FROM THE SCHOONER WANDERER-INTO-EMANCIPATOR,
CURRENTLY DOCKED IN ST. MARYS, GEORGIA:
ECO-ANARCHISTS FORCED TO SHOP AT LOWE'S AND WAL-MART
(BUT WE ARE FORSAKING DIESEL AND PROPANE)

Sunday 4 February through Thursday 8 February 2007.   So Paul and I had
completed the twenty-six hour journey to St. Marys late Saturday
afternoon, and on Saturday night we had all-u-can eat shrimp at Lang’s
Seafood, owned by, we assumed, the same Mr. Lang who owned Lang’s Marina
and employed Mr. Nat Wilson. After we headed back to the dock, we
transferred most of our stuff over from the Fishers Progress onto the
schooner, and then Paul motored the Fishers Progress out from the marina a
little, anchored it (we didn’t want to have to pay two dock fees), and
motored back in the leaky plastic dingy.  He told me that he’d noticed on
the map of colonial North America (circa 1730) which hangs inside the
Fishers Progress that St. Marys shows up as San Matteo – apparently it was
once a part of old Spanish Florida – perhaps it was founded about the same
AS time St. Augustine?  Some of the architecture in St. Marys today does
look Spanish.

Sunday – what we did today was make new friends who would help us with the
refit, and these are Bob, a retired police officer from New York who is
living on a friend of a friend’s boat (the three of them plan to sail
around the world soon) -- Ken, a retired (though still in his forties)
computer software developer who is living on his own boat, and Euangelos,
the owner of a restaurant near the marina where we can pick up a wireless
signal.  Here is how we did it.  After I had sat down in the restaurant
and started checking e-mail and stuff, I got the feeling that the waitress
was uncomfortable with my having my laptop out -- then I noticed that
there were lots of Greek dishes on the menu, so I asked to talk to the
owner, figuring that he was Greek.  And he was Greek.  And since I’d been
to Greece three times and studied Ancient Greek in grad school (I’m the
sort of dude who likes to read Plato in the original), I started chatting
with him about Greece and it turned out that he was from Delphi and that
when I was visiting Delphi on the day Reagan was shot in 1981, I had
stayed at the hotel and restaurant which his brother then ran in Delphi
and still runs.  Also it didn’t hurt either that I’m also the sort of dude
who likes to read Rousseau in the original and that Euangelos’s wife
turned out to be French.  And so it ended up that Euangelos (call me
“Van”) showed me where his fuse box was so that even when his restaurant
is closed I can turn on the power for the front porch and plug  my laptop
in.  Meanwhile Paul was at the dock, schmoozing with other boaters.  And
he had especially interesting conversations with the aforementioned Bob
and Ken, who are both very adventurous and yet both prone to suddenly
speaking as if they were channeling FoxNews feeds.  Bob and Paul later
joined me at Euangelos’s restaurant, where we shared two bottles of
retsina and some feta salad.  Euangelos promised to score us some ouzo at
a later date.

Monday—in the morning Paul and I discussed food and the galley (which is
used properly as a nautical technical terms refers to the stove only).  He
has an idea that we ought to do, in the spirit of Food Not Bombs, Boats
Not Bombs.  I’m down with that, especially since I was impressed by the
Food Not Bombs work I saw done last fall by the Permaculture Army in
Berkeley.  More food theory: we are going to be discussing one of the
books which Paul brought over from the Fishers Progress – it’s called The
Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew.  We are already very deep into the topic
of how to eat well on a boat, especially in the context of post-petroleum
times.  We have already dispensed with refrigeration, and a lot of the
food which we have aboard the schooner now is cheese and beans and rice
which I bought in Tennessee at the Amish-Mennonite store near The Farm.
Paul and I agreed that we’d order a portable wood stove (with oven) for
the schooner and dispense with propane entirely.

Late in the  morning, Ken and Bob met us and gave us a ride out to Roger
Waskett’s boatyard.  Roger told us that he’d have room for the schooner in
the middle of March -- he’d charge us six-hundred fifty dollars to haul it
out of the water and relaunch it and two thousand dollars a month for each
month we were out of the water.  He said we could live aboard the schooner
with our volunteers while we worked on her.  He also offered me four
thousand dollars for the schooner’s diesel engine and said he’d haul it
out himself.  Paul said this was a great offer because if we had to take
care of  hauling out the engine, we’d have to hire a crane and that might
end up costing as much as eighteen hundred dollars. (Paul has suggested
that we also have the engine from his Fishers Progress removed and then
use it to power a yawl boat.)  We told Roger that we’d be rebuilding the
schooner’s cabin trunks in the weeks before he pulled the schooner out of
the water.  He  recommended that we buy the lumber from a man across the
border in Florida who runs his own sawmill.

That afternoon, while I was at Euangelos’s restaurant, Paul was down at
the docks, where he met a reporter from the local newspaper, The St. Marys
Tribune & Georgian.  She was taking photos of abandoned boats for a story
she was writing on the topic.  Paul offered to help her with the story and
to tell her about refit of the schooner.  She invited him to come to the
newspaper office the next morning.  Her name was Emily.

Tuesday—We both went to meet with Emily from the newspaper – she’s fresh
out of some college in Texas and is very friendly and enthusiastic but
doesn’t really understand why we’d want to refit a schooner (i.e., she
doesn’t have a clue about Global Peak Oil, but then again, neither did the
N.P.R. reporter I met at a Grist fundraiser in San Francisco last fall).
In any event, Emily promised to talk us up at the next editorial meeting
and see if she could write a story about the schooner.  I’m not sure
whether we told her about the story that Erik Baard is writing about us
for the business section of The New York Times.

We then  met up with Ken the software wizard, and he agreed to drive us
down to Florida, to the sawmill which Roger had recommended.  Ken bragged
about his flawless memory for direction, but after we’d missed our
Interstate exit and started to run low on gas on some back Florida
highway, we chickened out and retraced our steps until we found a gas
station.  It would turn out later that we were on the right road when we
turned around -- we were basically driving in circles for a couple of
hours, but we all were in high spirits.  At one point in our seemingly
pointless errand, we pulled into an old man’s driveway to ask for
directions, and we mentioned the name of the sawmill owner whom Roger had
recommended, and we were told, rather bluntly, that the man was dishonest
and that we best conduct our business with the owner of another sawmill.
So we drove out to this other sawmill, and there the owner told us that he
did not have any lumber big enough for our project – that we needed to go
to the supposedly dishonest man’s sawmill.  And so off we went.  And the
supposedly dishonest man turned out to be actually dishonest: he said that
he could provide us with the lumber for the cabin trunks for some hideous
amount over four thousand dollars – and that I’d have to return the next
day with eighty percent of that amount in cash for him to start the work.
This freaked us out.  We got back into Ken’s S.U.V., and he drove us to
the Lowe’s in St. Marys.  There we saw that we could get the same wood for
about one-tenth of the price which the dishonest sawmill operator would
have charged us.  But since we’d been lecturing Ken all day about the
evils of petroleum and interstate trucking and large corporations (and
Ken, chain-smoking filterless Camels and channeling FoxNews, had responded
by praising Wal-Mart at length for its high wages and generous health
insurance plans), I was still too into eco-cred overdrive to buy anything
at Lowe’s.  But Ken knew that he pretty much had us by the balls at this
point, so he loaded us back into his S.U.V. and drove us over to the brand
spanking new Wal-Mart SuperCenter.  At the entrance, a female police
officer was threatening two teenagers with a stay at the juvenile
detention center.  We assumed that they’d been caught shoplifting.  A bad
omen.  And as soon as I set foot in the SuperCenter,  all of my remaining
mojo evaporated in a little poof.  I ended up buying a really cool wok and
a stock pot with vegetable-steamer and colander attachments and a
non-breakable glass-like top for like a really great knock-you-on-your-ass
price.  I also got some organic peanut butter.  (We’d do some Thai
stir-fry in the wok later.)  And a can of Bugler tobacco for Paul.  Ken
drove us back to the boat.

Wednesday—we spent the morning with our laptops out on the front porch of
Euangelos’s restaurant – we were procrastinating our trip to Lowe’s to buy
the lumber for the cabin trunks, but we knew in our hearts that we were,
soon enough, going to lose this battle in the war against corporate evil.
It was Bob who ended up driving us.  We got the lumber we needed (though
we had to pick through every darn sixteen-foot-long two by twelve in stock
to find the eleven straight ones we needed) plus a brand new saw, plus a
speed square, plus a plane for under five hundred bucks.  So it really did
end up costing us about one-tenth of what the dishonest sawmill dude in
Florida would have charged us.  Plus, for an extra fifty-nine bucks, the
nice Lowe’s checkout lady promised to have it all delivered to our
schooner the next day.

Thursday—a guy from Lowe’s showed up at Lang’s Marina in a flatbed
eighteen-wheeler with our lumber on it and nothing else.  He got the
lumber onto a forklift and got it as close to the dock as he could, which
turned out to be not very close.  But Bob and Ken both helped us carry the
lumber the hundred yards or so the rest of the way out to the schooner,
much of it piece by piece (don’t forget that we had those eleven
sixteen-foot-long two by fours).  Bob chain-smoked Marlboro UltraLites and
Ken his filterless Camels while Paul chain-rolled from his stash of
Bugler. And the day ended with Ken driving me down to the bus station in
Jacksonville – I caught an overnight Greyhound to Nashville so I could
visit Betsy on The Farm (see my article “Relearning How to Be a Voluntary
Peasant”) for my birthday and Valentine’s Day.  And so I’ve turned it
everything over to Paul until I return.
-- john s.

Well, we're still located in Jekyll Island, GA, now with John siman, and a new crewman, Brad, aboard.  Stoically trying to get the ship south to St. Mary's, GA for the rest of the refit and haul out in March to perform maintenance on the hull.  I haven't started the engine since 2 weeks before Christmas, and I think the ship has forgotten that it, in fact, has an engine..or it may be the the engine is angry at the fact that we are planning on removing it.  But regardless, it is just not starting.  Now, my knowledge of CAterpillar engines is limited, but I do know diesels in general, and from having worked on bus engines, I know that it can be a pain in the ass to start an engine in the middle of winter after it hasn't been started in a while.  So, we're going to juice it with some ether and get it going that way.  Brad is ashore at the moment procuring some from the store.

Otherwise, things are going well.  We have gotten the rest of the ship clean, and have finalised most of the refit plans and designs.  One thing that we've decided is that, rather than building a long cabin trunk along the topsides, and using the forecastle area for freight, we're going to take her back to the way she was originally built with two cabin trunks, and a forecastle crews quarters, and aft cabin quarters, with freight mounted amidships in what will used tohave been the engine room.  (Was that proper english?...anyway).  We have another crewman coming out all the way from Junwon Village South Korea to join us, and we are especially excited about that.

After the earaly January work period, we determined that a belt sander is just not going to suffice to get the resin/ruber compound off the beautiful BC Fir decks, and are going to hire a floor sander guy to do it for us.  I think that's the only outside labour we're going to require.  It's the modern developments made on the ship that are the biggest hassle.  Go figure.

We should have a good place at St. Mary's, and are looking forward to getting there.  We were going to make the trip today, but the seas kicked up to 6-8' in the St. Andrews Sound, and were almost 2 feet here in Jekyll Creek, and it has been raining off and on all day.  It is purported to be the same tomorrow, and Saturday looks like it will be the best time to go, maybe Sunday.  Considering that it is the first time I will have piloted this ship, I would like to not be pitching stormy seas.  The very first time I piloted my Fishers Progress was during a gale in the Chesapeake Bay, and I found that thoroughly distasteful, and am trying to avoid a repeat of the same.  Oh well, time will tell, but Brad must leave in a couple of days, and we need at least three people to safely hoist anchor and move the ship, mainly because we will actually be moving two vessels at the same time...my fishers Progress, and the Wanderer, rafted up next to each other.  Talk about flying by the seat of your pants!  Anyway, we want to make this dangerous trip as safely as possible, if that doesn't sound too strange.

More later.

05JAN07

Well, the standing rigging has been collected and coiled up, and the decks are now being swept of their bits of wood and rope, called dunnage, and she is being prepared for her deck sanding next week.  If she were at a boatyard, this refit would take about two months, but at anchor, this could take years.  We have to figure out a way to get her to a dock and tied up, that'll make keeping the bilges dry so much easier using a 110v sump pump, rather than a 12v bilge pump. 

I'd like to haul her out and recork her seams.  There's a fresh coat of bottom paint on there, but without knowing when the corking was last replaced, that bottom paint may have been wasted effort.  I know already that about 10 planks need replacement right at the gunwales, and the corking above the waterline defnitely needs replacement, so I can only assume that that below the waterline is also in need of attention.  There's no rot down there, just needed maintenance.  The hull is good and strong, and the wood is fine (save for the planking at the gunwales, which needs replacing, because it was damaged at dock and epoxy'd over rather than replaced, and the epoxy caused rot

That's the frustrating thing about wooden boats in a fiberglass world.  People don't want to rake out the old corking and pound in new.  They think that it's "too much work."  But, really now, 12 hours of work every 3 to 5 years?!  That's too much?!?  Since when did we become so lazy?  Has our grecian search for a life of leisure and the outdated concept of the American Dream created a generation of people who would rather sit there and watch something sink rather than do anything about it now?  It's the difference between a little bit of work now, keeping the seams sealed, or a WHOLE LOT of work later, refloating her  after she sinks, and cleaning up the oil spill created by the engines.  Jeez.  To me, it's a no-brainer, but then this is the 21st century we live in.

The other thing that people do is cover wood with epoxy and resin and fiberglass, which makes them look nice and be maintenance free for about 15 years, after that, they have to be scrapped, because the fiberglass doesn't allow the wood to flex and breath the way it needs to, and the hull is so warped in 20 years, that it's not worth fixing, there isn't enough of the original shape left to fix.  It's a real shame.  I liken what's happening to the wooden boatbuilding world to sitting by the bedside of a beloved family member who has a broken arm, and the doctor just prescribed leeches.  That family member has a good chance of dying from infection unless someone does something effective...such as cleaning the wound with hydrogen peroxide, setting the arm and casting it up.  But leeches are easier, and cheaper. 

Wooden boats require constant "little" maintenance throughout the year, they need to stay in the water and not come out except when necessary, the need to be kept clean, painted, and used.  Follow that formula, and you'll have years of service from your boat.  Fiberglass needs little if any regular maintenance, but when anything goes wrong on fiberglass bottoms, it's nearly always a big deal that requires gallons of toxic chemicals and protective gear so you can work with them, and it's always expensive.  The idea of a hole in the water into which one throws money is a fiberglass term.  It's too easy to let a glass boat go so far that it's almost not worth it before you even notice that something is amiss.  ("Was the deck always that mushy?")

The main reason why wood fell out of favour in the boating world is the second ingredient in the formula of happy woody's...they have to stay in the water.  People don't want a boat that lives at the marina anymore, they want the whole neighbourhood to see how fortunate they are and how lovely their powerboat or daysailer is.  They don't want a boating lifestyle, they want a boat a couple times a year, and not have to pay dock fees year round on top of their rent or mortgage and car payment and all the other expenses of living ashore.

But, fiberglass is cheaper than wood, provided oil doesn't jump up over $100.00/barrel...oh but wait...it already has...People are so enamoured with modern technology, and they don't even care where it comes from.  FIBERGLASS RESIN AND EPOXY ARE PETROLEUM PRODUCTS!!!  And they will be the first thing to get cut when oil gets expensive.  Look at what happened to the fiberglass boat industry during the oil embargo of 1972-74...Fiberglass boats got real thin-skinned during those years, and there aren't many of them left afloat, because they were too thin, and a light brush against a dock piling could spell death for those boats, and oftentimes did.  The mid-Atlantic seaboard is littered wiht the skinny hulls of these casualties of the war on tradition.

Like I said before, most of the work, 90%, to be done during this refit is cleaning up the mistakes made by others.  Boats were never meant to be recreational, recreational boating has done more damage to America's waterways than anything else, and it's the white elephant that no one wants to look at.  Boats are for trade,  transportation, fisheries, and coastal defence.  Yes, period.  Not to drag some youngster across the harbour on a set of skis, as fun as that is, it is damaging to a delicate marine environment.  The plethora of recreational boats has created nothing more than a waterway full of ignorant boaters, and their polluting wrecks.  This is 15 years of sailing experience speaking here. 

There are no licensing requirements for recreational boating.  You just have to be over 16 years old.  No license, no insurance, and no experience required. This is dangerous, and is the reason why you no longer see sailing vessels that do not have engines.  The water is too crowded with idiots to safely sail into a harbour, even though a vessel under sail has the right of way, how many people on the water actually know that, or care?  Yes, you do detect a little cynicism in this writing, I am very cynical of modern boating, because I have been sailing for half of this lifetime, and all of countless others, and I can see how recreational boating and modern technology have killed the maritime world, or at least neutered it.

16DEC06

I am still working on getting the old mast remnant off without causing any further damage to the structure.  There are several dinstince possibilities.  One, it can be secured temporarily enough to make it to Tiger Point, where it can be removed by crane.  This would be a part of the new mast stepping costs.  Two, it could be secured temporarily enough to be taken to a place called Creadle's Boat Yard, about 3 miles up a creek, at high tide and removed there, but the vessel would be over a foot deep in the mud at low tide...there is the risk of worms, albeit low considering the anti-fouling paint on the hull below the waterline is fresh this year.  Three, I can offer the local tugboat-crane operator who is doing business in this area a hundred bucks or so to take ten minutes out of his day and motor over to the Wanderer and gently lower the mast to the deck (this option would be the safest, but it also somewhat unlikely...but I'll ask anyway).  Four, and the most unpleasant (last and least), we can unhook the standing rigging on the starboard side, and four guys can grab ahold of the halyards standing starboard, and (yeah right) gently lower the mast over the port side until we can no longer hold it and then let her go plunging into the Jekyll Creek later to be reshipped aboard and divested of her hardware (which is all reusable).  This option runs the risk of cracking one of the hull ribs, which would be most unfortunate indeed.  Needless to say, I am vigorously investigating the other opportunities.

The standing rigging is all fine, save for one shroud, as are all the halyards and running rigging, booms, and all but one sail (which is unecessary in the short term) with minor stitching repairs needed in a couple of the sails. 

The photos of the engine room show her diesel powerplant.  It is a Caterpillar 3208 150hp deisel with less than 500 hours on it.  In other words, it, alone, is worth almost $10,000.00.  It runs like a top, and was installed masterfully with no vibration on deck when she is in gear.  Being a direct injection engine, it can easily be converted to SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) which will improve fuel hourage (similar to mileage) and the overall life of the engine, as well as being environmentally friendly and accidental discharge legal (there is a $25, 000.00 fine for discharging any petroleum product into the water even if it is an accident).

The strange looking pictures of me holding out a piece of what looks like frayed rope is actually the way it is supposed to be.  They are called rags, and they prevent chafing on the stress areas of the sails, as well as deflecting any damage that any hard surfaces, such as booms, would cause as they travel across the deck and the rigging.  Those rags are in the standing rigging.

The very last photo is of where the foremast broke off in the dismasting.  Very rarely do rotten masts save a ship, but in the case, they did.  If the masts were strong, the impact of the shrimp boats outriggers would have broke the ships spine and sunk her where she sit.

Now, keep in mind, these pictures were taken only days after purchase and possession.  There has been no time to clean up anything on deck, or down below.  That is the task I will be starting on for a bit tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday.  Wednesday, I will be picking up a new anchor for her, as the one I am currently on is borrowed and all the anchors I have aboard the Fishers Progress are made for a 35 foot 12 ton fibreglass boat and are wholly unsuitable for an 18 ton wooden ship.  After that I will be continuing on with work aboard the Wanderer during the day, and designing the STN website during the evenings.  Once the old mast is removed, and the deck triced up (old sailor term for cleaned up), I will do another photo run, and continue the photos as the work progresses.

Please feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or concerns you may have, and now that there is a stable internet conection here ashore, I can check my email at least once daily.  Consider that I may (due to work aboard ship) not be checking email until the evening when I begin computer related work.  I hope you find these photos and my commentary helpful in experiencing this project from your respective locations.
 

21DEC06

The mast came down without a hitch!  She took a stroll, as it were.  Grayson, the seller, and I boarded her this afternoon around 1500 or so, at slack low tide, and we derigged her, and unbolted the forward stbd mainmast shroud and when that popped off, down she went...slowly...slowly...like she was in slow motion the whole way down and swam into the water with graceful ease.  About a third of the mast is still aboard, and the other 2/3 is floating in the water until tomorrow, when the rest of it will be shipped aboard and the cleaning and full derigging process will begin.  But first, I must transfer all my personal effects and tools aboard and start the process of turning the forecastle into a workshop (I had to corect myself from writing, originally 'workship'...thought the Freudian slip was worth mentioning).  We all got together for a solstice campfire this evening at Jekyll Harbour Marina for a celebratory potluck.  Everyone was thrilled that the mast came down so smoothly.  You should have seen the people on the dock looking (gawking, I should say), and putting their hands over their mouths in surprise...I'm kind of disappointed that no one was there with a camera.  Grayson and I were concentrating on the task at hand too closely to even think about cameras, and Joe, the gentleman who took the original photos of the Wanderer, which I sent along through email, is out of town for the holidays.

But the mast is down, and not a scratch on the ship, not even a dent in the coaming.  It really did come down in slow motion.  Before all the derigging was done, I followed an old maritime tradition of thanking the ship for all her service and asked her if she felt ready to sail more under a new Master and Crew and to let her sign of agreement be an uneventful demasting with no damage, then I followed a Native American tradition of leaving tobacco as an offering.  I marinised the ceremony by laying out tobacco at the old mainmast partner, where the break was, in thanks to the old mast for its' years of service, and offered tobacco to the sea, upon which the Wanderer will contune to sail.  It was a touching ceremony of thanks and blessing on this Yuletide evening.  I spent a portion of the evening with a gentleman named Frank and his wife Lynn, who did the original damage survey on the Wanderer after the shrimp boat fandango.  The went through the whole ship, and while they only surveyed what they were paid to do, they both were looking around in fascination at the craftsmanship.  They were the ones who told Grayson to go and get her before the old owner got mad enough to chainsaw the ribs and deck beams.  Frank told me tonight that he had been around wooden boats all his life, and is considered to be one of the best wooden boat surveyors between the Chesapeake and Miami and he said that he had never, in 30 years of wooden boat enthusiasm, seen a boat built as well as this one was.  He had been drinking, and since he wasn't being paid ('cos I know I don't have the money to pay him for his services as a surveyor) I have a feeling he was speaking freely and honestly about the ship.

All around, a great day.  Dare I say, as Tony the Tiger, Grrrrrreat!

Tonight will be my last night aboard the Fishers Progress, a heavy occasion to be sure.  I feel I must extol the virtues of this boat for a moment, as she has been a true boat for me and has taken me to where I both want and need to be.  She has steered a true course, and sailed closer to the wind than any other vessel I have ever had the privelege of commanding.  I love this sloop with all my heart, and I pray that the next person that takes ownership and command of her appreciates her for the pure sailing joy she is capable fo providing and takes her as far as she needs to go and excercises her sails and gets her out offshore where she wants to be, rather than turning her into a dockside darling with a few daysails per season.  I pray that her next owner work her as hard as she wants to be worked and never lets her get bored.

A good Yule.  May the new year be as fortuitous as the end of the old.

23DEC06

Got the (almost) new Stainless Steel 65lb Fluke Anchor from Charlie Collins this morning along with 60' of stainless chain fora whopping totalof $120.00.  I purchased another 60' of new galvanised chain (all chain is 3/8") and new Stainless swivel shackles and connecting shackles, and a few tools, as well as the new ships log all for an additional $220.00.  All around a good day. I'll be constructing a bow saw later today to cut through the old mainmast with blades I purchased this morning.

I think, after the settingof the new anchor, and the difficulties encountered pulling it up by hand (it's very heavy), I'm going to put together a design for an old style windlass that uses a part of the old mast as the drum.  That would make weighing anchor a much less strenuous proposition.  Holes can be chiseled into the  capstan drum and a tailstock (handle) fitted to provide leverage.

Now,with the ship on her own groundtackle instead of a borrowed $1800 Fortress and chain, the arduous process of making sense of all the tangled crap can take place, and measurements of supplies needed can happen without the additional worry of breaking off of someone elses anchor.

24DEC06

The SchoonerWanderer has given me her first test today.  The automatic bilge pump died.  I go to board her this morning and find the bilges full.  The extra bilge pump off the Fishers Progress isn't powerful enough to pump the water overboard, and so I ended up as a one man bucket brigade taking off bucket after bucket for about 4 hours.  Then the DNR stopped by and letme know nicely that if I was planningon keeping the ship in GA for more than 60 days, I would have to register her there.  He ran my ID and nothing came up (duh) and I went back to work for another hour, and then went ashore to talk with Capt.Brian, he had a Whale Gusher 10 manual pump to get the stuff out, and we went over and puimped for a while, and bucketed for a while,andgot the bilge under control.  Now, I'mashore having Christmas dinner, then back out to the ship to finish off the job, and get the bilge pumps off and check them out. Brian also has a spare automatic bilge pump he said he would give me, so at the worst, she'll have a new electric one by the morning.

She wanted to make sure we really cared about her, mystically speaking

Merry Christmas, heave ho heave ho heave ho.

25DEC06

After the bilge concerns were brought fully under control, I set up an anchor light (as that was one of the things the DNR cop asked me to...he said the courtesy lights weren't enough.  While doing that, I came across the one thing I REALLY REALLY wanted for Christmas...a high volume 12v bilge pump tucked waaay back in the forecastle.  I have a spare float switch on the Progress, and tomorrow morning (I'm calling it an early night tonight...it's been a long, stormy two days) I'll install the new bilge pump and float switch.  I have two banks of two batteries (for a total of four) on the Progress, and I'll be switching out a deep cycle daily over to The Wanderer until I can fix my genset to run the bilge.  I just pray it doesn't start raining again...no more rain.  Oh, for those of you located in the Cheaspeake Bay area...be warned, there are strong storms heading your way, and they should be there in the next couple of days if they don't veer east out into the Atlantic.  We got the brunt of them here in Jekyll, there were even a couple of tornados.

Oh well.  I'll do a full DC (Damage Control) from the bilge flood tomorrow morning after I get the new pump installed.  I've already checked the engine, and there are no signs of water incursion in the oil, but there is a little fuel oil in the bilge now, so I may have to flush the filtre, and I'll have to check the starter motor to make sure it's OK.  It'll be nice to have the genset running so I can run a drying heater in the engine room from time to time.  The leaks above the engine are really bad.  I'm going to be putting a tarpaulin over the engine hatch tomorrow as well.  Well, the bright side is...at least I know where all the problem spots are as far as leaks in the deck are concerned, and they're all localised so, as bad as it sounds, it's really not that big of a deal.  The Wanderer hasn't given up yet, and neither have I. 

On the topic of converting her over to a Yawl Boat Auxilliary...there is a local here who is willing to purchase the engine off the Wanderer for $2000.00.  It may be possible to get a bit more than that from someone else, the only thing with doing that is, the ship would have to be pulled out of the water sooner than later to remove all traces of the engine and plank over the area of the hull where the cutlass bearing came through.  She would be more hydrodynamic like that, and may get as much as two extra knots out of her under sail.  That would also be in keeping with the old world of shipping...or at least taking her back to the early 20th century while still being compliant with US boating laws (as far as mandatory auxilliary engines on sailing vessels more than 21' long).

The way a Yawl Boat Aux is rigged, is she is dropped down from the stern with davits, and then the port and starbaord cleats on the Yawl are run in one of two ways;
1.  They are tied hard to the port and stbd cleats of the main vessel and this prevents the Yawl from wandering around while underway and you get direct stern motorway.

2. The lines are run from the port and stbd cleats on the Yawl to a block and tackle system run into the main helm so when you turn the wheel to the port, the Yawl pivots around like and outboard engine on a powerboat.

The second method makes for the easiest operation, the first is more quickly set up and uses less equipment, and doesn't require modifications to be made to the helm.

The other benefit of a Yawl Boat Aux rig is it would open up that entire third of the ship to be used as crew and passenger space, and cargo hold with nothing underneath the cargo weighting the ship down.  That engine weighs almost a ton, and that's a lot of weight on a wooden frame and a lot of torque against the transom.  Without the engine, very comfortable accommodations for 8 crew and 4 passengers or crew trainees could easily be fitted in. 

Anyway, more tomorrow.  I pray for, if not sun, then at least no rain and wind and stormy crap.

 

01JAN07

I'll start dating my News and Updates mailings from this point, since there seems to be so many of them!  But that's good news!

And this message brings some EXCELLENT news!  I just got off the phone with a man named Lee Cahn, of Nashville, TN, who runs a production company called 2.8 Productions (www.2.8productions.com) and he is VERY interested in making a documentary about the Sail Transport Network and the Wanderer project!  He just completed a documentary called Tucker's World, which will be in the Sundance Film Festival next year, and he is looking for another documentary project to help launch his production company, and he thinks STN is the project to do.  I directed him to the Culture Change website, and told him about all of you guys and what you are trying to do, but said the info that is on the web now would better explain it.  I sent him 2 pics of the Wanderer before the phone call, and I'll send him the lot of them now, but to save being redundant with photos in your guys' inbox, I'll only cc you my message to him.

You have his web address, his email is xxxxxxxxxxxx, and his phone number is (615)xxx-xxxx at home and (615)xxx-xxxx mobile.

He's mailing me a copy of Tucker's World so we can preview his work, and that should arrive sometime next week.

I told him that it would be nice to have the entire refit process documented, and the whole STN crew interviewed, with a large segment on STN and it's goals, with the last part of the documentary being the race in October.  I told him that you guys were coming down in a couple of weeks, and that we would be able to talk about that more then.

I tried emailing a response to Michele Kim, but her email isn't working at the moment.  Oh well, when I get that response out, you'll get a copy of that as well.

 

01JAN07

The Fishers Progress is now gently nestles against the Wanderer, rafted up for convenience.   This saves on fuel, as I don't have to run my bathtub back and forth.  It's down to the final cleaning, now.  The damage from the bilge incident is minimal, the positive cable leading from the battery to the starter broke, but that is easily replaceable, and a little water got into the transmission, but it was evacuated, and the trans now only needs a new case of fluid.  Thankfully, the transmission is sealed from the engine to prevent the engine oil from mixing with the transmission fluid, and the marine transmissions are low placed in marine engines and are usually in the bilge, so a little water getting into them doesn't hurt them, as long as you evacuate it and replace the fluid.

I've measured the old mainmast for conversion to the new bowsprit, and very little wood needs to be takn off.  It could probably be done with a belt sander.  A total of about a 1/2" all around needs to be taken off, and it needs to be cut down to 22'.  All of the hardware for the bowsprit is reusable, but the ship would need to be at a dock to step the bowsprit, because of its weight and unweildliness.  Both masts were of identical size, and the topmast collar from the foremast is in perfect condition, and can be used as a pattern for a metal fabricator to create a new one for the mainmast.  Neither the mainmast, or the foremast standing rigging is damaged, but the stbd rigging for the fore topmast is destroyed, though Charlie Collins, in Darien has the replacement cabling needed for it, and it is a simple enough job to do.  The way she's rigged, is a long piece of wire rope is doubled around, and siezed in a loop at the end, large enough to slip over the masthead, and...it's slipped over, and the two bitter ends are connected to turnbuckles and hooked on to the chainplates.  The turnbuckles used for the main and foremast shrouds could be reused, though the topmast turnbuckles should be replaced.

I sent, yesterday, the measurements and materials requirements for rebuilding the cabin trunks, and the tools needed for the mid-January week are:

Belt Sander (with varying grits of sp)
Random Orbital Sander (see above)
Hand sanding blocks (see above)
Holystones (for rejuvenating the decks once they are free of the resin crap once again, these should be available at Bacon's in Annapolis)
Angle Grinder
Drawknives
Planes (non-electric)
Chisel set (with gouges, to remove screw keys in cabin trunk planking)
Circular Saw (to remove sections of decking above engine compartment for cabin trunk addition)
Handsaw
Hand Drill, or cordless if no hand drill exists in your tool kit, John B., or you can't find one 

(break for short rant....You have any idea how hard it is to find a hand drill these days?!  I went into a Home Depot/Despot, and they told em they can't even order one!  It makes no sense to me.  They kept telling me that a cordless drill would do everything I wanted a hand drill for and more...all for $145.00!  I told them; "What if I don't want to have to plug the thing in, or what if I have nowhere to recharge the batterie?"  They didn't know what to say at that, they just told me that maybe I need to join the 21st Century, then they pointed me in the direction of new gensets.  This was a couple of years ago, in New Mexico, while I was working on rehabbing and old homestead in Taos, NM.  I was furious that there was nowhere I could just walk into and buy an hand drill.  Oh, I could get them online, to be sure, but I don't use or have credit cards so buying things online is extremely difficult for me.  I just want hardware stores to carry manual tools.  Maybe I do just need to join the 21st Century, but I don't see much of a future in that....OK rant over)


Also good hammers, both carpenters, and rubber mallets, and a 3lb short handled sledge to remove hardware from mast and bowsprit remnants.

I can't wait to see you guys, I had such an enjoyable time hanging out with John Siman.  It's nice to meet people who are of a like mind and who actually want to DO something about the difficulties we are facing rather than just TALK about doing something, or complaining that something needs to be done.

I still haven't sent a response to Kim on her question.  I'm not exactly sure how to answer it.  I guess I'll tell her that now is not the time to think about such things as every things comes one day at a time.  I'll cc my response to you all as well.


04JAN07

Got the cheque for the mast this morning and deposited it into the account.  As I went ashore to collect the mail, I told that my dinghy dock fees that I paid before were no longer valid as they had decided to raise the price of dinghy dockage from $30.00/week to $20.00/day.  I get the feeling that that is the price they're charging me (but no other boaters would be subject to this highway robbery).  Some of the people here at the marina are unhappy that we even want to save this Schooner, as one of the guys is building his own and wanted the booms and tackle and is mad that he can't have them now.  They also don't like the idea of sail based cargo, they think it's a stupid idea and have said as much, and I think this is their way of saying "get the hell out of here with your crazy ideas you punk kid!"  I'm mad as a hornet over it, but their isn't much I can do about it.  There is a state park dock nearby that I can use to land ashore and get to the grocery store, but this $20.00/day bullshit effectively locks me out of the marina and it's services, including mail.

So, I'm not sure what to do at this point.  But I'll keep on truckin away. St. Mary's Boatyard is closer than Tiger Point, and allows DIY projects.  That's one possibility, there are others, which we can go over when you all get down here, but The Wanderer will have to find a different home, as Jekyll Harbour Marina are not ken to making things any easier for us (or me).

I could bring her north now, but without exhaust risers present on the engine, it would be a fire risk.  I have a couple of feelers out for exhaust risers, and should hear something in the next couple of days.  I'd like to get her north ASAP, even if it means towing her with my boat, but I would need another person down here to accompany me up, as I can't handle two boats at once underway.  It would take about three weeks to get back to the Chesapeake from my present location, travelling every day.  Towing her might be the least expensive means of getting her north, and since it seems that global warming have taken firm hold of the planet, I know it's not nearly as cold in Maryland as it should be, and my engine burns about 0.4 gph, rather than the 3.0 gph the Caterpiller burns.

 

On the Legacy and Spirit of Joshua Slocum, and the Schooner Wanderer;

A Personal Narrative

-by Cpt. P.W. Flowers, master of the Wanderer

 

In 1892, Captain Joshua Slocum, since retired, received as a gift, or I should say, a joke from Capt. Eben Pierce, a “ship” which proved to be a very antiquated sloop in Fairhaven, CT, that the neighbours had said must have been built “in the year 1.”  She was on the hard, meaning ashore, propped up on stands, miles from sea and people thought that the only thing this ship was good for was to be broken up into fire wood.  Capt. Slocum felled his first oak-tree a month later and began refitting her.

 

Thirteen months later, at a cost of $533.62, Capt. Slocum had refit that little ship from the keel to the topmast, and it became the world renowned “Spray” and was the first to circumnavigate the globe single handedly.  Joshua Slocum’s “Sailing Alone Around the World” has since become one of the greatest adventure stories of all time.  No one thought he could do it, and most didn’t believe that he was doing it when he pulled into their ports.  He took a year and a month to rebuild his sloop from the keel up, and got a boat that lasted him almost 20 years.  He disappeared forever in December, 1906 on board the Spray while en route the Caribbean.

 

The story of Slocum’s adventure stirs the hearts of many to this day, and is one of my greatest motivations as a sailor.  However, there is a great lesson to be learned from this.  If you want to do something, there is truly no one save yourself that can stop you.  He let no one get in his way, or dampen his spirits.  Many told him their opinions of how the ship should be refit, and many balked at his methods and designs.  But he was not only successful, but became world famous as the first person to prove that a single man can circumnavigate the world.

 

Now, in December of 2006, exactly one hundred years since Joshua Slocum set sail for the Caribbees, never to be seen again, his spirit is found in the refit of the Schooner Wanderer.  She is a topmast Schooner, of a 1903 Grand Banks design.  Hand built by master shipwright Henry Thomas Vokey in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland in 1985, the Wanderer was his last and greatest tall ship project.  The Wanderer is the ships second name, her first name was given to her by Vokey; “J & B” after his four daughters, Jane, Josephine, Beatrice and Bonnie.

 

The Wanderer has seen some rough seas, having been a tourist attraction charter craft for 21 years, and if she were less of a ship, she wouldn’t be afloat today.  She was dismasted by a shrimp boat in Georgia in October of 2006, and she now sits, dejectedly at anchor in Jekyll Island, GA, where many of the locals look upon her as the locals of Fairhaven looked upon the Spray.  No masts, rotting bulwarks and cabin trunks, and the modern disease of epoxy covering areas of rotting wood that should have long ago been replaced.

 

She’s been more engine than sails for five years, after her former master installed a gigantic Caterpillar engine to be able to power the boat with tourists aboard even if he was sailing against the wind.  He never replaced the original sails, only kept them patched, “because it looked piraty.”  Now, I seek to do to the Wanderer, what Capt. Slocum did to the Spray.  What nobody thought he could do with that little ship, he did, and her name is famous to this day.  While Slocum was the last great sailor of the first golden age of sail, and the first to sail around the world singlehanded, I seek to be the first to carry the Wanderer into the third golden age of sail.

 

By 1892, sail-based commerce was on its last legs.  Slocum commented; “...for I had already found that I could not obtain work in a shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a society, and as for a ship to command – there were not enough vessels to go around.  Nearly all our tall vessels had been cut down for coal-barges, and were being ignominiously towed by the nose from port to port.”  Today, the only tall ships still sailing, are doing so for historical preservation and eduactional purposes only.  There are no tall ships plying the seas bearing freight, mail, or passengers in transit rather than on vacation.

 

Sailing is arguably mankind’s oldest way of life, and dates back to prehistoric times.  Everything we have ever achieved in this fascinating modern age we live in has been a result of sailing.  Undiscovered countries charted out and inhabited.  Freedom fought for and won.  Regular trade routes established, and trade relationships fomented on the quarterdecks of some of the greatest examples of human achievement ever recorded.  I think of Joshua Slocum’s undertaking in the Spray every time I stand on the quarterdeck of the Wanderer.  I dedicate this restoration project to the legacy and spirit of Joshua Slocum.  He undertook the impossible, and sailed it around the world by himself.  The undertaking of the Wanderer is by no means a one man operation, however, she, like the Spray, is but one small boat on a great sea.

 

What I wish to achieve with the Wanderer is to put some wind, as it were, into the sailing world once again.  After languishing in luxuriant decadence for 60 years, the rich have thrown away sailing as quickly as they throw away all other pastimes when they are no longer a symbol of great status.  The world moves too quickly for sailing, and people have lost interest in this, one of the purest and noblest of human endeavours.  The world is moving too quickly for its inhabitants.  As we run out of our precious resources, which we have become so dependant on, that in four short generations we have forgotten where we came from almost altogether.  

 

Not only are people not sailing anymore, except for a brave few who buck the system, like myself, but they are not gardening, not building their own homes, not fixing things and making do, but throwing them away when they get upon them, the smallest speck of dirt or wear.  I firmly believe that if mankind is to survive another four generations and beyond, we are going to have to look back at where we came from to be able to move forward. 

 

The world is fighting wars over the resources we use to transport goods across the seas and around our respective countries.  When we were still under sail, we didn’t fight wars for the cloth the sails were cut from, as we do the oil that runs our engines today.  Wars were bitter to be sure, but they weren’t for money as much then, as they are today.  We are running out of these resources, and are facing the bitterest war of all in our lifetimes.  The answer to the dilemma of mankind lies in the seas, under sail.  While we are furtively trying to invent new technology to solve the energy and transport crises emerging daily, the answer is sitting dejectedly at anchor, in Jekyll Island, GA, in need of love and attention.  In need of  people like Joshua Slocum who see not chores, but challenges.  Not impossibilities, but successes.  Not falling apart old seabirds, but diamonds in the rough.  Not a lot of work, but a finished product before the project has even begun.  I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, are you a Josh Slocum?