut down. And over the past two years, it’s grown. And this year we raised, I want to say, $120,000.

Our old gala cost $50,000 to put on; this only costs

about $10,000!

We have an amazing board member who really spearheaded it, Rusty Lhamon. He’s a racer and he’s completely committed to youth education and youth on the water. He just ran with it. But it was our team, our collective team, that made this happen.

It was really fun. People gave generously. And then they get awards and plaques and we had a big party at Corinthian Yacht Club, who was a big supporter. It was not the gala, but it was full of love. You felt the community’s love for the ship and the work and the mission. And it was so great to be back together again this year.

MS: Has the Cup replaced the Gala for you now, or are you going to do both?

CC: Such a great question. My suspicion is that our board and our community would like to get dressed up again to celebrate the ship and the mission. And I don’t know what that’s going to look like yet, but it is very possible we could do both.

MS: I don’t think you can ever have too many successful fundraisers! ❂ For more info, visit SoundExp.org

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What on earth is a

Necropsy?

ALL PHOTOS M. RUTSTEIN

On November 5, a “necropsy” was held for the 1911 sardine carrier Sylvina W. Beal, sponsored by the Essex Shipbuilding Museum and Harold Burnham's Maritime Heritage Charters.

The purpose of the event was to document what Burnham refers to as the "first hull" prior to its dismantling. A second hull is to be built by the 57-year-old Burnham, a National Heritage Fellow and the builder of five schooners to date. The Beal will be his largest project yet.

“We have been planning this day since before we took stewardship of the Beal back in 2018 and wrote about it in our preservation treatment plan,” wrote Burnham in an invitation that went out to boatbuilders, maritime archeologists, and the US Coast Guard.

“The Beal was built by Frank C. Adams in East Boothbay, Maine in 1911 — and that will not change. On the other hand, as the National Register of Historic Places’ Bulletin No. 20 (Nominating Historic Vessels and Shipwrecks to the National Register of Historic Places) notes, and just about anyone who knows anything about historical wooden vessels understands, over time, every part of a seagoing historic ship will eventually have to be renewed.

“We hope to preserve the story and culture of the historic fishing schooner, Sylvina W. Beal, understanding that when her first hull has been replaced, the documentation compiled from the necropsy event will be part of a record that will be as relevant to some historians as the new hull.”

Burnham and the Museum had originally planned a very ambitious event that allowed participants to “put your boots on, roll up your sleeves, take out your camera, notebook, and measuring equipment, and start your chainsaw… Cut away what you need to give yourself access to Beal’s construction details that will allow you to gain a thorough understanding of what you are looking at.”

In the end, the decision was made — almost certainly a wise one — not to fire up the chainsaws until the event was over. However, a group of 30-odd maritime professionals, including three USCG inspectors, climbed all over the hull, even wading through the muck of the creek in which the Beal currently lies.

Cameras, cell phones, and notebooks were the only tools used, although at least one belaying pin was rescued 12

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from the wreck and quickly resurrected in Burnham’s workshop. No telling if it is original!

Sharing the creek with the Beal and glimpsed in the accompanying photos is the 1980s pinky schooner Maine, built by the Maine Maritime Museum and adopted by Burnham in the mid-2000s. Burnham sailed her back to Essex in a harrowing journey, remasted and re-rigged her, and sailed her for several seasons. He then removed the new masts and cabin trunks and incorporated them into his pinky schooner Ardelle. Ardelle was launched in 2011 and carries passengers from the Maritime Heritage Center in Gloucester.

The two decrepit hulls, lying in the tidal creek between Burnham’s family shipyard and the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, are a frequent subject of paintings.

Burnham's distinction between the original and to-bebuilt hulls will doubtless give rise to some philosophical Ship-ofTheseus debates. Very little of the first hull will be incorporated in the second, and although the two boats will be very similar, the new hull will be built to USCG Subchapter T standards and will not be a replica. It will, nevertheless, retain its original name and documentation number.

We had the following discussion, via text, with Burnham in the week leading up to the necropsy.

Marlinspike: When you use the phrase “first hull” you are breaking new ground in maritime preservation. An implication of “first hull” is that there is a second, distinct hull — and little to nothing of the first will be used in the second.

Most people accept the idea that a hull can be rebuilt piece by piece without losing its identity, the argument being that the identity of a vessel lies in the relationship between its components, rather than in the individual components themselves.

Still, when you are rebuilding a vessel piece by piece, there is always something you can point to and say “That is the Sylvina Beal.” This will not be the case in this rebuild, since you will disassemble the existing vessel, begin construction of a new one, and at some point transfer the identity from the former to the lat14

ter.

When does this pile of wood cease to be the Beal, and that new pile begin to be the Beal? What carries the torch of identity from one pile to another?

Harold Burnham: The documentation number is supposed to be permanently attached to the hull. I say whatever that number is attached to is the original boat.

If the beam with the permanent number is removed from a pile of wood, the pile that beam left is a remnant of the original boat. That is my thinking.

I have a friend with an original Friendship sloop he has been contemplating rebuilding for a long time. If he rebuilds it piece by piece, much of the historical value in his boat will be destroyed.

What I think he should do is remove the beam with the number, and rebuild the boat leaving the remnant for a museum to archive and display.

That way he can rebuild the boat, make changes to allow her to be seaworthy and meet current demands and standards, without destroying the historic value of the remnant.

This can be debated endlessly, but it is particularly sad to see the historic aspects of a boat thoughtlessly destroyed — or worse yet, vessels lost (or repossessed) and people drowning trying to operate a historically accurate vessel in a capacity they were never designed for, in a time they were not designed to operate in.

Burnham went a step further at the necropsy.

During the Beal ’s heyday, he stated, fishing vessels were subject to periodic rebuilding and modification so as to be better suited to the fisheries they were pursuing. Boats were cut in half and lengthened, substantially rebuilt, and so on.

He also stated that in places like Nova Scotia and Maine, documentation numbers were sometimes removed from one hull to another, not for the purposes of historic preservation but for more mundane purposes such as maintaining a permit or avoiding a tax. b

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Far from Home This Maine-built schooner might seem out of place in Southern California, but a dedicated group of volunteers have kept BILL OF RIGHTS sailing out of Chula Vista for eight years now

Marlinspike chatted with Don Johnson of the South Bayfront Sailing Association in November.

Marlinspike: Don, let’s start by talking about the history of the schooner. How is it that a Maine-built boat came to be in Chula Vista?

Don Johnson: Now, that is a real good question. I have pieces of that answer. I don’t have the complete story. I know the early parts better than the middle parts. Joe Davis, of course, commissioned the boat to be built.

MS: That was in the early seventies..?

DJ: His family apparently at some point had had a large schooner and I think it had been in his blood pretty much all along. So he wanted to build his schooner, did a lot of research, spent time with Howard Chappelle getting suggestions as to what would make beautiful, fast schooner. I guess a lot of the material referenced the Wanderer. She’s not a replica of the Wanderer, but a number of the characteristics are incorporated.

MS: Is this Sterling Hayden’s Wanderer you’re talking about?

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DJ: I don’t think so, I think it precedes that.

MS: But was he looking for a yacht? He wasn’t thinking about doing sail training, about getting passenger certification.

DJ: He did get passenger certification. He did do sail training, but I believe that had a lot to do with financially supporting the vessel. But it was built more along the lines of a yacht than a sail-training vessel. The original boat had private cabins. The A compartment, which is now open and has 16 open bunks, had eight cabins of two bunks each, each with its own lavatory. Not with a head, but a sink.

No engine, of course. And it was built, I believe, to do sail training and to race. Davis was a racing enthusiast. So the rig at one point was quite a bit bigger than it is today.

Apparently, it wasn’t performing quite as well as he liked, so they increased the area of the main, raised the rig, put a taller topmast on and sailed her that way for a while. When she changed hands, that rig was cut back, and an engine was added.

So she operated on the East Coast for a little bit after that, and I’m getting fuzzy about the years at this point, but somewhere in the late 1980s, a different owner had her put the engine in, brought her around through the Canal, and all the way up the West Coast up to Coos Bay, and up to the

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Vancouver area, and she operated up in that part of the world for a while.

MS: So when did she come down to Los Angeles?

DJ: My understanding is that the Los Angeles Maritime Institute (LAMI) came into a substantial amount of money, through port grants, that enabled them to design and build their two brigantines [Irving and Exy Johnson]. In order to scale up their programs, they cast about for a boat that was available, and Bill of Rights apparently was operating in San Francisco at that time. Bought her, brought her on down to Los Angeles, and operated her for several years while the brigantines were being built.

MS: And then after that, the Bill of Rights was sailing under the American Tall Ships Institute?

DJ: My understanding is once the brigantines were launched, [LAMI] basically set aside the Bill and she was languishing. Stephen Taylor with ATSI entered into some kind of lease arrangement with LAMI to operate the vessel, and sailed her out of Ventura for several years.

MS: Tell us about the genesis of your organization, and how you ended up with the Bill of Rights.

DJ: Well, several of us had been doing sail education down here at Chula Vista Marina for literally 30 years, teaching mostly the Coast Guard auxiliary classes, but also serving as sailing instructors in small boats. We were talking about starting a branch down into Vista Harbor. In order to do that, we needed to organize as a nonprofit. So we turned in an application to become a nonprofit in early 2013.

Now, later that same year, the Bill had come into the yard down at Marine Group. Work was being done on the stem and some of the planks on the starboard bow, and the project went over budget. Stephen Taylor didn’t have the funds.

LAMI went through a process, took back the boat, but didn’t have a use for it, didn’t have a budget for it, and had this yard bill owed against it.

I had been working with the ship. Typically we’d try to help whoever came into the yard to purchase things, figure things out. Any way we could help out. And so the shipwright on the job, Doug Shear, mentioned to LAMI, why don’t they give me a call? So they called me up and offered me the vessel for what was left on the yard bill.

MS: Wow.

There was only the one spot in Chula Vista Marina, down at the excursion dock. And with the help of the political people — the mayor was Cheryl Cox at the time — she helped make arrangements through the port for us to acquire that slip on a permanent basis. And so we had that spot.

Then, just as we’re about to conclude the deal, LAMI says, “Oh, by the way, we need to transfer this to a non-profit.” And literally that day, the paperwork arrived from the state of California granting us our non-profit status [laughs].

MS: It sounds like a lot of serendipity there, but it also sounds like you got the boat without the benefit of a planning process. You were just flying by the seat of your pants.

DJ: I don’t think it was even that substantial [laughs].

It was one of those whirlwind things — within three weeks from the phone call, we have this boat, and we’re now talking with everybody. Okay, how are we gonna do this?

One of the thoughts I had was there was a very good RV park here down by the harbor, and I believed we would be able to draw people from that RV park to take day sails.

That did not work out. We never did get a good business from that group. So we kind of languished, paying expenses out of pocket, which luckily were relatively minimal.

MS: When you purchased the boat, she still had a COI and you were able to jump right into doing day sails?

DJ: No. That was the impression we had! [OCMI] San Pedro basically was happy with the boat, and they were ready to sign off, but we had to reestablish ourselves with San Diego’s Coast Guard. And with them we spent almost six months going back and forth, doing things. Nothing truly major, but proving stuff, doing drills, and reworking a few things, before they actually gave us, South Bayfront Sailing Association, our COI. MS: You came up with a captain, or someone had a license?

DJ: There were two of us who had licenses in the group, at the time we bought the boat. Over the past eight years, we’ve licensed at least six additional captains, including myself, and I’ve been operating the boat for a little more than five years.

When we were in Dana Point a few weeks back, we had five captains on board.

MS: So you have a stable of captains rotating through; it’s not all on you to run all the trips.

DJ: Yeah! [Laughs] I checked with the people I knew in the marina, the ones who’d been teaching classes, and said, “There’s an opportunity to acquire a schooner. Are you guys interested?” and everybody said, “Yes, we are.”

So we came up with the money in an extremely short period of time, like two weeks. Parking it was a question.

DJ: That is correct. Me and my second main gentleman, who is Paul Nice, a retired merchant mariner from Military Sealift Command. He has an unlimited all-oceans license.

He had been operating tankers for the last 30-odd years, and so he’s an excellent second captain.

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MS: What kind of license do you need to run that boat?

How many deckhands?

MS: And are they hoping that these kids will enlist in the Navy?

DJ: The Coast Guard requires, for overnights, two licenses. Now, the way it’s stated on our COI is one captain, one licensed mate, and six deckhands.

DJ: A fair percentage do go into the service. I don’t recall off the top of my head what that is, but it’s good enough to where they invest in it. It does give enlistment a little bit of a bump. They come in E-3 if they were qualified in US Navy Sea Cadets.

MS: But your “mate” is usually another licensed captain.

DJ: Yes. That’s what we’re doing so far. We don’t have anybody who’s a licensed mate. Everybody’s a licensed captain.

MS: Do the Sea Cadets sign up the kids, organize the travel, assemble the paperwork, and then you just provide the sailing opportunity? Or do you have to get involved in those logistics?

MS: Bill of Rights is certified for something like 30 guests overnight and some enormous number for day trips, 80-something?

DJ: They organize everything. I propose dates to the regional commander and he accepts it and our price, and they go ahead and advertise it throughout their organization.

Again, we have kids flying in from all over the country: New York, Florida, all the way up the West Coast, the Midwest, and so forth. It’s really a good program.

DJ: 88 people, including crew. Overnight is 34, including crew.

MS: Do you fill the boat to those numbers?

DJ: Yes. MS: And she’s got room..?

DJ: We’re packed to the gills. As a matter of fact, typically the 4th of July is sold out.

BILL OF RIGHTS in an earlier life

MS: You’re also going to some festivals, right? You went up to Dana Point for the Ocean Institute’s Festival?

DJ: Yes. We go to every one we get invited to [laughs], which isn’t that many these days.

MS: Tell us more about that. What do your programs look like now? What have you got running?

DJ: Our primary customer is the US Navy Sea Cadets, for whom we do a number of programs through the year. A five-day sail between Christmas and New Year’s. In April, one week at Sea Plus, a boat building program. We do small boats. And then in the summertime we do two weeks at sea, two boat buildings, and six weeks of catamaran sailing.

MS: There’s not as much going on out in the West Coast, is there?

DJ: No. Now, typically the other one we go to is Fleet Week up in San Pedro. LAMI puts that one on.

MS: Is everyone in your organization a volunteer?

DJ: Yes. We have no one who’s paid.

MS: Tell us more about the Sea Cadets.

DJ: The Sea Cadets are sponsored by the US Navy. They provide the funding — my impression is it’s close to $2 million a year. They have an enrollment of somewhere around 6,000 Sea Cadets. They come in from all over the country.

MS: How old are they?

DJ: The ages range from 10 to 18. They’ve got what’s referred to a Junior League program, which is 10 to 13, and then the regular Sea Cadets are 13 to 18.

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MS: What is the downside to relying completely on volunteers to maintain and crew the boat?

DJ: When we have a sail scheduled, I have to advertise for crew. I put the dates out to our group. We have about 80 people in the group, and then people say, “Yes, I’m available.”

And they sign up and commit to go.

MS: And is that that like pulling teeth, or does that tend to go pretty smoothly?

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DJ: I’m not gonna say it’s easy, but it’s not pulling teeth either. I am comfortable with our turnout.

MS: How would you describe your volunteers?

DJ: There is a mix. But in all honesty, it’s predominantly older white men. A large percentage are veterans, some of them disabled veterans. But we have everything. We’ve even got an Irishman!

MS: So what is your annual calendar like? Are you able to sail year-round? Are some times busier than others?

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DJ: Some times are busier than others. January through March is very light. The groups locally who use us are the Rotarians. We have several Rotaries who use us as a fundraising venue. We give them a fixed price for an afternoon sail, a three-hour sail, then they sell tickets to their members. We probably have half a dozen Rotary sails.

Then the other things that we do, like the 4th of July, which I mentioned. We have the Parade of Lights in San Diego Bay. There are two weekends in December, and so we sell tickets for those. And those three events are typically full.

MS: How many days a year would you say that Bill of Rights gets underway?

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DJ: I would say less than 80 days. And it does vary.

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MS: This is eight years now you’ve been evolving your programs, your offerings. Do you feel like you’re getting traction, that there’s interest in the boat, that people in Chula Vista are aware of you?

DJ: It’s very limited in Chula Vista. Chula Vista is not a maritime community at all. It’s a city of 250,000 people and 99.9% of ‘em have no idea they have a harbor.

To a large degree, the town is a bedroom community, a less-expensive housing alternative to San Diego. A lot of the people work north from here. And there is a substantial Mexican population, a large Latino demographic. That particular culture likes to fish, but they typically don’t sail much. We’re having trouble connecting with that part of this community.

Down here at the waterfront, there is no draw at all. There’s one restaurant, period.

People don’t come down here to shop.

There’s no shopping at all down here. So there’s no walk-by trade.

MS: Have you had any success with the local schools?

DJ: We’re having limited success with private schools, homeschool groups, but BENSON LEE we’re having a lot of trouble breaking through into the public schools. Still working on it!

MS: You mentioned the unexpected work you had to do to get the schooner certified. This boat is now 50 years old.

What kind of shape is she in today? Are there any big projects in the offing?

DJ: The big project right now is replacing the majority of the deck. Portions of the deck are fairly worn, and it does leak, which makes it a little uncomfortable for the kids, when we’re out if it rains. So we are in the process of replacing the deck incrementally. We’ll be taking up a section of planks, putting new planks down. The prime focus is not to have to go into the yard, take the boat out of service for a year, and spend a million dollars replacing the deck. We can’t do that. We don’t have it. We’re replacing a few planks at a time and keeping the boat in service.

MS: The Spirit of Dana Point was just down in your area, having her deck renewed. Were there any learnings 20

from that project?

DJ: Yeah! I can’t afford to do that. They spent, literally, a million dollars. The boat was out of service for almost a year.

Good for Dana Point, they enjoy great support. They were able to raise the money, that’s great. But, for us there are definitely some issues when it comes to replacing the deck. There’s cabins and hatches and portions of the boat that are much more problematic to lift off and put planks under. So we’re not going to do that. The center portion of the Bill is sound and tight, so we’re going to replace the port and starboard sides and then leave the center portions.

The rest of the boat is an extremely good condition.

The Coast Guard has through her and BILL OF RIGHTS gone I’ve had two different surveyors go through her. The last one was scolding me because he wasn’t finding enough things to write down. We literally were going around looking for loose wire ends. So the boat is very, very sound. She’s got oak planks and frames, very well built. Joe did a great job. Harvey Gamage did a great job. She really is a good boat.

MS: What is she like to sail?

DJ: Oh, she’s a dream. She really, really is a great boat.

The best we ever did, coming back from San Pedro about five years ago, the wind was perfect — good speed, right direction — and under sail we were doing between 12 and 13 knots without any tops.

MS: When you say “good speed, right direction” is that a beam reach?

DJ: It’s a little ahead of a beam reach, but yes.

MS: You’re not setting anything above the lowers at this point, are you?

DJ: That is correct. We are not. We do have a jib top now. I keep blowing it out and having to rebuild it, but [laughs] right now, we have a top. b For more info, visit wesailthedream.org

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Protecting Mariners & the Marine Trades Since 1866 E N D O R S E D BY

A. J. Meerwald New Jersey’s official tall ship, built 1928 bayshorecenter.org Photographer: Craig Terry Courtesy of Cumberland County Department of Planning, Tourism & Community Affairs

Chris Richmond crichmond@allenif.com

AllenIF.com/tallships

(800) 439-4311

Sailing the

SULLIVAN &

Rebuilding the

ROSEWAY

Faced with rebuilding their flagship, World Ocean School acquired the DENIS SULLIVAN from Discovery World in Milwaukee, downrigged her, and packed her off on an epic inland-waterway transit, bound for St. Pete and eventually St. Croix This fall, World Ocean School announced a blockbuster move, acquiring the three-masted Great Lakes schooner Denis Sullivan from Discovery World in Milwaukee to replace the 97-year-old Roseway, which is in need of a complete rebuild.

WOS Executive Director Eden Leonard announced that the Sullivan would immediately be downrigged and transit via the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, with the goal of arriving in St. Petersburg, FL for uprig and recertification in November. At press time, they had arrived in St. Pete and the lower masts were back in. By December, the vessel is supposed to be in St. Croix, USVI, where WOS has traditionally run programs for local students on Roseway.

The acquisition of the Sullivan would seem to be the proverbial “trade that helps both teams.” WOS acquired a vessel capable of running their programs in both the Caribbean and New England, and of safely transiting between those two bases. And Discovery World was freed of the responsibility for a vessel they obviously no longer wanted [see Marlinspike #35].

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Leonard stated that part of the agreement involved providing opportunities for Milwaukee kids to continue sailing on the Sullivan. Discovery World will cover the cost of transportation for Milwaukee students and WOS will cover all costs to deliver the programming.

Meanwhile, Roseway has been laid up. Her rebuild will take place at Mystic Seaport, but the money is not there yet.

“We are in a quiet, nucleus phase of our fundraising efforts,” said Leonard.

The rebuild, when it happens, “will be a pretty comprehensive rebuild,” said Captain Jill Hughes of WOS. “The 22

lower third of the vessel is where the attention will particularly be paid. Roseway is doing a little bit of hogging, which means that her ends have sagged. In order to fix that, it’s a pretty comprehensive project. We’re expecting her to be out of the water for about three years. It’ll still feel like the same vessel when it’s done, but we’re renewing her so that she can serve us for another 50 years.”

When and if the rebuild is complete, WOS “will become a two-ship program with both vessels operating year-round,” said Leonard.

“They will both be working in the Caribbean in the winters; insurance won’t allow any tall-ship to remain in that region during hurricane season, so they will both be traveling, working vessels. There is a lot of great programming that can happen during the travels between regions.”

The following is the transcript of the zoom presentation in which World Ocean School announced these plans. It has been considerably edited and condensed. To hear the presentation in its entirety, including the ensuing Q&A session, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P3S7kX8AWY WOS Chairman Mike Atkins: As many of you are aware, World Ocean School is preparing to undergo a multiyear initiative to restore the Roseway, which means she will not be available as our primary platform on which deliver our mission of experiential education. The partnership we’ve recently developed with Discovery World in Milwaukee ensures that this mission will continue uninterrupted, but over the next several years, it’ll be delivered exclusively aboard the Denis Sullivan. The Denis Sullivan will be part of our winter programming in St. Croix and part of our sum-

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KATE WOOD

mer programming in Boston.

But our partnership with Discovery World is more than just that. We’ve agreed to explore additional opportunities across the two organizations to further our mutual mission.

We traveled last week to Milwaukee to visit Discovery World and the Denis Sullivan and I had the opportunity to meet their Chair, Terry McMahon, and CEO Brian Wunar… I was particularly impressed with the community of individuals who were volunteering their time and their expertise aboard the Denis Sullivan. To say that their passion for the Denis Sullivan was obvious would be an understatement. I want to thank [those volunteers] for the work that they’ve done in preparing her for this journey.

In closing, on behalf of the board, I’d like to thank the Milwaukee community and the volunteers who built and maintain the Denis Sullivan and who have helped prepare her for her next adventure. I’d also like to thank our captains, our crew, and our staff for their time and their efforts. And with that, Eden, I’ll turn it over to you.

Eden Leonard: A year ago, our board and staff undertook a really pretty significant strategic planning initiative, sparked by the recognition that Roseway is approaching her hundredth birthday. The acquisition of the Denis Sullivan enables us to expand our programming and allows a mechanism for us to steward Roseway into the next hundred years.

I know you’re here because you want to meet the Dennis

Sullivan and learn more about it, and I’m very excited to do that. But we wouldn’t be able to do this without an incredible new addition to our team, Captain Jill Hughes.

Captain Hughes has been somebody who I’ve tried to get into our fold for quite some time. She has an incredible reputation. Most recently she was the captain aboard Geronimo for St. George’s School, and she had been a relief captain for us for a number of years. We were really thrilled when she joined us permanently as a port captain earlier this year. We absolutely would not have been able to do this, and have Denis Sullivan join out fleet, without her expertise and, and creativity and resourcefulness. She’s just been an outstanding asset. So in addition celebrating this great new vessel that’s part of our fleet, I’m thrilled to introduce this incredible human that’s joined our team.

Jill Hughes: Thanks very much, Eden. I’ll talk just a little bit about my road to World Ocean School and the Denis Sullivan, but it’s mostly going to be about the vessel. I won’t go too much into the history of the ship. There are certainly people who know much more about that than I do!

I had a lot of folks stop by the boat while I was in Milwaukee to show me photos of the construction, tell me their stories, their involvement, and that was great to hear!

One gentleman even brought me a laminated book of his photos from when he was helping build the ship and left it with us. So I already have great memories from my couple

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weeks in Milwaukee.

A little bit about my background and how I got to World Ocean School and the Denis Sullivan. I grew up on the Great Lakes, so I am particularly pleased that we now have a Great Lake schooner in our fleet. My first tall ship was the Niagara. The summer after my senior year of high school, I signed up for two weeks as a volunteer. They couldn’t get rid of me! I was there the whole rest of the summer. I just said I’d keep doing it till it wasn’t fun anymore. And here I am and it’s my full-time job and really just about the only job I’ve ever had.

I spent a summer cooking on Bowdoin, and was fortunate to go up to the Arctic with them in 2008. I sailed on Sorlandet, a Norwegian ship. She takes students out sailing 10 months of the year — they sign up for a whole year of high school. We did some really exciting sailing around the world and it was great to work with an international crew and learn from them.

And then Geronimo has been my home for just about the last six years, based out of Newport, Rhode Island. I would say that 80% of my time on tall ships has been on student-based vessels. That’s my real passion.

As Eden mentioned, I joined World Ocean School in 2021 as relief captain for the senior Summer Ambassador trip. As Eden said, for years we were trying to make something work and it finally aligned last summer. I first sailed with Chris Flansburg, World Ocean School’s senior captain, back in 2007, aboard Westward. Christopher and I go way back and have a great relationship and I’m looking forward to sailing with him and working with him more.

As Mike and Eden discussed, World Ocean School needed another vessel to ensure that programming could continue. I came onto the scene this summer, and was excited to be able to dive headfirst into helping find a solution to that problem. Maybe because I’m from the Great Lakes, maybe because I’ve sailed with enough Denis Sullivan sailors. But this vessel popped into my head pretty quickly. I just asked, “Hey, can I make a phone call and just find out what’s up?”

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And that was the catalyst.

I’ll admit that at that time I didn’t know just what a great fit this boat was going to be for us. It seemed like every time we had another conversation with Discovery World, where I learned a little bit more about the boat, it was more and more obvious that it was going to be a really great use for her and a great opportunity for us.

Visually the two schooners look very different. The Sullivan has 10 sails. Roseway has five, that’s including her fisherman, which we haven’t used for a couple years. But the sail area on Roseway is actually greater. That really gives a sense of just how big her mainsail is! I enjoy that the Sullivan has so many sails and that they’re smaller, because it gives you more options based on the weather conditions and more flexibility.

The Sullivan has two engines, Roseway has one, but the horsepower is almost the same.

The berthing on board is very similar.

Roseway has two more bunks for students.

There are 10 bunks forward, that’s typically where the crew has lived. I imagine we’ll do With her new crew the same on board, the schooner’s arrangement.

Then the main unorthodox transit hold with 16 took place in October bunks, typically and November, student berthing. with the goal of arriving There’s two heads in that in the Virgin Islands compartment

by December and a shower.

That’s where all of the World Ocean School crew is living right now, because we’ve used the focsle for storage. If you want a [video] tour, go to YouTube and search for Wooden Boat Show 2020. Abby Werner, who has been the ship’s engineer for the last five years, gives a great walk-through. Abby is joining us for our transit down to St. Pete. She has been a great resource so far and we’re really glad that she’s joining us.

For the last three years the Denis Sullivan has been docked at Discovery World. She hasn’t sailed since COVID shut everything down. I want to acknowledge that at least in the tall ship community, there were concerns about the maintenance and the state of the vessel. I’m here to say that work was still happening on board during this period. Not at the same capacities as if there was a full crew, but Discovery

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DENIS SULLIVAN was launched in 2000 thanks to nearly a million hours of volunteer labor

World was doing their due diligence to make sure that the vessel did continue to take steps forward.

With that said, there were still some challenges. This is going to happen when any boat sits for a couple years. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the work that World Ocean School has already put into the vessel. It was a work site when we got there; there was a barge tied to the dock and things were happening. But she certainly wasn’t ready for sea or for people to move on board. The chief concern was that the topside planks had dried out with not sailing, not doing regular deck washes, having the winter cover on.

Discovery World had taken great care to completely unload the vessel, in a way that I’d never seen before. The galley was totally open, the engine room was empty, aside from mechanical equipment. When I first flew out, you could really see all the frames and ceiling planking and everything to make a great vessel inspection. But it did mean we had a lot of putting-back-together that we had to do.

And a lot of cleaning just from sitting for so long. I just have to acknowledge that it would not have been possible without the local volunteers who came down to help us out.

Now I’m going to shift gears and talk about how we’re going to get the boat to St. Croix. This is a big, big shift. My brain has toggling between “What does the vessel need to be an operable sail-training vessel again?” and “How do we get her to St. Croix in time for this winter?”

Most people just assume that we would take the St. Lawrence Seaway. It’s a trip that I’ve made a couple times.

It’s not an easy trip, but it’s fairly straightforward. But then we were looking at the weather and the timetables and, and

thinking of our comfort going through the Seaway, through the Gulf of the St. Lawrence this late in the fall, the fact that the vessel hasn’t really operated in three years, and it being a new vessel to us.

Some of us started thinking that we could bring the Denis Sullivan through entirely inland waterways. We save some mileage. We’re not up against the weather so much. I have some connections in St. Petersburg. It’s a great place for the vessel to stop and get her COI back and regroup.

Roseway could not make this trip because Roseway draws 12 feet. The Sullivan actually draws just under nine. With her lower masts not being on board, she’ll draw a little bit less. I’ve talked to a lot of inland tugboat captains and the Army Corps of Engineers, and everyone has reassured me that as long as you’re in the channel, you can draw up to nine and a half feet and not have any problems.

We’re all looking forward to embarking on this very different transit. And we’re also very fortunate to be joined on this transit by a professional inland tugboat captain who is coming along with us in a pilot capacity. Chris Flansburg is serving as the captain, with Captain Sam Hill as our waterways expert on board. It should be a really neat and unique adventure.

I just, again, want to express my thanks to everyone in Milwaukee, to Discovery World, for the volunteers that built this ship. We are so excited to be bringing kids on board again. What a great platform she is for that. We’re excited that she can return to her original mission, and hopefully we can continue to get Great Lakes youth on board as well. b For more info, visit WorldOceanSchool.org

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Making a Custom Rigging Knife Step-By-Step with Med Chandler of Ships Coy Forge Text & Photos

by Tyler Fields ALL PHOTOS M. RUTSTEIN

For many of us, it would be rare to spend a day without a knife in our pockets or sheathed on our belts. Whether it be carried out of habit or as an frequently relied-upon tool, a blade of one sort or another is never far from reach. For those in the marine trades, a knife is more than an EDC accessory, it can be life-saving when situations go wrong.

Readers of Marlinspike are no strangers to rigging knives. Peek in the back of many issues and you can see the knives of readers across the globe. The commercially-available options are endless and companies like Myerchin offer high quality knives in every flavor. If a mass-produced knife doesn’t cut it for you, the custom knife market has every style you can dream of. Need a blade shaped like a shark? Done. Need a handle made from a meteorite? Easy. Want a sheath sewn from an alligator? No problem. If you have the budget, you can buy a knife that would make Dundee jealous.

Let’s take a more detailed look into the world of custom knife-making by visiting Ship’s Coy Forge in New Hampshire. Med Chandler is no stranger to the pages of Marlinspike either. An immensely skilled blacksmith and artist, he opened Ship’s Coy Forge in 2003 and has since earned a reputation for crafting tools, knives, and hardware of heirloom quality. Bringing together skills learned as a crew member aboard the tall ship Bounty, boatbuilding at Boothbay Harbor Shipyard, and as a blacksmith for Ball and Ball Reproductions, Med’s work is second to none and the perfect person to walk us through the steps of how a custom knife is made. *1* The forge is a relatively simple system. Boiling it down to the basics, there is a fire box, fuel, and a way to force air into the mix. Chandler uses coke and coal for his fuel; coke being a byproduct of heated coal. As fresh coal is added to the outer edges of the fire, it burns off impurities, releasing green smoke, and what remains is coke.

Below the fire box is an electric blower to force air into the fire. The more air, the hotter the fire burns 28

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and this allows a skilled blacksmith to control the intensity of the heat.

With a forge, anvil, and hammer, a blacksmith can make anything else they need. Over the years, Chandler has forged tools of all shapes and sizes, including tongs, fullers, and hammers.

For making a rigging knife, the list of required tools is short and all could be sourced from any discount supplier for less money than a decent pair of boots. However, Ship’s Coy is a professional forge and has all of the tools to make forging more efficient for a one man shop; mainly a massive pneumatic power hammer and large belt sanders. *2* The heart of Med’s shop is the forge and it’s heat, but a close second is his anvil. This example dates back to the 1800s and was made by Joshua Wilkinson and Sons of Dudley, England. Weighing in at 250lbs, it’s not the largest anvil in the trade, but large enough to handle the work of Ship’s Coy. For knives, Chandler uses 5160 steel that he cuts from larger round bar stock into uniform blanks. 5160

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is a high-carbon steel, excellent for tool making because of it’s strength and resilience. The same stock is used for Ship’s Coy’s line of caulking irons and marlinspikes.

5160 is not the only choice for bladesmiths. In fact, you have as many choices of steel as you have in choices of knives to build. Don’t have access to a metal supplier locally?

For the adventurous, good knives can be made from reclaimed steel like vehicle springs. There are pros and cons with all metal types, so do your homework before diving into a project. *3* Naturally, the first step in forging a knife is to heat the metal, softening the piece before shaping.

Heating the steel to the correct temperature is crucial; too cool and the material is hard to work, too hot and the steel can become too brittle or even melt.

The temperature of the metal is judged by the color; ranging from the nearly black of cold steel to a white hot puddle (Rookie tip: if it’s a puddle, start again). The center of the forge can reach nearly 3000 degrees Fahrenheit and an extra few seconds in the fire can be costly.

Once the blank is glowing a bright yellow — at about 2000 degrees — the steel is ready to work.

To make quick work of the initial forging, Med uses a pneumatic power hammer. The 88-lb. air-powered ram is controlled by a foot pedal and applies tremendous force. The harder you step on the pedal, the faster and harder the hammer hits. The round blank is carefully drawn out into a flat bar.

When forging, manipulation of the work piece is a zero-sum game. If you flatten the steel, that material has to move somewhere. In this case, the goal is to lengthen the blank and not just widen. The knowledge of when to move the steel, where it moves to, and how hard to hit are all skills learned by years of practice.

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Rotating the steel consistently helps ensure an even result. With the power of this hammer, it’s very easy to go too far (I proved this point rapidly with my own build) and leave the steel thinner than desired.

As the steel cools, the color fades from yellow to red to black.

Once the piece begins to lose the red color — about 900 degrees — it’s time to re-heat the metal. This process is repeated over and over throughout the build, but I won’t note each time the blade is put back into the fire. *4* When the first half of the blank is flat, the steel is flipped in the tongs and the still-round portion is hammered to match.

You can make the knife up as you go along, but having a design and size settled before hand ensures you have enough stock for the knife’s final length and thickness.

A skilled blacksmith like Chandler makes short work of the power hammer and soon has a nearly uniform piece of flat steel ready for work on the anvil.

In the world of blacksmithing, there are specialized tools for every job. Just the number of hammer types alone can be overwhelming. For this project, a 2-lb. hammer with crosspeen works well. The flat face gives even strikes and the cross-peen moves material quickly with less work by the smith.

In addition to numerous faces and edges providing for endless options when shaping metal, anvils can have Hardy (square) and Pritchel (round) holes as well. These holes are used to hold additional tools in place and, as with hammers and tongs, there are countless types of tools that utilize these holes. *5* Now on the anvil, Med sets the shoulder between the tang and the blade. The 90-degree edges of the anvil are perfect for forming the shoulder.

Moving the steel up and down with the tongs changes the angle that the hammer hits the blade and

can have more or less impact on the shape. As the steel cools and requires returning back to the fire, Chandler takes a moment to flatten the blade saving more work down the line.

With the transition from tang to blade done, Med’s focus moves to finishing the handle profile. The standard Ship’s Coy knife has a nearly flat spine, a rounded butt, a gentle curve to the bottom of the handle, and a solid bolster to prevent the hand from sliding down the edge. This gives a comfortable and secure grip when in use, even when wet. *6* The next step is to trim the knife to its final length. With the steel heated back to working temper-

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ature, Chandler uses a Hardy cutoff tool to cut the steel. The cutoff tool is a sharpened wedge set in the Hardy hole and cuts by hammering the material onto its sharp edge.

As with previous steps done to save time later in the process, the blade is cut at an angle similar to its final shape. In this case, the blade’s forward shape is called a sheepsfoot. *7* Moving onto the blade, it’s important to understand how metal moves when forged. As the edge of the blade is drawn and tapered away from the spine of the knife, the blade would naturally curve. To address this, the knife is prebent the opposite direction, with the goal of the tapered edge being-more or less- straight when finished.

There are many ways to forge in the curve and using the rounded horn of the anvil is a good choice. Rotating the blade around the horn and focusing the hammer blows towards the ends of the blade create the bend quickly.

When tapering the edge of the blade, Chandler has a lot of things to keep track of. First, tapering the blade evenly on both sides of the knife.

Second, because this is a rigging knife, blade thickness is kept heavier as these knives are destined for a life of hard use.

Tapering too far will leave the knife too delicate for its purpose. Lastly, constant attention has to be paid to keeping the knife straight. Forging in a warp or bend can either add time to the build or even send the whole blade into the scrap pile. *8* Once happy with the knife’s overall shape, the steel is heated again and set aside to cool slowly. This heating and cooling cycle gives the metal a chance to normalize and relieve some of the internal stresses hammered into the steel during forging.

As mentioned earlier, the more care taken when forging, the less time will be spent with the grinder. With 32

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Chandler’s years of experience, his blade is fairly close to its final shape before even looking towards the sanding belts. For my build, let’s say I left a little more material to work off...

The process of grinding repeats itself through a handful of sandpaper grits. Starting with a very coarse belt of 36 grit, the bulk of the material is taken off.

Then working up through 60, 80, 120 and finally 220, the knife’s profile, tapers, and edge are set. *9* At this point in the process, you have a piece of steel in the shape of a knife, but to make this steel into a tool, the metal must be heat treated to harden the blade. This is called quench hardening.

The knife is once more put into the forge and heated to the glowing yellow color. When evenly heated, the blade is pulled from the fire and immediately plunged into an oil bath. This rapid cooling

changes the crystal structure of the metal and leaves the steel extremely hard, but brittle. If left in this state, the knife could shatter if dropped on the concrete floor.

To find the perfect balance between strength and flexibility, the knife is heated once more. This time in a toaster oven (yes, a regular kitchen toaster oven) to 400 degrees and then left to cool slowly. This tempering allows the blade to keep most of its strength after hardening, but pulls back the brittleness and makes the blade durable as well.

After a final trip to the grinding room to remove any scale left during the heat treat and a minimal amount of hand filing the details, the knife is ready for handles. * 10 * Chandler’s forge has a library of wood choices, including saved materials from historic ships like Constitution, Eagle, and Amistad. For this knife, a vibrant set of purpleheart grips were chosen.

The handles are held in place with epoxy, but brass pins are added for further security and aesthetics. The number of pins and their placement are personal styling choice.

The tang is then drilled for the chosen number of pins and one slightly larger diameter hole for a lanyard.

Handles are rough cut to the tang’s shape and epoxied in place.

Once dry, the handles are sanded; first on the belt sander for a rough shape and finally by hand.

Again, going through the sandpaper grits until the maker is content. Last step for the handle: apply your finish of choice.

With a final sharpening, the knife is ready for a lifetime of hard work in the loft, up in the rig, or — less excitingly — on the desk of a photographer. b A rigging knife from Ship’s Coy Forge can be packaged with a marlinspike and leather sheath, both handmade by Chandler as well.

For more information: www.shipscoyforge.com www.tylerfieldsphotography.com

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❂ CORONET NOW

CORONET THEN

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❂

Mystic Seaport Museum received a massive restoration project this month. And we’re not talking about Roseway.

Coronet, one of the last of the Gilded Age yachts, was scheduled to arrive in Mystic in early December to begin a three-year restoration. The vessel had been drydocked indoors at IYRS in Newport since 1995.

First launched in 1885, Coronet was one of the most elegant sailing yachts of its day. Intended for crossing the ocean in style, the 131’ schooner was designed by William Townsend and built for Rufus T. Bush by the C. & R. Poillon shipyard in Brooklyn.

Bush then put forth a $10,000 challenge against any other yacht for a transatlantic race. The resulting race between Coronet and Dauntless in March 1887 made Bush and the victorious Coronet famous — the New York Times devoted its entire first page on March 28, 1887 to the story.

Since 1995, Coronet has been under restoration at IYRS, the premier marine trades and modern manufacturing school in the United States. Originally purchased as a student project to provide hands-on experience in historic wooden vessel restoration, the schooner was later sold to a private buyer. However, she remained at IYRS under restoration by a team of shipwrights who included IYRS

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In 2012, I was on board the tall ship Bounty, wintering over in San Juan. El Batey was the dive bar of choice to practice rehydration therapy after volunteering to scrape sand and varnish in the hot sun.

— Alice JT

students and alumni.

Coronet was recently purchased by Crew, a New Yorkbased company run by brothers Alex and Miles Pincus. The Mystic Seaport Shipyard has worked with Crew over the years to maintain vessels in their existing fleet, most recently Pilot, which now serves as a seasonal oyster bar in Brooklyn.

Chris Gasiorek, Senior VP of Operations and Watercraft at the Seaport, posted on the Marlinspike Facebook page shortly after the announcement to the effect that Coronet will not become an oyster bar — the Pincus brothers plan to sail her.

Visitors to Mystic Seaport will be able to view the progress of the restoration, as the Shipyard offers a unique opportunity to watch its shipwrights while they work. The

As most rum drinkers know, you’re not allowed to call it a “Dark’n’Stormy” if it doesn’t feature Goslings rum. But there are many ways to combine rum and ginger beer.

Clay Commons submits this recipe: 2 oz. Cruzan Gold Rum, 4 oz. Empire ginger beer Squeeze of lime, chipped ice.

“Don’t call it a Dark’n’Stormy; it’s just a rum and ginger. But Empire makes the best ginger beer going! Made in Bristol, RI. Wicked hot ginger!”

— Clay Commons 36

restoration team will again include IYRS alumni who are looking forward to bringing Coronet’s restoration full circle.

Spectators both near and far can also follow along with the restoration on social media at both the Museum and Coronet Instagram accounts. ★ The Environmental Protection Agency is providing a $100,000 grant to SoundWaters Inc. of Stamford, which will be used to provide students from disadvantaged backgrounds, along with their family members, with the opportunity to participate in research projects conducted from aboard the SoundWaters, the organization’s 80’ schooner.

The program, dubbed Sound Families, will take the form of a collaboration between SoundWaters and five partner organizations in Connecticut.

According to Michael Bagley, vice president of programs at SoundWaters, the funds will be used to provide two-hour sailing cruises in order “to learn a little bit about the Sound, to have the experience of being on a sailboat, and to not only learn about the sound but ideally leave inspired and empowered to make a difference in the environment within their communities.”

The grant will allow SoundWaters to operate 23 two-hour trips, each with as many as 40 passengers.

“The trips will involve using a trawl net to collect fish and marine life that are living on the bottom of the Sound,”

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Bagley continued. “We’ll also do some water quality analysis — they will take water samples and look at what signs are good and what’s bad in the water. Depending on the season we might collect microorganisms that live in the Sound and look at them through microscopes.”

“Throughout,” he added, “there is a general conversation about what is Long Island Sound and how do we live next to it. We’ll discuss what are some things that we can do that are good for it, and what could create adverse conditions.”

Additionally, a portion of the funds will go to the five partner organizations, which include the Boys & Girls Clubs of Stamford and Greenwich, the Future 5 program for Stamford High School students, and the Riverbrook Regional YMCA, with branches in Norwalk and Wilton.

“The EPA recognizes that if we want to find, recruit and transport [the families] to our docks for free, that requires administrative and logistical work,” Bagley explained. “We can compensate those organizations for their assistance in making that happen.”

The first voyages funded took place in September and October; voyages will resume in the spring of 2023.

“The Connecticut coast is something like 97% private,” Bagley noted. “It’s very difficult to access Long Island Sound if you don’t own property that is adjacent to it, have a boat, or a friend who has that. Our mission is to make sure that everybody in the region knows about the Sound, appreciates

SOUNDWATERS

it and understands how they can impact it.” ★ Danielle Doggett, the face of SAILCARGO INC. since its inception, is stepping aide as CEO to focus on managing the company’s growing fleet of vessels.

Julia Milmore succeeded Doggett as CEO effective on November 1.

“Julia has extensive experience and knowledge in business management, marketing, sales and finance. She will be responsible for the company’s funding strategies, consolidating investments for the holding company and overseeing the marketing and communications department,” said the company’s release.

“Eight years after founding SAILCARGO INC., Danielle Doggett is stepping down as the CEO to focus on her true passion: managing the company’s vessels. Skilled in sailing, maritime operations, navigation and traditional rigging, Danielle will continue to advise the company as a member of the Board of Directors, alongside business experts from external companies.

“I am extremely proud of everything we have accomplished and the strong and experienced team we have put together over the years. While I’m stepping away from the day-to-day responsibilities of running the company, I’m still committed to our mission of proving the value of clean shipping. I know the company will be in good hands under Julia’s leadership given her extensive business management experience. I’m happy to go back to my roots and continue to support the growth of SAILCARGO INC. in the future,” said Doggett.

Julia Milmore has worked in the past for organizations like BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and brings great leadership to the position. Before joining SAILCARGO INC., Milmore has worked at Cafe William for a decade, a company focused on roasting accessible organic and fair trade coffees. SAILCARGO INC. and Café William have been partners since 2020 and are dedicated to delivering the first low-emission sailing cargo ship, which will transport coffee beans from South America to New Jersey.

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"Danielle is a visionary and a leader in the industry and I am honored to continue her legacy,” said Milmore.

“Maritime transport is a crucial link in production of coffee and contributes to the overwhelming emissions of the shipping industry. By leveraging Café William’s market reach with the regenerative shipping model of Vega, it is possible to lead the way.”

SAILCARGO INC.’s leadership team can also count on new executives with extensive expertise to further accelerate the growth of the company, including Thomas Cogram, Head Legal Aid and John Porras, Chief Executive, Operations and Finance. Lynx Guimond, who helped Doggett found the company, remains as Chief Technical Director. ★ The Maritime Museum of San Diego has announced the dates for their volunteer training program. Training includes learning the history of and skills to maintain and sail the Star of India, Californian and San Salvador. Sail and maintenance crew members will learn skills such as knot-

tying, terminology, line-handling, sail-setting, sail theory, maintenance of the ships, and they may even “lay aloft” to work in the rigging.

Graduates of the program will have the opportunity to volunteer as sail crew aboard Star of India when she sets sail for her 160th birthday November 11 and 12, 2023 and also crew Californian and San Salvador during regularly-scheduled weekly underway programs for public, educational programs and private charters.

Open orientation will be held Wednesday, January 4, at 6:00 pm aboard the steam ferryboat Berkeley. The first class will be held at 8:00 am Sunday, January 15. Classes are limited to 150 participants. All enrolled must be Museum members prior to the initial class, and provide their own health insurance. Classes continue every Sunday through February 19. Final testing will be Sunday, March 5. ★ SEA announced in November that John “Wiggs” Wigglesworth, W-5, will serve as interim president until the presidential search process is completed and a full-time pres-

for Schooner VICTORY CHIMES 1900 Three-masted Chesapeake Ram schooner, 127’ LOA, wood hull. Located Rockland, ME. Asking $385,000. See Artisan Boatworks for full listing.

Schooner ALLIANCE Three-masted schooner, 1995, steel hull built by Treworgy.

COI for 49 daysails, 12 overnight. Located Yorktown, VA. Boat and business for sale. info@sailyorktown.com Schooner HALIE & MATTHEW 2006, fiberglass hull. Located Maine. COI for 100 on deck, 50 overnight. Asking $1,250,000.

AMAZING GRACE

Schooner GRACE BAILEY 1882 wooden-hulled schooner in the Maine Windjammer trade. LOD 81’, COI for 54 passengers, 34 overnight.

Brand new sails. Located Camden, ME. Reduced to $450,000. See Artisan Boatworks for full listing.

Schooner MERCANTILE 1916 wooden-hulled schooner in the Maine Windjammer trade. LOD 79', COI for 49, 29 overnight. Brand new sails. Located Camden, ME. Reduced to $350,000. See Artisan Boatworks for full listing.

Schooner AMAZING GRACE 58’ LOD ferrocement schooner, built 1991. New engine, rigging, electronics. COI for Lakes Bays & Sounds, 33 + 2. Located San Juan, PR. Asking $450,000.

Schooner GRAND NELLIE 1988 steel hull, COI for 48 on deck, 20 overnight.

Located Key West, FL. Asking $400,000.

Schooner CAPT. KIDD 55’ steel schooner, 2000. COI for 28. Located Seabrook, TX. Asking $190,000.

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In 2007, after sailing to England on Amistad, some shipmates and I spent a few days in London. We learned of a pub called “The Town of Ramsgate” that is located on a historic section of the Thames called Wapping Old Stairs, which among other interesting historical events was the place where Captain William Kidd was hanged for piracy. Naturally my shipmates and I needed to pay a visit and drink shots of rum in honor of Captain Kidd.

The Town of Ramsgate is a rather civilized establishment and perhaps not what would normally qualify as a “sailor bar”, but for any sailor visiting London it is a must-see. There are also a buttload of Thames barges docked nearby and some other points of interest relevant to maritime history.

— Tim Clark

ident joins the team, replacing Peg Brandon. will examine the history of the Museum through the lens of “John brings with him a deep understanding of the hisits collection of seafaring vessels and the respective industries tory and culture of SEA. A retired teacher, John taught math and activities that are associated with the exploitation of natand earth sciences at Waring School, in Beverly, MA. Prior ural resources: fishing, whaling, the transportation of goods, to that, he was a faculty captain of both the R/V Westward human migration and slavery, invasive marine species, polluand SSV Corwith Cramer. He also served as Interim Dean at tion, the biodiversity crisis, extinction and climate change — SEA on two occasions and was Assistant Dean for Program the most pressing issues of our time.

Development, responsible for the creation of SEA’s high Oceanus will be the anchor of a broader examination of school programs. A forinvasive species across mer member of the SEA the entire Museum.

Board of Trustees, John Programming and eduserved on the Executive cational opportunities Committee and as chair throughout the run of of the Marine the show will harness Committee. the resources and “John recently expertise of the returned from the North Museum and partner Pole, where he sailed on organizations to address the US Coast Guard the science and impact cutter Healy on the of this most pressing Synoptic Arctic Survey. issue.

He served as science ★ technician for Woods The 50th Tall Ships OCEANUS opens at Mystic Seaport in May Hole Oceanographic America Annual Institution and helped Conference will be held gather data on many aspects of the Arctic Ocean system. at the Newport (RI) Marriott February 7-9. Registration is After that experience, he said he’s more committed than ever currently open; early-bird rates apply through November 30. to the mission of SEA.” An online Crew Resource Day will be held January 31 ★ which includes video access to the keynote and sessions from A new exhibit by artist Alexis Rockman will open at the Newport conference. b Mystic Seaport Museum on Memorial Day weekend, 2023.

Do you have a newsworthy item for Boats, Bars & Beaches?

Oceanus, an 8’ x 24’ painting and 10 large watercolors, Contact us at Marlinspike1812@gmail.com.

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VIRGINIA’s rigging crew hard at work Building continues, but is far from complete, aboard the pinnace Virginia, which spent her first season in the water after her June launch in Bath, Maine. The lower standing rigging is in place, ratlines done, and a few of the yards crossed and sails bent. Construction of watertight bulkheads is complete and the crew quarters are being fitted out.

Some design issues are still being pondered: catheads or no catheads? Position of the gammoning knee? And where to put the swivel guns?

In the non-seventeenth-century department, design work on the electrical systems is still on-going. In that, Maine’s First Ship has received help from retired electrical engineers from Bath Iron Works, just down river from where Virginia is docked, and from MFS volunteers who are former merchant marine engineers and masters. Fuel tanks are in place, engine room venting underway, and the engine should be on-line shortly.

At press time, work on Virginia was winding down for the season.

“The colonists who built the original Virginia in 1607 arrived in late August and probably thought the weather in Maine was perfect,” says rigger Jim Nelson. “By the time it was November they were probably rethinking that. Which is kind of where we are now.”

The Kennebec River, where Virginia makes her home, 40

can be treacherous in the winter, thanks to currents and ice floes. Plans are in place to move the ship, hopefully under her own power, to Wiscasset, where the Sheepscot River is more free of ice than the Kennebec. There, work will continue to whatever degree it can until the ship returns to the Bath waterfront in spring.

The current goal is to secure a COI next summer.

H At the Jungle Shipyard in Costa Rica, SAILCARGO INC. continues to work on their flagship Ceiba, a 157’ three-masted topsail schooner.

“For five years, Ceiba has been a skeletal structure of frames and beams rising out of the mangroves, but in the last six months, the gaps have started to close. Interior planking is now approaching the turn of the bilge and segments of deck houses are beginning to appear, giving an increasingly clear outline of the ship's final appearance.

“This November, the shipyard celebrated the waterway's completion in the tween deck. Etta, Chris and Constantine did the meticulous work to fit these planks seamlessly into the framing. Each day on the deck below, the planking team lights the fire for the boiler that feeds the plank steamer.

After six hours in the steam box, a plank can be bent into place with purpose-made threaded clamps. Once it has set into position, the plank must come off again for the last

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round of fairing, drilling and tar painting before installing and fastening.

“The length of time it takes to steam and prepare the planks, makes this a job of epic proportions, but it will ensure a robust and even surface against which we can store cargo during transit.

“In the stern of the ship, where the accommodations will be, one team has been installing bracing knees between the beams where the deck meets the sheer. These are to reinforce against the twisting forces that are exerted on the ship when ocean waves hit the bow. Carrying cargo multiplies the forces that Ceiba must withstand.

“The galley, the foremost deckhouse, has been built in four segments, each crafted by our team led by Eugenio Salvato. After five months of development and construction, each piece has now been winched up from ground level to the weather deck. The whole team stops what they're doing to help with this lift. After hours of tense maneuvering with tractors, winches and sheer brute force, there is a round of applause as the team gently lowers the last wall to the deck.

“In the coming months, as the bilge planking approaches completion, teams start to break away to begin the next landmark: hold-side planking in the tween deck.

Simultaneously the galley team will fit the walls to the ship, and the knees team will move to install the stanchions to which the bulwarks will be fastened. With a current launch estimate of 2024, the team is working hard to keep on schedule.

“Meanwhile, in The Netherlands, after months of work replacing and preparing the rig, the Vega Gamleby has now received all the appropriate codings and safety checks to carry approximately 82 tonnes of cargo in her holds. She will set sail from Harlingen for Santa Marta, Columbia, where the crew will load Cafe William’s green coffee beans onboard. Then, it's across the Caribbean Sea and up the East Coast of the United States to the baristas and coffee lovers of New Jersey.”

H New owner Aubrey Wilson sent in some gob-smacking pix of the Hawaiian Chieftain CEIBA rebuild that’s ongoing in Port Townsend, WA [see Marlinspike #32] with the following note: “Restoration work continues on Hawaiian Chieftain! In May, we moved her inside to continue hull repairs, sandblast, and paint. (Pictures show the ketch’s steel hull after badly-needed sandblasting and primer.)

“We have acquired a shop space where we will begin to restore the spars, and winterized the ship so that we can begin restoration on deck.

More to come!”

H Harold Burnham writes from Essex: “Well the necropsy on the first hull of the Sylvina Beal was certainly interesting [see page 12]. A lot of amazingly talented people showed

VIRGINIA

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CEIBA: Fitting planks

CHIEFTAIN

up and looked her over and I am very curious to see what the reports come back with, or who shows up to do more detailed dissection work over the winter.

“One thing I learned from my friend Rebecca, who helped me come up with the idea and who does necropsy work for the New England Aquarium, is that they mark mostly-dead animals with a green grease pencil and dead ones with a pink. That way they get washed out to sea and later wash ashore somewhere else, it will be easy to see whether it was alive or dead when you marked it.

Rebecca thought we should have marked the Beal in pink.

“I watched the first hull die when the pier she was leaning against collapsed and she fell about 8” onto one of our marine railways. After she hit the railway, the railway passed right through her starboard side and up through her deck. It was truly horrifying. Not six months earlier I had sailed her outside the river before Graham McKay towed her into the creek, and not 18 months earlier I had spent a week sailing her from Bar Harbor to Gloucester.

“Later, as we removed the deck, it became apparent that while the section of the hull over the railway was completely crushed, the vessel’s form was intact at all of her watertight bulkheads. After discussing it with the Coast Guard and other wooden-boat experts I have come to believe that had she rolled down onto the railway at one of the bulkheads rather than between them, we could have used Rebecca’s green pencil.

“On other fronts, on November 2 we launched Isabella off the railway at the Maritime Heritage Center looking lovely in a lot of new paint. While we did not get her done in time for this season, we are in good shape to finish her up nicely for next year and are looking forward to sailing her in company with the Ardelle next summer.” b Got an update for Boatyards? E-mail us!

CEIBA: Fitting knees

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HAWAIIAN CHIEFTAIN

Custom Woodwork Cabin Interiors and Cabinets Deck Trim * Boxes Coamings and Companionways

ISABELLA

WickedCreekWoodworks.com

Nick@wickedcreekwoodworks.com MarlinspikeMagazine.com

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A popular feature on the Marlinspike facebook page is NAME THAT BOAT, where readers are asked to identify tall ships and sail-training vessels of the past & present.

A

How many of these vessels can you name?

8/9 — Admiral of the Ocean Sea 7/9 — Commodore 6/9 — Captain 5/9 — Master & Commander 4/9 — First Mate 3/9 — Seaman, Able 2/9 — Seaman, Ordinary 1/9 — Swabbie 0/9 — Tourist ANSWERS: A) Freda B, B) Elizabeth II, C) Tarangini, D) Sultana, E) When and If, F) Aquidneck G) Pamir, H) Mercantile, I) Stad Amsterdam.

B

C

D

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G

E

H

I F

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Made this for my brother from an old file, a scrap of stainless rod and a few odds and ends. He made the sheath. I had hopes for him! But then he bought a catamaran. He did use it to help rig the new Bluenose II though. — Ed Sturgeon

Years ago a shipmate made me a marlinspike from a railroad spike. A few weeks ago, I came across a forge-your-own-knife experience at the NC Renaissance Festival. So I made my own knife from a railroad spike to go with. I’ve now got to make a leather sheath for them.

Forgot to mention the coolest part, where the knife was forged in the mouth of a dragon! I think it’s called the Dragon Forge Experience.

— Mysti SoThen

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It’s the coat of arms for the village in which I was born and raised. Also Where Phillip John Sainty is laid to rest in the churchyard. Arguably the best shipwright, fisherman, sailor and smuggler on the whole of the east coast (UK) he built what is considered the fastest cutter to ever grace the waters during its time: the Pearl for the Earl of Anglesea.

The coordinates are for the home port of Wivenhoe. I will forever be grateful I was raised there. Unfortunately now changed a lot. The cutter in the coat of arms top right is a local craft, a smack. The same as the Pearl. The bottom left is an oyster shell depicting the local industry, dredging for oysters.

— Laurie Watkins

Endurance, being crushed in the ice as the crew escapes in their small boat. Got it in 2007 in Charleston, SC while I was guest crew delivering the Windy II from Chicago to Charleston. I was moved by Shackleton’s ability to bring home the whole crew even after leading them into danger and disaster. As a newly licensed captain, I wanted some of that mojo.

I am ashamed to say I cannot remember the full name of the artist. The shop was in Charleston, and I believe his name is John. He took the time to hear my story and help find photos of Endurance to work from.

Awesome experience! — Adele Arlitt

I wanted something very Erie, and what’s more Erie than Perry’s battle standard?

I also have “We have met the enemy and they are ours” tattooed on the same arm. I choose to believe these tattoos had something to do with my getting hired to work with the Niagara. This was, I want to say, January of 2020, done by a gentleman named Kevin Burfield. I’m currently Executive Assistant and Sailing Coordinator for the Flagship Niagara League. I’m also an OS on board when needed.

— Hank Wiest

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Visit the historic seaport of Salem, Mass for a cruise on our replica of the 1812 privateer schooner FAME! Sailing daily all summer from our downtown dock!

978.729.7600 * SchoonerFame.com