Slocum`s Spray

Bataan, here is an oldtimer from N.Z. I think it has stuck.

 

Bataan, you said that berties frames had been tapered from shear to the keel and i read in old ship building books of the same practice. how or what is the layout for making the taper so ceiling runs smooth frame to frame. is it a percentage of taper to length of frame or water line marks. i thank you for the photos and commentary. jnjwilson

 

BERTIE's frames are sawn from two layers of 3" stock, making them 6" in siding. The moulding is 4" at sheer, 6" at turn of bilge, and 8" at the keel. When cutting out the futtocks on the shipsaw the bevel is the same inside and out, so all fits pretty well.
She is "Essex built" with "long and short floors" instead of bridge floors bolted to frames as is usual on bent-frame boats. This is how the Gloucester schooners were built in Essex, Mass. and is wonderful for quick easy construction combined with strength. You can see this in the first photo of the frame futtocks crossing the keel. Note no back rabbet, just a bevel on top edge of keel to take garboard. A keelson goes over all this and is drifted through with clench rings.
Some fairing with an adze was required to the frames in fitting the ceiling, which was the first thing into the boat. D.J. Arques, my master and a canny old tug and barge builder, told me to put the ceiling in first, totally opposite what so many books say. But by doing so you gain time and efficiency in several ways:
You can use C-clamps (G-cramps for the pommys) to pull the ceiling planks into place, as no planking has been yet fitted.
No deck structure is in the way so ceiling planking literally flies into the boat.
It's easy to set up the steam box hanging over the stem so you can grab a hot plank and stomp it into place. In photo the "grub" or shelf pieces are steaming along with a chunk of sheer clamp. With ceiling in first you can walk around while fitting clamp, shelf, and then the whole deck frame. So f*****g easy. Hull planks go on last and are shored into place, as is usual in repair work, few c-clamps needed really.
All the 1" PO cedar ceiling planks had a caulking seam planed on and the seams were caulked with a thread of cotton, painted, then payed flush with Bondo (cheapest, does the job very well etc).
This strengthens the vessel wonderfully, keeps dirt out of the bilge, and makes it easy to fit furniture, which on this boat is all 3/4" pine boards and SS square drive finish screws. A large air strake is left top and bottom for ventilation.
.

 

More advantages to putting the ceiling in first:
It makes the structure a "whole" thing, a strong, connected boat, so when you start shoving heavy planking on with jacks and shores, nothing moves.
The ribbands, rudimentary when setting up frames, can be dispensed with, as the ceiling fairs the framework.

 

More fotoz....
First is ceiling and clamp going in. So easy with C-clamps. You can see the little fairing required.
Your question hinted at separately lofting the interior of the frames, but this is not done. Just duplicating the bevel on both sides of the futtock is sufficient.
Second photo shows stern at same time.
Third is later, with topside planks on (bottom was left off) and deck planking starting to go on. Pattern for port fwd covering board in progress it seems.

 

Great stuff , thanks so much .Looking at the last photo, what is the main deck beam sizes in Bertie. thanks again jnjwilson

 

Beams were sawn from clear Douglas fir 4x18s, giving two beams with 6" crown in 14' beam. This is more than usual but seems to have worked out well as all water quickly leaves the deck. So finished beam size is 4"x6". It would have been better to have sawn a 4" deep beam from 6" timber as is usual in Skipjacks and other Chesapeake sailing craft. This would give the same beam section but 2" more headroom inside.
This is 1977 and the first photo is shown fitting the 2 1/2" PO cedar covering boards. Port being fitted and starboard fastened down. All are butted on beam ends and have a horizontal stopwater driven through the joint, no scarfs. 34 years on and they show no degradation at all.
Second shows a half-beam to carlin joint. Note the taper at bottom. This makes a solid fit and prevents splitting, while keeping the pocket cut as small as possible.
Third pic is laying the deck alongside the aft house. Deck is straight laid, so needs to be nibbed into cabin sill piece. Covering board outboard shows well. Note the stanchion holes and also fact that all deck is laid on tarpaper to keep deck leaks from soaking into frame heads and deck beams causing rot.
Last one shows BERTIE and SPRAY-replica JOSHUA comparing sterns. You can see BERTIE's outboard rudder and Danish coaster setup. It's not obvious in the pic but JOSHUA's transom rakes quite a bit more steeply than ours.

 

More building stuff showing deck details and our old shipsaw at the Gate 3 Boat Co-Op, and BERTIE at anchor in the Salish Sea a couple years ago.

 

I just realised Bertie was the spray refered to in one of the articles in the Wooden Boat book published by Wooden boat mag. back in the 70s. I recognized Bertie with no clothes on and the ships saw.I bought the book because of the story of the spray.I have been a fan for many years.I have restored antique horse drawn carriages for 20 years and i appreciate old world craftmanship the beauty of wooden boats and old traditional boat building.It is good to here Bertie has done well all these years thanks again jnjwilson

 

Wow, horse drawn carriages are quite sophisticated wooden structures with unique stresses that are very hard to overcome. Congratulations on a rare and unique skill I envy! Nothing like shrinking a red-hot steel "tire" on your loose and questionable pile of felloes and spokes, driving it on with smoking oak and fire, pouring the water on and watching it shrink and pop the correct dish into the wheel, tightening it into an immensely strong thing, enabling it to take the "outside, downhill wheel" stresses that would collapse it if built otherwise, and making something that will last many years of hard use.
I used to work at Mystic Seaport Maritime Museum and would hang around the fabulous (!!!!) and competently-staffed blacksmith shop when anything interesting was going on. Oh, those were the days.
Mystic rigging shop, winter 1972-73. I'm the questionable character on the left, Captain Bob Boulware in the middle and Frank Young, boss rigger on the right. We're making new lower shrouds for the CHARLES W MORGAN whaling ship, as seen by the pile of stuff in foreground. Stretched across middle of frame is a shroud set up to serve with the "flying mallet", where you bounce the wire and the mallet flies around and around at dizzying speed until the marline breaks and the loaded mallet hits a window. Thus the chicken wire covering the glass in this ancient building. This was a great old shop and you can see various antique tools in constant use there yet today.
Preserving old useful skills is a wonderful, precious, deeply moral thing and I salute you for doing so.
Second pic is GOVERNOR M.B.M., a 1901 oyster sloop I re-rigged as a schooner after my time at Mystic. It worked out well and cost very very little. Due to a falling out with my partner in this boat (Psycho!!) I decided to build BERTIE and did. Thank you for following our story.

 

Here's a photo of JOSHUA, a SPRAY copy in the Pacific NW. The other is the original rig of SPRAY.

 

It looks to me that the Igradsil was ketch rigged, is that correct?If it was, had any thing been said about the self steering qualities, that the original had,as to how it would compare to a ketch rig.Even slocum didnt like the large main sail,Or i get that impression since he split the rig from sloop to yawl. Bataan, you are the only one that i have ever had the chance to talk to, who has experiance in building and sailing a spray type, so your experiance is valuable to those of us who admire the spray and the story behind the boat.As Slocum says not everthing is learned in books .Another thought, has there ever been a schooner rigged spray? Thanks jnjwilson

 

I forgot to ask another question, about how long did it take to build Bertie. Thanks again jnjwilson

 

The FOAM design is a slenderized SPRAY and a bunch were built with different rigs, schooner among them. I came across one in Mexico that was gaff schooner with an aluminum hull. IGDRASIL is ketch rigged and was said to self-steer well. SPRAY was the usual east US coast jib and staysail sloop, much like a cutter but with the mast farther forward. When JS left on his voyage, still sloop rigged, he spoke to a reporter about rigging it Chinese with a mizzen, so the idea was there from the first.
BERTIE self steers wicked good, and I've sailed a wide range of square rig, marconi, gaff rigged and a few Chinese lug boats and ships. I hate steering, bloody waste of time, so love it when I can drop the mizzen (throwing the CE fwd), put a reef in the main (put CE further fwd) and sheet the jib in pretty tight on its 16 foot outboard bowsprit. This makes a little lee helm, the short tiller is tied off and fiddled with until balance is found, then off she goes, dead downwind if you wish, but a point off the quarter is better, for days at a time and never jibes. Damndest thing I ever saw. The SPRAY "perfect balance" seems to have carried over into the modified BERTIE, and the yawl maybe has something to do with it, as one can really have control over the CE and thus the steering.
BERTIE's keel was laid beginning of 76 launched 84, so 8 years but there was a couple of wives and some kids in there too, so she really took 3 years of building, single-handed almost all the time. Today easily done in a year and a half, or much faster with a crew.

 

Some more BERTIE photos. Folks seem to like seeing her, so here you go. First is the outboard rudder, then you can see the mizzen boom jaws, then the watersail we set in light air, then the midships deck with the end of the workbench, a covered 50 gallon plastic fuel tank and an igloo cooler, next is the stern deck and you can see the tiller with its clam cleat and finally the bumpkin and skiff. Notice the mizzen bumpkin, single and off center. As long as the sheet block is on the longitudinal centerline, that's what matters.