Slocum`s Spray

Bataan,
As you know there is a strong woodenboat following despite what some of the people on this board think of
traditional designs. So while not a best seller a book would generate some interest I would think.

 

BERTIE could easily carry 10 ton cargoes. Here in the Puget Sound area there are a few fanatics who carry garden produce from the San Juan Islands to the Seattle area under sail, but on a sort of volunteer basis, not profit making. Thank you for your very strong support for the book idea and I'll keep it on the burner.
Today, the mast is out and laying on horses in the boat yard, the upper eye ends have been re-served and re-seized, the lower ends served about a fathom higher than before, new ratlines all installed and the wire slushed with a mix of stockholm tar, black paint and Japan dryer, which makes a coating that eventually dries, but stays flexible for a long time. I have to cut the mast step mortise some to change the rake of the mast from slight aft rake to a slight forward rake, make a new mast coat, do some painting etc. It never ends.
If you are in the Pacific North West, drop me a line and we'll find some jobs for you and take you for a sail.
best wishes back at ya

 

Waterwitch, thanks for the encouragement and I will definitely start thinking about it.

 

Bataan - just seen some spelling clangers in that earlier post. but I think you guessed the corrections - 'make a living carrying cargoes' is what it should have said.

Thanks for the offer, I will certainly come and learn some wisdom on maintenance and sail if I can get to the Pacific NW - currently in India.

What would you build as a cargo sailing vessel for these times? Surely sailing cargo must come back with fuel just getting more and more costly?

Did you get to sail on China Cloud and what did you think of her? How did she sail?

As to the folk who laugh at Bertie's shape and gear all I can say is it is their sad loss not to see the beauty, wisdom, evolution, worth and wonder of it all.

I reckon if you advertised in UK for sailing charters you would find a enough people who would love to sail on a real Spray type boat to turn an income. I think you could get the sort of people who would be facinated to learn about the traditional methods and handling the closest thing to Spray they will ever get.

Want to come to India and build another Spray!? Probably have to be quite rough materials and short plank lengths... they are still building timber trawlers here but you might be appalled at quality of much of it.

 

A cargo sailing vessel for these times? The route and trade design the vessel for you. In general, a brig or brigantine for 80 feet or less, bark or barkentine above that. Flat floored and long bilged so it'll sail without ballast when necessary. Steel hull, shallow draft with power and tankage for hull speed and a range of 1000 miles. In UK in the 1890s a bunch of old coaster skippers got together and designed just that and the result of their consultations was called RESULT and is still afloat I believe. She was a 3 masted topsail schooner as launched.

 

BATAAN, Are there plans for a steel spray, like bertie. Not a BR one? Has anyone built one? What I glean from your experience is that the freeboard and accomodation should be kept low and the rig should be large and powerful. But the underwater profile should be right - hence the question. Do you think there would be much to be gained from a centreboard (like Irvin Johnson had in Yankee - he had two of course, in tandem)?

Saw earlier in the posts that you said you had to be careful when tacking not to hitch up the staysl sheet on the fwd end of the mainsl battens. Is that going to get worse with canting the mast slightly fwd, or is the difference low down too small to make much difference? And are you canting fwd the mast to help keep out the main in light airs?

A bit about me and my boat: For last 20 years I have had a Maurice Griffiths Tidewater Cutter (30' LOD) Bermudan cutter rigged. Self tacking staysl on a boom and roller jib on short bowsprit. Timber bilge keels and long trad main keel. She was built in a fishing boat building yard in Scotland, sawn oak frames 2.25x2.5" and mahog planking 1.25" fastenings and fittings are all GI. She is fairly stiff having quite firm bilges and I sail her more as a little ship than a yacht! Have spent too much of that time around India building plywood surf crossing canoes and, in villages, ecological toilets for little or no return. But the boat is a refuge from the heat and noise and press of humanity. Most of the time it has been in the Scottish Hebrides and S and SW Ireland.

 

Also, in India, years ago built a wharram tiki 21. Still have it but sails were stolen so have made it a 'schooner' (!) junk rig, inspired by the N Vietnam smuggling boats of years ago and that become also the rig of the Halong Bay fishermen (probably they did both!). Retained the original hollow pine main mast and used a bamboo mast stepped in a strop on the fwd xbeam for the foremast, canted well forward. It is quite fast other than to windward. But I am somehow really not happy with a cat. The original logic of building it was the surf-ridden coast. But most of the time the surf is too serious! Pictures of Spray, Bertie, Islander, Moonraker, Wylos, make me happy, the real thing even more so! But anyway I might be in trouble here for going off topic?

 

MasalaChai- I think you may be mistaken in the idea that either of Johnson's two YANKEEs had centerboards. The first was a wooden pilot schooner and the second a steel one. These pretty deep and quite weatherly vessels had no need for shallow draft or centerboards and I have never seen a reference to a c/b European pilot schooner.
In the 70s and 80s I worked a good deal on the restoration of the 1883 Elbe pilot boat WANDERBIRD so I know a little about the type. Captain Johnson was aboard as skipper for a sail one day and a friend snapped a pic of me talking to him. His books never mention a centerboard.
SPRAY or BERTIE could be steel, but much easier to build as multi-chine rather than molded plates. She has a voluptuous shape and was the hardest planking job I ever did, and I have planked some big craft.
Of course SPRAY was originally a centerboarder with 14" less freeboard than Slocum's re-build, and an oysterman, where the board is necessary for shallow water. I would not want a c/b in my boat because the payoff is not worth the price.
Mast is getting a slight forward rake for several reasons.
First is to compensate CE for the 2' I cut off bowsprit to reduce my moorage. This has taken away a little from her former dead-certain downwind self steering and now she is harder to get to behave. The rake change should get the CE a bit forward where it was previously, I hope.
The other is to make the sail hang outboard in light airs and make easier jibing because the sail has to go 'uphill'.
Sounds like you have a lovely boat and enjoy it! Kudos to you and your life in India helping people!
Here's a shot of BERTIE and HERMANAS Y HERMANOS, the lapstrake SPRAY copy built next to my boat. Also another of HYH years later under new ownership and with a new longer house and pilot house.

 

What is the payoff of centerboard and is your boat freeboard more or less than original?

 

Slocum's boat, as re-built, and BERTIE are the same in freeboard but I raised the aft deck an inch or so for slightly more sheer. Centerboard gave Slocum's original boat better ability to haul an oyster dredge to windward. The Captain did not include it in his rebuild as he knew the weaknesses off set the slight gain in windward performance.

 

More on the c/b. I've been over this in previous posts but I got my underwater profile from Pete Culler's 1929 SPRAY 'replica', that had some significant differences from the original. I measured that boat on the ways for repair (photo) before I started building my boat and found it had a lot of outside keel and drew 5' 6" versus the original SPRAY which was 4' 2" or something like that. I wrote Culler a letter and he said that Victor Slocum and he had talked at length about the original, which Victor had sailed on many times, and it's weaknesses. They added extra outside wooden keel area and increased the drag, making it deeper aft proportionately, hoping to increase windward ability. Pete said he had no idea if his boat was better to windward than the original or not, as they never sailed against each other, but that his boat was about like any coaster and figuring in leeway and heave of the sea made good 60 degrees from the true wind, like most cargo schooners and sloops. When laying down BERTIE's lines I copied Pete's and Victor's idea of drag, but without as much outside keel, so my boat draws 5'. Pete's boat was 'skeg-built' with a large center line prop aperture, while mine is 'planked down', like the lines show except for my changes to the rudder arrangement, with no aperture and an offset controllable pitch prop. This really helps light air response in such a heavy boat. A centerboard would possibly give a better windward performance but is not necessary because the lateral area has been added as keel as a change to the original SPRAY.

 

In around 1958 the Johnson's retired from the sail training business and had a final steel Yankee designed by S&S and built of steel in Holland. She carries two centerboards of 1" steel plate. They cruised her mostly through Europe for 17 years, and made a historic voyage up the Nile, all documented in National Geographic.

 

Forgot all about the ketch but now I remember those great NG articles of going up the Nile and Rhine! I did not know it had c/bs. Thanks Tad.

 

Thanks Tad and Bataan. That has given me peace of mind! I was sure there was such a thing and yet I also respect Bataan's experience and knowledge enormously. Had a very baffling night trying to remember where on earth my memory of such a vessel came from if not from Irving! Phew!
Are there any reports about those centreboards and if they were more a pain than benefit? (of course they allowed them up the Nile and Rhine, but I mean in sailing to windward and in maintenance and in living with them)
And do either of you know of any very well sailing steel Sprays, not houseboat types?

Bataan I can see that a cb can be a pain: vibration and knocking noises, structural weakening, jamming, maintenance, but if it really gave a significant improvement in windward ability might be worth the pain?) Or should one accept that a working boat of Spray's sort of load carrying hull form is simply going to get a 60 degree best what ever and live with that?

Great that you have that picture of your time with IJ. (Like I said, a book, a book! in fact i wonder that you couldnt write several.)

Nice to see HYH, but they really spoilt her with all that superstructure, to my eye at least.

Do you ever wish you had put a centreline shaft and prop on Bertie or do you feel that she is really much better with pure sailing rudder and keel she has even if there are the occassional anxious anomalies manouevring under power!?

 

Oyster boats, like the original SPRAY, had centerboards to give shallow draft on oyster beds and to give more power in pulling a dredge over the bottom. A c/b in a cruising boat, unless very well engineered as I am sure the S&S crew did with the ketch YANKEE, can cause more problems than it solves. Beating hard to windward for long periods is avoided in normal cruising due to discomfort usually. Thinking and planning and patience usually substitute.
I never miss a centerline prop and find BERTIE