restoring VANDA, 1926 40' Alden schooner

Discussion in 'Motorsailers' started by kevinbootes, Apr 13, 2009.

  1. kevinbootes
    Joined: Apr 2009
    Posts: 10
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: hawaii

    kevinbootes Junior Member

    Ahoy skippers -

    A bit wordy here, but consideration of big, midlife-defining choices compels me...

    Searching for leads on estimating lead keel weight of a 1926 Alden schooner / termite farm that has slowly turned to compost over the years through neglect. People question my sanity in undertaking (pun intended) this restoration, but I've always considered this a complement through life: 'in an insane world the sane person will appear insane'. I'm a professoinal carpenter still in possession of a full complement of fingers, so the project is a natural fit. Nansen's Fram is the yet-distant ideal toward which I aspire: simplicity/ availability in matarials/ maintenance combined with uniqueness/ near-indestructibility of design.

    A storm in 80's washed VANDA up on the rocks of Maui out here in the
    Hawaiian tropics and previous owner invested small furtune in thickly
    glassing exterior to snatch seaworthiness from jaws of scuttling/chainsaw.
    Considering haul-out to backyard for years of weekend woodworking
    challenge, various questions surfacing:

    how to assess condition of glassed hull - still water-tight after years of harbor inactivity

    how to assess weight/value of lead keel which will be collateral for
    property owner (i'm a humble renter) who would cut off and sell should
    our respective project visions ultimately diverge (he will hold title)
    (and matches/ gas can)

    foolishness/wisdom of planting her in trench dug to fit keel profile
    rather than up 6' higher on standard supports - minimizing
    conspicuousness to neighbors is an issue - this may be the strength
    test to answer first question?

    foolishness/wisdom of craning onto truck for hauling to front yard using 2
    slings encircling hull fore and aft, inclined toward each other and
    joined overhead amidships to crane cable (further strength testing)

    how to obtain hull lines / profile enabling trench layout more precise
    than underwater observing / tape measuring with mask/snorkel; hull
    lines would also facilitate calculation of displacement tonnage
    through current position of waterline on hull (college math degree
    provides calculus tools to wrench a volume estimate from hull shape)

    how to locate owner of the one other copy of this Alden design toward
    reuniting owners of these twins separated at berth, one of them allegedly a
    former Woodenboat Mag covergirl in 50's - and which issue?

    Much appreciative of any mental effort devoted to my ponderings and...

    Happy Spring and Fresh Breezes,

    Kevin in Kaunakakai (kevinbootes@hotmail.com)
     
  2. peter radclyffe
    Joined: Mar 2009
    Posts: 1,454
    Likes: 72, Points: 58, Legacy Rep: 680
    Location: europe

    peter radclyffe Senior Member

    aldens design in maine, 100 dollars an hour, it will save you so much if you go direct to source, they may have it on archive, whats her sistership called, good luck
     
  3. peter radclyffe
    Joined: Mar 2009
    Posts: 1,454
    Likes: 72, Points: 58, Legacy Rep: 680
    Location: europe

    peter radclyffe Senior Member

    please dont cut her up, you have a rare gem, make sure the slings are under the lead, chisel the glass to find out where, or check large keelbolt positions, measure back from porthole, skinfitting, mast etc inside to outside, if the hull's about 15 tons the keel may be 5-8 tons, for price ask the local cops, the lead specialists
     
  4. kevinbootes
    Joined: Apr 2009
    Posts: 10
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: hawaii

    kevinbootes Junior Member

    slinging the VANDA gem

    hi peter
    no chainsaws if i have my way
    'we can fix it, my dad's got an awsome set of tools' said the Spicoli clown in 'fast times at ridgemont high' also source of 'read it, learn it, know it, live it'
    estimate of keel weight is first step, have to convince trucking contractor with crane to perform lift on credit and hold title, collateral being keel value as scrap: lead going for 60 cents a pound approx, he needs to see dollar signs somewhere in this mess, how comfortable are you with your estimate?
    ever heard of the 'keel-planted-in-trench-instead-of-in-proper-cradle' approach? if hull keeps water out, it'll keep worms out too, and i've dug fishponds with peace corps using nothing but shovel and bucket-on-head for hauling dirt, so digging a trench matched to keel profile will be a light workout, will resort to snorkel and tape measure if can't find lines or hauled-out photos for reference, you mentioned possible archived records in maine, any wep/phone leads?
    thanks for firing the neurons with me and floating fiancee
     
  5. PAR
    Joined: Nov 2003
    Posts: 19,126
    Likes: 498, Points: 93, Legacy Rep: 3967
    Location: Eustis, FL

    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    If it's the boat I think, a big guess, based on the very little information provided and assuming it's a full keel, not a centerboard boat (see attached), then you've probably got a sister to "Twilight" (#270). Her external ballast is about 9,000 pounds (cast iron), with about two more tons internal. She had metal floors, sawn frames and was a gaff fore/Bermudian main rig.

    [​IMG]

    Currently the Alden designs are being handled by Niels Helleberg Yacht Design. Niels has been with the Alden office over 30 years and is responsible for the body of Alden's work, until the full lot (over 1,000 designs) is donated to the Hart Collection at MIT.

    http://www.aldendesigns.com/index.html
     
  6. peter radclyffe
    Joined: Mar 2009
    Posts: 1,454
    Likes: 72, Points: 58, Legacy Rep: 680
    Location: europe

    peter radclyffe Senior Member

    theres no problem i can see with a trench, saves scaffolding access, possibly hurricane safer etc, you can put a bilge pump strumbox/pipe in the trench before the boat , the problem you may have; is if you sling her fore & aft the keel may depart if she's only worm grub, but to rebuild her all the fibreglass has to come off , then photo, & write , record every detail, copy details, record all positions, of every fitting, tag every fitting port or stbd if different, is she centre board, if so the keel will be less i guess, i estimate weight of solid keel no c/b, is the keel lead or iron, here is a comparison boat, the Tyehee, alden gaff schooner, 1927, 36 ft x 10 ft b, x 6 ft dr, iron keel 6,500 lbs,displacement of boat is 18,600 lbs, the ratio of fixed keels on old classics is often about 1/3 of boat weight, she has an extra 2,300 lbs of inside ballast ,internet alden designs , i would advise you to agree only 1/3 title to crane driver, as you know once you've rebuilt her you may be working for him for free, it may be better to get a loan with a bank to pay the crane driver, as then the amount is fixed in writing, rather than your backbreaking work gaining in value, but not for you
     
  7. PAR
    Joined: Nov 2003
    Posts: 19,126
    Likes: 498, Points: 93, Legacy Rep: 3967
    Location: Eustis, FL

    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    Instead of making life more difficult for yourself, you should approach this substantial project as a business would.

    - Establish a budget.
    - Evaluate the value of the boat, both in it's current condition and in several stages of restoration. Other then emotional value, is it worth it. It's often considerably more cost effective to build a new version of the same boat, then restore an old war horse.
    - If you haven't experience in this type of project, then hire some one who does or walk away.
    - Start up funding, which may include loans, sweat equity, grants, donations, possible a fund of some sort.
    - Line up material sources.
    - Arrange skilled labor for the things you'll need jobbed out or help with.
    - Find a suitable job site. Don't even consider a residential area, they never work out on a large eye sore, unless under acceptable cover (fencing, shed, etc.)
    - Evaluate you abilities, being honest with yourself about what you truly can do. Building a house or love seat, isn't really close to the multitude of skill sets you'll need for a project of this scope.
    - Setup a preliminary, but very flexible schedule for the various stages of work.
    - Don't put the boat in a hole dug in the sand. Place it on the hard. If a sandy base, reinforce it with blocking under the stands, concrete pads, what ever it takes. A hole will just fill with water and become a major problem.
    - A professional yard might take a year or two to do a bang up job of this yacht. You, think the better part of a decade.
    - Get the immediate family on board for the project, because you have to neglect a lot of your duties to get a project like this completed.
    - If you can't imagine a substantial 6 figure (possibly 7) budget, walk away.
    - If you can't imagine several years of hard labor, walk away.

    These are simple and quite classic business decisions that will need answers and require a fair bit of cash to accommodate (surveys, transportation, yard space, utilities, covered working, etc.). It's all part of the project, there are few short cuts on this scale.

    There are also steps to be taken to correct distortions that have invariably crept into the structure by now. Other immediate issues would include shoring her up to prevent further deterioration, placing her on solid, non-moving blocking (stands and keel blocks), removal of her heavy machinery, ballast, spars, etc. to gain access to her structure, without making matters worse.

    I personally don't think you have any idea of the task(s) before you. Line up your ducks and have a good wholesome look at the project. I've restore no small lot of yachts in the last few decades and it's a very rare amateur that can complete a project of this size, even a skilled carpenter who's managed to keep all his fingers out of whirling blades, during his career. The first thing to do is have her professionally evaluated. I perform this deed for the nation's largest yacht insurance outfit, in my area. Most often, a craft as you've described her, is long past saving, but for the quality of her builder and talents of the designer, is she's still holding together. Recognizing this, requires considerable skill.

    Plans for a copy of this yacht will run in the $1,200 to $1,500 range. You'll need them. I'm not trying to insult you. I look into the eyes of loving, caring owners every year and them them their baby is terminally ill, with the best course of action being to remove it from life support. I've also seen countless projects like this started, always with the finest intentions, just to see divorce, bankruptcy, broken families, ruined friendships and of course a yacht that languishes in disheveled disrepair, butchered or unsellable because of her disassembled condition.

    If you post some photos I can ID the model most likely.
     
  8. peter radclyffe
    Joined: Mar 2009
    Posts: 1,454
    Likes: 72, Points: 58, Legacy Rep: 680
    Location: europe

    peter radclyffe Senior Member

    very well written
     
  9. kevinbootes
    Joined: Apr 2009
    Posts: 10
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: hawaii

    kevinbootes Junior Member

    i need a new project

    Is the VANDA a path with heart?

    OK, you've flushed me out, beware my already professed wordiness, a consequence of a riotous divorce and everlasting family court system battle. Way more than anyone needs below, I'm on a bit of a tear here- both kinds, air/ear. A torrent this raging may get me knocked off the forum... DO NOT read all this unless you are very very bored. I desperately need a new project.

    Thanks for the leads, i believe my boat matches what you diagram. will get photos posted...

    What I've got going for me in taking on VANDA: just the right mix of tools, tormented brain cells, creativity, experience, earned confidence, dogged persistence/ devotion to heart, adaptability, audacious disrespect at the allegedly impossible, respectful worship of accomplished authority and tradition, and a way with words that seems both to open doors without knocking and slam them down onto offered fingers.
    Not so much a historical restoration as a remodel and evolving residence as alternative to near-homelessness. Real men don't crawl home to mom in defeat, they land there on their own wings or die trying.
    Past highlights, short version:
    2 story tree house with dad and younger siblings in 5th to 6th grade
    high school 6-sided aquarium big enough to float on back in from dumped window glass 18x48" long edges flat
    repeated swims across Ohio river and back to Louisville with coolers of beer and buddies after leaving one car at riverside park and driving other one 10 miles upstream for evening retrieval after all-day leisurely float/ downstream dogpaddle to Indiana and back interrupted by worried paddlewheel restaurant steamboat captain calling rescue helicopter to midriver scene of controlled riskophilia: 'if you require assistance, raise your arms' distressed voice over loudspeaker 'just more beer' we quietly called back, left to our foolishness (who lets me out of my cage unsupervised? I'm tempted to ask myself)
    engineering math degree johns hopkins with honors 87, shuttle disaster '86 diverted rocket science to follow at NASA instead to waiting a year for peace corps rainforest assignment targeted as further 2 yr wait for NASA;
    accidental forced mastery of motorcycle mechanics via surprise-encounter cocaine dealer on run from FBI back to Spain sold me dirt cheap what looked like solid Kawasaki GPZ 1100 but had an engine destroyed by racing - tiny holes drilled with surgical precision through every nut with thin steel wire twistlocking them tightened onto drilled bolts, alternator's internal rotor magnets turning with shaft had disintegrated with various seals/bearings, choking every sliding/moving part and surface throughout crankcase and cylinders with abrasive magnetic sand. I spent months and more than twice purchase price on replacement parts - new crahkshaft, cylinder rebore and oversized pistons, but learned engine mechanics the right way and well enough to adjust valve clearances blindfolded, beersopped and handcuffed at 120 mph (flashing poetic license here).
    4 yrs house, fish hatchery and pond construction in equatorial african forests, more motorcycle mechanics Yamaha DT 125 2-stroke, chainsawing 5' diameter fresh-fallen tree carcasses into sap-squirting lumber for framing of corrugated metal roof 60x120' of first family-in-law's house
    100 straight landless days aboard 160' stern trawler as gov NMFS fishcop Bering Sea extracting otoliths earbones with crude fishbrain surgery for wild stock population calculations, 45 degree port to stbd listing in sometimes 35 foot seas 'drop whatever you'fe doing and HOLD ON' captain warned sternly over loudspeaker when reversing course temporarily broadsiding swell, bunk assigned to me with curious black smudges, no one would tell until left port: previous occupant tied to bunk, doused with tequila and set ablaze, hospitalized near death and FBI investigated
    masters' degree aquaculture/ fisheries management, first reported hatchery rearing of red snapper, publication in NYT of fisheries science journals
    Encountered Nansen's legendary Fram, basis of adventure book 'Farthest North', in Physical Oceanography course during 3 years of flawless advance toward PhD marine science, abandoned effort with Peace Corps prize wife freak-out in gradschool penury after her sister died of botched backroom abortion to prevent third unwanted child (we adopted one), second named after me for accepting invitation to ceremonially cut cord with alcohol-sterilized pocket knife on morning of surprise birth, we thought she'd been ill as she'd been claiming, i actually called 911 on own wife in a pelting rain of books and shoes and lamps and kitchen knives as kids screamed in terror, but kept the faith i'd find the solution to our problems someday.
    Invited to Hawaii to repeat snapper success for company growing fish in offshore cages, if we can't make it here, we never will. We didn't. Dislocated knee
    Distant dream remains participation in project farming fish in floating net system held in Pacific's Sargasso sea of trash in the central gyre stability, transforming near-shore pollution impacts of aquaculture into mid-ocean blooming of bluewater biological desert
    Fram is the ideal to which I aspire: the ultimate in strength and independence in a conveniently modest yet indestructible package.
    Now I've found another trap to lose myself in and escape through mastering wooden boat building and repair because I feel it is a path with heart.
    'For me there is only travelling on paths with heart, on any path that may have heart. The only worthwhile challenge it to traverse its full length, and there I travel, looking... looking... breathlessly.'
    From my bible, the Don Juan trilogy by Castaneda, also
    'The conditions of a solitary bird are five:
    the first that it sings very softly,
    the second that it has not a definite color,
    the third that it never suffers for company, not even of its own kind,
    the fourth that it flies to the highest point,
    and the fifth that it keeps its beak always pointed toward the skies.'

    Longer version, as if that's not enough, recent email to dad, yes I'm fishing for a writing career foot-in-the-door...

    a son's letter to a dad
    Gracias muchas y tomales calientes!
    Retrieved the time capsule from post office the other day, fascinating blast from the past! Most pressing question being 'where have you concealed the remaining Tarzan books?' You had piles of them! Are they all 1914 originals? And is Burroughs' hero bizarrely clean-shaven like the mutant Hollywood version? I've forgotten how how many of these jungle tales I read, but they planted the seed of fascinated love for the forests of Africa that will grow forever in my heart of enlightening darkness. Interesting seeing the page numbers written in your developing hand and appreciation of proper pagination patterns... Did your dad buy those for you, or were they gifts from his own childhood? Hmm... hold for my son someday, or E-bay cash... easy answer. You know my bookworminess.
    And the 'Amore' book, purchased July 95 as new spouse and I prepared to set off for our Alabama adventure which opened the presents of your and precious Mamere's first grandson and my surprise bit of aquaculture fame which came through simply pointing at the ocean and saying 'hey, let's try it her way!' Wonder if receiving 'Amore' back then instead of now might have changed the way things turned out? I'd read a similar book years earlier, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Books like these with those huge high mountains of questions can direct thoughts and decision-making along blind alleys. Seems better just to ask certain questions and sort of let them float around like colorful kites on the wind rather than insisting on finding the perfect answer. A big part of anyone's success seems to be knowing what questions to ask...
    My own choices in questions and challenges so far has been the ticket to what most would call a hell of abandonment and failure even in this heavenly garden of Eden in paradise: can I fix a heart I broke? Can I grow fish and manage ecosystems better than almost anyone? Can I win a fight to the death against the Child Support Enforcement Agcncy and the entire divorce-based culture of modern America and change the world? The real ticket to success is ignoring the little bit of hell in every moment in order to not be blinded to seeing the hints of heaven always mixed in. My kids are happier than they used to be, see the ocean of love we are all navigating and know our ships are on the same heading rather than steaming apart while those of me and my Coconut fiancee are on a much anticipated collision course. She's due to arrive Easter Sunday after being left in effect to her own devices by my predicament, she stronger financially than me and my marital misinvestments of 10 years with the wrong person made that way by my wrong decisions.
    If it takes money to make money, does it follow that having nothing but debt allows incurring nothing but same? Looks to me like a safe bet in free-market capitalism. I seem at last to be on the right path though - or should I say I always have been but have simply needed patience - and have joined a group with lofty goals identical to mine: one world government and language and currency, equality of sexes and races, unity of science and religion: elimination of war and environmental destruction toward perpetual stability and progress. I first encountered this movement, the Bahai faith, and signed for membership the same hour in February, a trivial paperwork attestation of what I'd already been thinking and doing for decades, saving humanity from itself through growing fish for fun and friendship and forest management rather than strings of zeroes on financial statements.
    Anyway, work and friendships and success are accumulating now like snowdrifts in a blizzard and I have to keep moving to avoid being buried. The future finally looks bright because I see it that way: the windshield wiper control. In choosing this kind of eyesight, mistakes and regret can be wiped away like clearing smashed bugs off a windshield. Always.
    I had a clean windshield and could see clearly the curvy mountain road in front of me in choosing my graduate research project. I was attracted to it by the steady stream of students both past - who'd stumbled and were swept downstream to other opportunities - and present, unwilling to risk a nearly certain similar fate. 'He chose the SNAPPER PROJECT?? Is he BLIND?' Just the opposite, I quietly replied, maybe YOU are... the bugs of failure don't stick to my windshield.
    The secret to success: deciding to feed the fish exactly what they eat in the wild instead of what the robots of science had calculated the babies SHOULD eat based on the false assumption that if other baby fish eat rotifers (a particular kind of freshwater pond scum) and grow up healthy, then so should baby snapper - who cares if they're saltwater fish? Like saying if nectar-sipping honey bees are happy with clover flowers, then nectar-sipping butterlies will be too! Wrong: the long coiled drinking-straw mouths of butterlies are adapted for larger flowers like honeysuckle, and butterlies will starve no matter how closely their faces are pushed into sweet summer clover picked by kids making sunwrought necklaces for smiling moms.
    If there is anything I have mastered in life, it's perceiving harmony-establishing patterns in enclosed collections of interacting living things - fish, sea monkeys, dinoflagellates, turtles, antfarms, venomous snakes, younger siblings and other assorted vermin... My simply watching and repeating what happens in nature embarrassed more than a few highly trained biologists as I was introduced to local news reporters as a rockstar of aquaculture, an insult to the scientist in me. 'Highly trained biologists' may not be the correct term: some of them nearly lost bowel control as I appeared out of the brush late one afternoon walking toward the office with a buzzing 4-foot rattlesnake in hand: hey, found this crossing the road, where's a good place to release it? Wait... wait a minute, come back! What are you scared of, you're biologists, aren't you??'
    Some co-workers reacted in spiteful rudeness to the so-called major, MAJOR advance of solving a long 10-year riddle of - in their eyes - diabolical difficulty with the baby fish. In my humble view, our following mother nature's example was the equivalent of merely enabling them to finally pick their own noses through simply standing up from sitting on their own hands.
    I recall one particular horse with especially tight blinders finding me at lunch one day in the lab. He seemed to have been irritated that outsiders from another group of biologists had come to work on their problem. I annoy lots of people with my love of canned sardines, which I can eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner any week of the year. I opened a can in a friend's car once on a trip to Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia (where we got lost with a case of beer and literally had to paddle from sunup to sundown to avoid being trapped overnight among lurking alligators chasing fish literally INTO our canoe, 2 fish actually jumped inside - I found two holes in the seat of my pants on dragging myself out of the canoe, worn by the friction of paddling effort) and he actually considered pulling over to let me eat outside. But back in the fish lab, upon my attempting to start a conversation sitting down for lunch one day and asking if the sardine smell annoyed him, he said flatly 'I don't eat bait' apparently to see what response he might lure with that little bait on a hook. I took his bait and spit the hook right back out instead, apologized for the annoyance and politely walked out to eat in breezy peace under a tree and ponder all the snappy responses I might have fired back instead were I not playing politician....
    'You don't eat bait, you say? Well now, you eat bacon don'cha boy? And ham sandwiches on rye with mayo and mustard? Or barbecued ribs hot off a sizzling backyard grill? How 'bout fatback, you corkbrain redneck country bumpkin? Well lemme tell ya why I don't eat pork. You ever watched a grunting sow lick her lips after slurping down a fresh-laid loaf of steaming human corn-flecked butt-cheese and then sidling up to your bare backside hoping for a chance to wipe your cornhole squeaky clean with her hot groping tongue? You go pinch off a loaf in a hog pen, wag your bentover farmboy fartfurnace in the air and see how it changes the flavor of bacon at breakfast afterwards.' (I actually had a frightening midnight experience sort of like this - the pig started following me as I stumbled away in horror but I had my own paper - working with the Peace Corps in a remote rural town where farm animals ran around loose and people put fences around their houses instead, but that's another story...)
    And on the topic of playing politician, a cute definition occurred to me once inspired by this one: a politician is the sort of person who can tell you to go straight to hell in a handbasket, but can do it in such a kind and gentle way that you look forward to the ride! My version: a politician is a person who can flat-out tell you to go EFF yourself, but do it with such eloquence and inspiration that you not only rush right home and outright EFF yourself, you do SUCH a good job you wake up and send yourself flowers the next day!
    The 'Amore' book you sent looks like a fascinating introduction to the sort of high terrain of philosophical thought I encountered in Zen and the Art of Mororcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, the only book I've ever read cover-to-cover and non-stop, except for a lunch break. Early Thanksgiving Day of sophomore college year in the Drosophila (fruit fly) laboratory of the molecular cell biology course, I began the book as assigned in the class syllabus. Had stormed through half the 300-something pages by lunch, enthralled with the mix of adventure travel and pondering the meaning of existence and body-self / brain-mind / father-son / reality-imagination relationships, then returned to finish the book breathlessly exhausted in late evening darkness long overdue for dinner. It changed my thinking and eventually inspired my switch out of biology - so polluted there by money/fame-lusting premedical students, those walking celebrations of hypocrisy in disguising greed and self-importance with affected altruism and goodwill - toward the self-less challenge of math, which had become, in total surprise, my nemesis, a challenge, a worthy opponent.
    And what a bizarre phenomenon THAT was after nothing but A's in math through highschool - I had put off calculus my senior year to focus on advance placement (college-level) biology and english in order to more properly focus later on the math during my first year of undergraduate work intended for the highest summit of science at the revered MIT, perhaps the most difficult school in the world to get into. The resulting perfect score on the biology exam got me into Hopkins, while delaying the math cost me acceptance at MIT - despite a nearly stellar SAT performance - as revealed by the their letter stunning both for its rejection decision based on my calculus miscalculation and for its being opened by Mamere for me. (I was hurt by her decision at first, but realized later it flowed from her enormous and belatedly appreciated concern and love for her kids.)
    My first year at college was a study in time mismanagement. I did manage to avoid falling into the intellectual death-trap of fraternity membership, a trap which nearly cost my best freshman-year friend his sanity and ability to graduate. He was dragged into a cocaine addiction that put him in narcotics rehab for a year to get back on track and finally graduate. My loose association with this degenerate beer-guzzling / dope-smoking behavior gave me the most depressing year of my life, ending with copying other student's homework, cheating on the final exam and still only managing to steal a C- for the year-long calculus course. I remember the silent disgust in the face of the professor as he tossed my graded exam booklet across his desk at me in his office on what should have been a beautiful spring morning. My score out of 100 points was a 27. 'What is your PROBLEM' his scornful gaze seemed to be silently wondering as I leafed through the disaster hoping to find an addition error. I couldn't even bear to sit there long enough to do the addition, so just choked out 'thanks' looking at my hands as I limped out the door, wondering how much worse I'd let things get before deciding to fix them.
    A very big part of the problem was the cheating I felt the school - the system - was doing to me in allowing the class to be dominated by cunning premedical students repeating the course they had already taken the previous senior year of high school just for easy A's on their way to medical school and big fat doctor incomes and vacation homes in tropical climates in Hawaii and foreign countries. It was payback time for me really, as I had already gotten my own easy A, a perfect AP Biology score by not studying calculus when I should have. I had plenty of time, but wanted to leave some to - as they say - smell the roses. And other flowers, and ignite a few to taste their smoke of idleness, just a little... enjoy life rather than drive it at full-throttle screaming ever-faster toward the Brick Wall.
    My decision to hesitate in high school rather than grasp the bull of knowledge by both horns and study AP biology AND calculus had backfired. I was stomped into frustration by fiendish exam problems designed by the professor to keep people who had already mastered the material from getting perfect scores and making him look like a pushover. I felt like a kindergartener trying to read Henry David Thoreau's beautiful mastery of grammatical form and baroque eloquence of rhetoric, a writing style which reminds me of Mozart's intoxicating mixtures of subtle math-like patterns and music. Knowing the beauty of his music inspires me to encourage my kids to learn its patterns...
    BD tells me about the band she's put together with some friends. As long as her music and play reinforces interest in school instead of parasitizing and derailing it into the near-trainwreck I experienced, I'm all for it and will help her go to music school someday if she wants when I can, after I regain ex's cooperation in our remotely coparenting our 2 wonderful jewels of kids. I have lost nearly all influence and guidance along the paths they're following for the time being, but you and Mamere took pretty much the same approach with me, just letting me succeed and screw up as I alone decided. This is the best way it seems - if a baby bird is going to fly, it has to flop around on the hard ground for a while until it learns better. Ex and I did a great job getting our kids to the edge of the nest with full radiant feathers of flight, and now it's time to test the breezes through their adolescence. Luckily, while I flopped and flailed through my own adolescence, I avoided the strikes of the snakes that were lunging at me - as at all of us - with their fangs squirting various kinds of paralyzing venom at me ducking and somersaulting like a spastic ninja.
    Back to math, I sat through a few summer remedial courses - if I can even clearly remember - to get back on track, even earning an A in calculus III. And then I took flight - decided to dump Hopkins premedical biology entirely with only one course remaining to meet degree requirements: developmental bio with stories of how developing humans have gills like fish before birth and have blood salty like the ocean. This premed training was not at all the biology I loved as a kid - the plants and animals and ponds and meadows and coral reefs and ecosystems of zoology and botany and limnology and oceanography, courses not even OFFERED at Hopkins - but was instead the background for neurosurgeons and cardiologists and cancer researchers who seemed interested not so much in pure intellectual challenge and discovery as they were in Nobel prize fame and in lining up in the money stream generated by people giving up their last dollars to hospitals in desperate attempts to cling at any cost to our temporary earthly existences, to jump over the Brick Wall. I bulldozed through differential equations both ordinary and partial, functions of complex variables, and the theoretical mechanics of planetary motions around stars and of galaxies around black holes toward graduating with honors...
    And now further back to Pirsig's ZAMM book - the philosophical mazes of introspection and unanswerable questions of meaning and beauty had reduced the author to sitting motionless on a hotel bedroom floor urinating on himself as cigarettes blistered his fingers burning down through their deadened unresponsiveness to a brain grid-locked by a mindtrap of existential circularity. Electroshock therapy to the brain hit the required reset button, but generated - bizarrely - a new personality existing on top of the old one previously known to his son and former acquaintances. The two conflicting mental software programs (personalities) slowly battled each other for control of the hardware (body and voice), and during a cross-country motorcyele trip with his son - frightened by the former personality reappearing in short phantom-like spells, its presence manifested in an altered pattern of speech and voice reminiscent of drunkenness - the initially ghost-like former self returned and vanquished the overlaid invading foreigner and everything turned out fine. They just knew it, or so it seemed...
    And then the son was murdered a few years later by thieving drug addicts hunting for cash while he crossed the street one night near a Zen Buddhist house of worship in California somewhere. Spellbinding victory turned into unspeakably sickening tragedy. Anyway, my own answer to all of life's unanswerable questions pondered by inquiring minds bounding like babbling goats among the craggy wind-whipped summits of so-called high thought is this: Truth Is. Find it - in books and challenge and unselfishness - learn it, know it, live it. Truth came to me this winter past in a lightning-bolt miracle of perceptive insight into how to answer some questions I've been struggling with since a discussion of particle physics in college: how can an electron exist and occupy no space?
    While plotting to grow prawns (or freshwater shrimp) with a spiritual friend in a gorgeous valley of pure pacific breezes and flowers screaming with purple and pink and patience, the seed of answering this question suddenly appeared and slammed one hand down on my knee as forehead slammed down on other open hand and I gasped - nearly shouting - HOE LEE SHHHIT! The electron question may have something to do with whether the universe will expand forever or contract back into the point out of which it appears to have exploded in what is called the Big Bang, and may throw some light on the mystery of dark matter. I need to learn some more math to convince myself there's anything meaningful in the ideas, study the equations of James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism (or light, a course I never took). Just after the idea thunderbolted me I quickly straightened up and looked out the window to be sure no one had heard me and was rushing over to see if I was hurt. 'Sorry! Sorry, just suprised myself' I was going to say in humorous embarrassment. No one heard and I scribbled a few math symbols to set a hook in the idea swimming around in an ocean of thought. Later that day, I was reminded of your ability, my ability, to focus attention so tightly that people sitting next to us calling our names are not even heard from being lost in the depths of the 'zone' of concentration. 'Kevin, what are your dinner ideas...' No reply from five feet away, chin gripped in hand... 'ahem, Kevin? KEVIN?' Then disturbed walking away... 'Oh! ummm... What? HEY what was that - sorry! Dinner?...'
    More writing to do... thanks for setting all this off with you and Mamere keeping The Promise! And for flying me back from the forests of shadow I nearly lost myself in with my hopes of stitching up a heart I broke in NOT keeping promises felt but not penned. No buts, excuses, none needed, just turn the windshield wipers on. Saving the planet from nuclear war may turn out to be a much more realistic challenge than mending a broken heart...
    Peace and Health! Yes We Can wipe the bugs off the windshield of human destiny, no matter how blotted with wind-dried bug guts of terror-fanatics...
     
  10. PAR
    Joined: Nov 2003
    Posts: 19,126
    Likes: 498, Points: 93, Legacy Rep: 3967
    Location: Eustis, FL

    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    Again, just to get it in "shape", meaning restoring her health, fixing structural issues, re-rigging, a set of sails, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, etc. You will need considerable expertise and a buckets full of cash. The initial stages of a project like this are the most important, you have to curb deterioration, begin the process of "re-shaping" her very likely hogged and sagging hull, of course after she's squared away, shored up and solidly braced on the hard.

    You're lengthy post doesn't address any of these issues nor the experience to do so. I can't tell you how difficult it is to jack a tired hull back into shape without breaking it. Getting it on the hard should be simple enough to figure out. After a survey and proper bracing or shoring, this should be your first task. You'll need several thousand dollars for this, depending on distance and difficulty of transport, the amount of shoring and bracing necessary and of course how much you have to farm out and repair area fees/rent.
     
  11. bistros

    bistros Previous Member

    Methinks your bucket of ice cold reality gently tossed with care was not even noticed while he was writing his soliloquy. Best toss a five in the hat and move on.

    --
    Bill
     
  12. kevinbootes
    Joined: Apr 2009
    Posts: 10
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: hawaii

    kevinbootes Junior Member

    will gladly pay you tuesday...

    for thumbnail plans today. Or did you post them yesterday? very helpful, very appreciated.

    thanks for interest in my interest in learning/building. A five would be appreciated, that would make 55 dollars my temporary net worth after 5 hours digging ditches for irrigation lines on aquafarm yesterday. master's degree paying off handsomely. digging out of mess will take a few more years.

    Again, pardon length of last post, rushed cutting and pasting, some very very bored readers apparently. No more such flotsam beyond explaining my decisions; i'm still dead in the water, but back at surface.

    About restoration background... Beyond experience on Sunfish and Lazers at Port Aransas TX, my yacht work is limited to Cal 20 purchased for $900 last year for move out of former family minivan, forced temporary home after following ex and new money sack to Oahu to stay close to kids. No apt downpayment. Snapped shroud tang first trip out, lucky to keep mast up. Paddled back in, disassembled all rigging and mast fittings, repaired and replaced, modifying mast top with aluminum disk for mounting anchor light, vhf antenna and wind instrumentation. wires down through mast, held tight with bits of foam ever 2 feet. Adapting daysailer to offshore. Had plans of sailing away to fiancee met in Kona Big Island during her 2 years studying/service related to her church activities in Abidjan Ivory Coast. She talked sense into me, i moved to molokai to manage shrimp farm hatchery, owner promised company partnership for hatchery plans/construction. All the pain is over I thought, a miracle, i can finally earn my keep and pay everyone off through my own hard work and not watch someone else get rich. he waited for plans, i waited for dotted line, 3 weeks later he invited me to explore other opportunities. can't win for losing. nice vacation though, decided to stay and rebuild - close to kids, safely distant from ex. Anyway, stuck here, air travel foreign and domestic prevented by loss of passport and now drivers license to Child Support enforcement friends. Trying to keep up, lost job after 6 months as union carpenter 80K annually last year because my foreman embarrassed himself telling architect that his ceilings were 2 inches too low. I had explained in detail that the cabinets I was installing were 2 inches too high, what do we do boss?, but the mental midget disagreed, got called out. Nothing said, but layoff notice came following week - going too fast trying to earn a spot, i installed a big one and forgot electrical box cut-outs, went back and cut out where needed based on stud layout on plans, 'wasted 15 minutes', this goof relayed up the ladder as proof i was a drag on the team.
    So stepped the mast solo, shut a lot of new-guy criticism down, a few test hours in the breezes, then removed worm ravaged rudder, cut new from fir 2x12, shaped w/ skilsaw kerfs and handheld power planer. she awaits refinishng and installation upon my return... if it happens
    have been told VANDA keel is lead not iron - will drill small test hole and know; this may change title-holding attractiveness of lift/haul to contractor. bank loan sounds better, my credit rating though has got to be below zero by now. trench next to obscuring hedge beachfront residence will have to do until income sufficient for proper approach. city land use authorities have blessed project as long as work-in-progress and not permanant yard ornament. I'm just hoping to provide an alternative to creating a new dive site at this point.
    Qustion: was engine included in original design? a chevy diesel installed currently, service manual there. Would switch to cutter rig be im/possible? Gloriana (herreshoff, yes?) captured my design heart years ago... gorgeous flowerbright huge billowing sails heading with wind in a dreamy watercolor big sailing book image...
     
  13. kevinbootes
    Joined: Apr 2009
    Posts: 10
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: hawaii

    kevinbootes Junior Member

    pruners needed

    yikes...
    my first thread experience, i watched a crab apple tree as a boy fill its branches with so many sour little apples one fine spring they all broke and the tree died.

    how to prune a thread... a life... a world
     
  14. kevinbootes
    Joined: Apr 2009
    Posts: 10
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: hawaii

    kevinbootes Junior Member

    vanda photos

    Comatose patient in all her gory lost glory...

    Abused by both nature (storm-tossed onto rocks) and neglect (personal dump of previous owner), bewarted hag will be hauled out to spend some time as a yard ornament. Small fortune invested 20 years ago(?) in thickly glassing broken hull, not yet sure of extent of structural damage/ adequacy of repair. Assumed strength of engine and reinforced hull drives a hopeful commitment to project. Future funds may someday allow the proper PAR restoration of which I dream, initial focus obviously on assessing salvageable components, extermination of termites, rainproofing.

    Tonnage permitting, consideration being given to using forklift for 1/2 mile transport to dead-end streetside worksite under mango tree. 2 slings carred by 2 forks will carry vessel at 90 degrees to direction of travel after demasting, but route narrows to 30' width. Sawing off proboscis leaves 42' of deck, can forks swivel with load to angle her through the bottlenecks... if this scheme unworkable, craning onto cradle on excavator trailer will have to do. Value of keel (lead or iron?) and engine will fund equipment use as collateral while new owner works off debt.

    Thumbnail plans an approximate match, VANDA head is just fwd of engine, not amidships. And wooden not metal floors, single not dual masts.

    Previous owner - groping someone else's boat in photo held by wanna-be new owner - still owes slip fees, lots of folks wondering about his disappearance...

    Thanks to all with interest in advising this mess, if the previous rants haven't snapped the thread... start a new one perhaps best. Pardon all the attitude / personal garbage, nothing else is left save fiancee and new faith in Truth... and kids' knowing dad knows where he's going, with them aqain some sunny day
     

    Attached Files:


  15. Boston

    Boston Previous Member

    although I can appreciate Par's suggestion you approach it like a business venture

    I would approach it from a view point of Zen
    its not just the money
    its the satisfaction

    set an attainable goal ( as defined in the business model ) and go for it
    have a dam good time

    I also can stair at my hands an congratulate myself for owning all the appropriate digits after all these years

    always a good sign

    if you got a good handle on a mill then the woods cheep
    I got one in Missouri that will cut you all the white oak you want cheep
    why screw around with remodeling when we both know that building from a plan is faster
    specially when the remodel is as extensive as that one obviously is
    contact the guy who designed it, you seem to have his name right there
    and ask him to help you out a little
    you have all the hardware and rigging and your going to loose the fiberglass anyway
    might at well start fresh with some molds and a few sticks of wood
    sounds like you just want a project anyway so why not

    should keep you busy for a while
    might even keep you out of trouble

    cheers
    B
     
Forum posts represent the experience, opinion, and view of individual users. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post.
When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. Your circumstances or experience may be different.