Slocum`s Spray

A couple of building photos. In the first the bulwarks are getting close to being planked and the stern log is finished. All those stanchions are between frames and fastened with only one accessible bolt so can be changed and are small enough to break off flush without damaging anything else in a collision, which they did once. The bitt aft is a 6" steel pipe with a top on a long screw so it can be opened as a ventilator, there's a twin to port.
Second photo and the cursed planking is finally finished. This boat was designed for 1 1/2" yellow pine planking, a supple easily-steamed material that bends well. I tried to plank it with 1 3/4" PO cedar, which doesn't steam as well and is brittle sometimes. The reason for the extra 1/4" was to get that much more epoxied-in plug over the fasteners. Many years on and it has proven out well as I have no rust bleeds or loose plugs.
In the last one we're launching her in 1984. The guy in foreground looking at camera is Bruce Northrup, master shipwright and builder of many of Pete Culler's designs including the schooner LIZARD KING and Chebacco boat DOGBODY and his own radical schooner design REUBEN DECLOUX. He was a tremendous help in keeping me on track when lofting, patterning and setting up the backbone.
Hope you enjoy this stuff.

 

Troy, that was bulwarks, not bulkheads. I made this structure lighter than usual and a little different design by using edge-fastened strip planking for the skin of it along with a stout scarfed caprail mortised down over the upper end of the bulwark stanchions and the top of the skinning.
When Mr. Human Muffin drove a Bristol 27 into our side at full throttle (we were tied to the pier at the time so I suppose we had right of way) his raked fiberglass stem hit just below the caprail, bursting it, then rode up high like a rearing horse, breaking 5 of the stanchions (sometimes called bulwark pins) and folding the strip planked skin over about 80 degrees. As the boat slid back, our caprail pinched together, putting a hole in his bow below the waterline. He tried to motor away but I grabbed his forestay and we had a little talk. The insurance paid $3000 and I fixed it all in 3 days. No damage to the hull other than a scuff mark on the covering board. We were lucky.

 

BERTIE was lofted from these lines, but with these changes.
First, I did not subtract plank thickness, so these lines represent BERTIE's frame surface and I added 1 3/4" plank to that which added beam and displacement and stability. Next, dispensed with the chicken beak clipper bow, added about 3" to draft forward and added about 6" aft by making a deeper keel with 2" oak shoe. No outside ballast.
Where LWL meets transom, stretched this point aft until top of transom to heel of rudder was a straight line. This gave longer LWL so straightened aft buttocks about an inch to compensate. Outside post supports rudder, whose main area is in the same place as the original SPRAY's upright, in a wooden trunk, rudder, so she steers the same I guess, just more rake so more braking action maybe in theory. Boat does all that Slocum said so I guess it works.

 

Maybe some electrical genius out there can look at these photos of damage to BERTIE's prop shaft tip where it sticks out of the SABB controllable pitch prop and give me wisdom. At the time, I had hooked up a new automatic battery charger for a year and this appeared. After I decided to only plug the charger in when needed the problem stopped. But everything in my AC and DC systems checks out and follows usual procedures. It was obviously stray current corrosion but I don't know how it happened.
Also here's BERTIE beside JOSHUA, a near copy of SPRAY so you can note differences and BERTIE on the beach for a bottom job. Kid in photo is now 24.

 

The original SPRAY in her new sails in Australia, after arriving with a patched tarpaulin mainsail after her adventures in the Straits of Magellan which destroyed the original main.

 

Two SPRAYs, sort of, both with Chinese main.

 

A lapstrake Spray in Silva Bay a few years back, name might be Northern Spray ....?

 

SPRAY's world.
So many ask why is SPRAY so fat and heavy and ancient looking and why would one desire such an antique? Here are a few pics of typical small merchant vessels at work 1850-1880. A Polacca Brigantine loading raw limestone on an exposed beach, a smack winching out coal, again on an exposed beach, and an east coast US/CANADA small local schooner with a load of passengers. These are 'industrial machinery', not toys like our modern sailboats. No modern sailing vessel carries a cargo apart from passengers except in very rare cases. No modern vessel would do the jobs seen in the first two photos except a landing craft like an LCM with screaming diesels and a large fuel bill.
This is the mariner's world SPRAY and J. Slocum came from and the design reflects it. Though she was a centerboard oyster sloop before, after the rebuild she was a typical small trading sloop with greater hull depth and no centerboard, just like thousands of small sloops, ketches and schooners of similar shape world wide. And like them, she is honest, protective, matronly and utterly dependable with few bad habits.

 

Ats'a da one! Built as HERMANOS Y HERMANOS next to BERTIE. Had a lovely original house but the second owner was a right angle freak and did a lot of changes I did not care for. Made a trip to central America, was used quite awhile in trolling commercially for Salmon and Albacore. I delivered her for and with (never again) second owner SF bay to Bremerton WA and got thrashed by the weather repeatedly. Boat never leaked or gave any trouble, crew did though.

 

In case anyone's interested here's some sailing footage on BERTIE.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw6mdrcDL1o

 

Bataan, excellent video. Thank you for so generously sharing your photos (and video) in your contributions to this thread.

Rapt88

 

Parts two and three to follow.

 

Part two of the BC trip to find Allen Farrell and CHINA CLOUD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFb3AfxxgO0

 

Part three
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIBDOUSd-Ag

 

Part three of the video has a lot of BERTIE surfing in moderately snarky conditions with many spilling breakers while Heidi lounges in the hatch and no one at the helm.