Really made progress on the dinghy these past couple days. It really got into gear whn we moved the boat inside the shop, taking advantage of all the new space we have after the monster clean-out of the last few weeks. Under cover, i could really get moving on the paint!
Yesterday morning, i put the last coat on the decks, and by that afternoon i’d finished off the the whole headrig (bowsprit, gammoning block, whiskerstays, and outer bobstay). Tensioned up, the bowsprit has a perfect(!) bowse to it; set static, the bowsprit angles up about 10 degrees, but is now cinched down a couple inches to nearly level. The resultant curve provides a signifigant amount of “preload”, which will further prevent upward deflection from the jibstay and forestay.
i made the whole headrig as beefy as appropriate for the scale; it’s really important rigging! Mindful of recent events with Pride II’s headrig, as well as past failures aboard the Lady and Elissa, i’ve overbuilt every part of the headrig.
i also got the horse installed on the afterdeck, as well as the ringbolts for the running backstay deck attachments. i started laying out my bag of shackles, sheaves, fairleads, and cleats on the decks, making sure i’d bought or built enough little bits. The self-tending fores’l may give me more trouble than i thought, but i’m sure i can work something out.
The lads around the shop are trying to get me to add a sole grate, but i’m not entirely convinced it would be worth the labour, expense, and weight; we’ll see. Otherwise, the list is down to: sails, shrouds, rudder install, final deck hardware installation, and… well, heck, i can’t recall what else, but there must be something left…
Oh, this is gonna be fun!
September 9, 2005
o happy progress!
September 6, 2005
here i am
a few days back, i got an invite to join myspace.com, ostensibly to participate in a tallship sailors group there. When i got around to replying, i was quick to send off a “thanks but no thanks reply”. If anything, i was a little catty about it. i mean, why would i want to participate in a virtual sailing world when i live in a real one?
i served up a few eyes on the dinghy before it clicked. i had this sudden flashback to a few years ago. i was living in the bus, working odd jobs, but pretty much just being my old complacent self. i spent a lot of time on public-access computers, running my housetrucks group and chatting. i was just getting into the idea of sailing back then, and i was trying to find that etherial sailing community “out there”. i was landlocked (in more ways than one), and although i couldn’t have put my finger on it at the time, i was feeling a growing uneasiness that was infecting my life. i was fiercly interested in communities, online or otherwise. Today in the shop, working away, i had this sudden flash of sitting in the cubicle at Stardate Computers, emailing boat owners, posting in sailing groups, researching crew placements, etc. In fact, those were spiritualy desperate times.
It’s not so much a case of “reality vs. virtuality”. In some ways, it’s a realization that, when i was working on the Lady, i liked the work, but not the people. The work, the boat, and the sailing (what little of the latter we actually did) was the thing; the relationships and interpersonal dynamics were what made the gig ultimately unsatisfactory. In the end, more than any of that, what makes me shy away from the virtual world, the online community, is that it represents and reminds me of a time when all this was but a dream. i’m there now. This is the dream; being paid well to do work i love, living on a tropical island, sailing whenever i please, where most every friend of mine is a sailor too, and the evening conversation comes and goes to boats, wind, and water.
Of course, i still blog, but that’s more my space to “rant and roar”, and express myself for the benefit of my largely non-sailing familiy and friends who can’t be here with me. Like Bill said to me in Vancouver, “That’s it. You’ve done it. You’re living the dream.”. Well, this isn’t all of it, but it’s a great place to be, and a place from which i can both look forward with joy, and look back knowing that i have set aside many of those impediments with which i once held myself back.
September 4, 2005
check off a “done” box
Oh happiness… The woodwork on the dinghy is done. All installed, planed, sanded, and liberally oiled. The two last small bits got completed yesterday. Now, i’ve been concentrating on the rigging. The forestay and jibstay are 90% done; 1/8″ 7×19 wire, with softeyes spliced around the mast at the top, and thimbles stuck in at the bottom. i dunked the eyes in boiled linseed oil, and served them with sailtwine, then dunked them again. i used sailtwine instead of marline to suite the scale of the diminutive eyes. Today i’m going to experiment with making up some slush for the wire; something like linseed, jap drier, and black paint.
The most time-consuming bits were the two small pieces that make up the deadeyes for the jibstay and outer bobstay. They’re asymetrical figure-eight wire grommets, served and oiled as the eyes. The larger of the two sides of each figure-eight fits over the end of the bowsprit, while the smaller holds a thimble to take the lanyards. i’d made grommets, both round and figure-eights, from three-strand rope before, but never from 7-strand wire; interesting work! They came together pretty well (that service nicely hides my “learning curve”), and look every bit stronger than everything else they attach to. Completed, they each fit in the palm of my hand, yet each took up a fathom of wire and three fathoms of service!
The only remaining piece of wire rigging is the outer bobstay, but i still need to scrounge up the right length of wire from the shop’s bins. The rest of the standing rigging will be (gasp!) utterly non-traditional; single-braid Vectran. The Vectran is both stronger and lighter than stainless wire (the weight issue is what decided it for me), and dead-simple to eyesplice. i’ll likely serve the Vectran eyes the same as the wire, but leave the lengths un-slushed; the Vectran is a pleasant dark grey in colour anyways, and i don’t know how it will react to painting/slushing.
Today i’m also priming the decks (again!) in hopes of getting that final coat of paint on them this week. i’m trying to source some Easypoxy “Sandtone” instead of “Bristol Beige”, which i feel will look a little better against the oiled wood and dark green hull.
truth crew
Watching the reports from New Orleans… thinking thoughts, then Kanye West opens his mouth and says, “Bush doesn’t care about black people…”. Great stuff. Yet again, i’m astounded by America. Just floored.
i have a great deal of compassion for those persons struck by this disaster, but certianly no more than i have for the millions of people worldwide who suffer, living under such conditions permanently. Only in America would you build a city below sea-level, between the shore and a large lake, laced with canals, in a known hurricane path, then during an active hurricane season, fail to take all possible precautions. When the worst happens, in the country with the second-largest (but arguably far better equipped) armed forces in the world, it becomes a struggle to bring government forces into play. i can’t help but imagine some Louisianan National Guardsman somewhere in the Middle East right now wondering why he isn’t somewhere in the world where his efforts might make some difference.
As for Bush, well, he’s a rich white Republican southerner. If he sees poor black southerners as anything more than votes, i’d be surprised (not that many of them voted for him anydangways). Now there’s his comment, where he describes the areas affected to be as large as all of Great Britain. Sure, and there’s areas of the world even larger, in even worse poverty and disaster. Okay, i’m aware that a country’s first responsibility is towards it’s own citizens, right? Uh, does that include US states like Afganistan or Iraq?
Globally speaking, the hurricane damage in New Orleans is just one more blip on the radar, yet here it gets all this coverage. That’s bullshit. Trying to raise awareness of poverty and calamity in the third world is still like pulling teeth. Katrina or 9/11 are disasters, yes, but no more so than others that occur all around the world, in less developed areas, every year. No more so than the continuing disasters of poverty, hunger, and disease that never let up.
Clearly, i still firmly believe that America, as the superpower of the world, has a grave responsibility to improve the lives of all people of the world. Where the argument is made that America must look firstly to Americans, then why is there a problem? Why wasn’t government aid brought in sooner? Before disaster struck? Unlike Kanye West’s critics, i believe that this is a political issue. When his comments were later censored, it just goes to show that the media is more than ever in the pockets of the man.
