Boatyard Update

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?

VIRGINIA’s rigging crew hard at work

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.”

Virginia

The Kennebec River, where Virginia makes her home, 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.

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 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.

CEIBA: Fitting planks

“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.

CEIBA: Fitting knees

“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.”

New owner Aubrey Wilson sent in some gob-smacking pix of the Hawaiian Chieftain 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!”

Hawaiian Chieftain

Hawaiian Chieftain

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 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.

Isabella

“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.”

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