Drake -- 40' LOD Munroe-influenced ketch

[moTthediesel]

This is a great thread that I had missed, so glad that it was revived!

Was the picture below taken in Georgian Bay? Nothing says Canadian Shield country like the combination of precambrian granite gneiss and Pinus Strobus! I've never been to Georgian Bay, but that picture could have been taken anywhere in the Ontario "Cottage Country" lakes. It could even be here at my home in the Thousand Islands area of the St. Lawrence, an offshoot of the Shield known as the "Frontenac Axis".

Your "Drake" reminds me much of a similar shoal draft centerboard ketch that slowly fell to ruin on the hard in a marina in my home town of Alexandria Bay, NY. As a young man I used to love to look at the "Lotus" sadly fading away in a back corner of the lot. I would have loved to save her, but it was far beyond my capabilities at the time. I'm so glad that "Drake" has been lucky enough to find such a good caretaker in you...

Tom

[Dave Hadfield]

Yes, that most certainly is in Georgian Bay. The location is an inlet in Shawanaga, but I don't recall which one. What I do remember is that there was a Tom Thompson-style view every which way you looked....

Thanks for you kind comment.

Regarding the tabernacle, here it is,







It is very well made, solidly welded out of 3/8 steel, then hot-dipped galvanized. The quality of the steel and the galvanizing must have been top-notch, because it has sat on deck since 1972, and there is no rust on it. The paint is only a minor protection I suspect. (The mizzenmast tabernacle is very similar.)

For reference, it stands about 30" tall. It is mounted via the bolt-holes on the deck and the cabin roof. Under the deck there is a steel compression post leading to the keelson.

The mast is held in place by the two large through-bolts. The weight is held mostly by the upper one -- if you pull the lower one, then you can pivot (lower) the mast to go under a bridge. Sweet! (To do this you undo the forward shrouds, then the forestay, and extend the forestay by adding a line to it and then running it through a block on the end of the bowsprit and back to the anchor windlass. Thus when you're past the bridge, the windlass pulls your mast back up. And since there's a triatic stay up above, the mizzenmast too.)

Dave

[dredbob]

...Regarding the tabernacle, here it is...

Thanks, Dave.

How is the deck structure beefed up in way of the tabernacle base? I assume there's a pretty thick pad of some sort and a bulkhead adjacent to it. And knees and braces, etc.

Bob

[Dave Hadfield]

Bob, I'll take a photo of the cleaned-up foredeck as soon as I can, showing the support for the tabernacle.

Got the chainplates off -- always fun to do by yourself. (Thank God for vise-grips.)





After a lot of torching and scraping and a certain amount of sanding (!), she's ready for paint. (That band of white left in place is an area that was wooded and painted in 2010.

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

Hmmm, the photos in the previous post have turned to red X's. Does anyone else see that?

Here's a test. So far, June was a write-off -- I flew airshows and also airliners all month.



But we did manage to get some paint on....

....and the foredeck off. Looks bad, but it actually isn't, all the deck beams and such are sound.

[Ron Williamson]

The photos are good on this end.
Do you fly the Sabre?
R

[John B]

I know the answer to that one!



Great progress Dave , That deck could have been a worry eh.

[Dave Hadfield]

Sure, John B indeed knows! That photo is one he took in 2009 when I was in Aukland, overseeing the first engine runs and taxying of the P-40. That was the first time it had fired up in 65 years! Since then I've flown it a fair bit each summer, at airshows plus taking people for rides (it's Canada's only dual-control prop fighter).

I met John B on that trip and he and Kirsty were kind enough to invite me into his home, and onto Riada, for a weekend.

[Dave Hadfield]

Hi John, yes, the deckbeams and carlins are not bad at all. Glad I didn't leave it any longer though. I was saved, I think, by the fact that the last repairer used high-quality marine ply.



Robin got into the act for the painting. Here she is taping the waterline...



And here is Drake with her first coat of finish-coat on.



I've got a spell of days off now, so unless it gets too hot in there I should be able to make things happen.

BTW -- the photos didn't work because I was in Shanghai when I posted that. For some reason, probably censorship (you can't get youtubes there), the FTP site I post on wasn't accessible.

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

Bump, for a thread in Building/Repair.

[Dave Hadfield]

Busy summer. We bought an additional airplane ... another one... yeah I know... I could quit anytime I wanted to...

About Aug I realized I wasn't going to be getting into the water in 2012. But I did get some more work done. The foredeck plywood was a b1tch. It had evolved over the years to 2 layers of plywood, staggered screw heads, and glued together. That meant of course that there was no clean way to get at the screws holding on the bottom layer. My only option was to drive the end of a BigJ Crowbar into the end-grain of the plywood, and rip it apart bit by bit. Most of it was solid and did not want to come apart. Hack -- hack -- hack... then vise-grips on the exposed screws, move forward another 4 inches, and so on.

It was clear how much better brass screws are (no bronze seen) than galvanized. All the brass screws were still hanging on at least a bit, and the wood around them was sound. Not so with the galvanized.

I worked my way forward...



Then borrowed a tractor and front end loader and got the bowsprit off. (It's a lovely big thing made of white oak. It needs refinishing, but is sound. Weighs about 150 lbs.)



Sure enough, the ply under the sprit was delaminating. Not rotten per se, but coming apart. But the support pieces underneath were fine.



I was concerned about the stem ends, since the covering under the sprit was the 1960s-vintage "celastic", but all was OK -- black, but solid. And there were a few shreds of the 1947 canvas still there.



So, I got her all cleaned up, then actually went to Noah's in Toronto, bought some very expensive plywood, and have cut and laid in place the first piece of replacement decking. (Photo next time.)

Dave

[johngsandusky]

I think when I replaced the foredeck on my Friendship, I cut between beams with a circular saw, then pried off the strips. That was nailed down with galvanized nails.

[PeterSibley]

Back to work on Drake. I've been digging into some soft plywood on the foredeck. And to take a break, got some of the port topside paint off in the last day or two.



I bought a weed-burning torch. Far superior to a small plumber's unit with a flame spreader crimped on. The big one makes the process much faster, and requires less scraping.

Like this Dave ? A weed burner with a 3'' wide stainless home made paint scraper , it's fast !

[Dave Hadfield]

John, yes, if I'd been dealing with nails it would have been easier.

Peter, hah!, exactly like that. And I can see from the lack of scorch marks that you're good with it.

Dave

[Sailor]

Got any details on that shop you're working in? Looks like it may be just what I'm looking for. Length, height, width, materials etc.?

[Dave Hadfield]

The shop is not mine. It's at the airport where I keep my aircraft. They erected the large fabric quonset to store boats and cars during the winter. It is perfect for Drake -- :10 from home, and many of my tools are already there.

You must have these structures in your area? They're all over the place here -- pretty much the cheapest way to enclose space. Short sidewalls, widely spaced metal frame set on posts, and a tightly-stretched fabric roof. The one Drake is in is huge, about 120 x 60.

Dave

[peterchech]

Dave,

could you explain the setup of that square sail? I often wonder about putting one on my own marconi sloop rigged keelboat, but I'm not too sure how to make it work. If the yard is attached to the mast with a hoop or something, then you can't hoist past the spreaders. If you hoist to, say, the topping lift for the spinnaker pole, it would be low and the yard couldn't be rotated for different wind directions because the shrouds would interfere with it. If you hoist all the way up, to the masthead with the jib or kite halyard, then although the rotation would be good you have this big yard and square sail all the way up high, probably not the ideal place for a square sail...

How do you do it? And is it as effectice as a symmetrical spinnaker on a ddw run?

[Dave Hadfield]

The nice thing about a squaresail is that there's no jibe. You can put the tail end of the boat through the eye of the wind and nothing happens. Also it's up high where the breeze is.

Its a reaching sail, not just a downwind chute. You try to rig it with braces to the ends of the yard. On Drake these lead back to the mizzenhead, then down to cleats on deck. With braces you can swivel the yard 45 degrees or more each way. You can beam reach.

The belly of the sail is controlled by sheets from each lower corner. These run down to the deck and are cleated off somewhere. So the sail has 4 lines, one on each corner, to control it's angle to the wind and the curve of the fabric.

Drake has an eyebolt 4 ft down from the masthead. The yard is hoisted to that. The sail is stropped using rubber bands. Once aloft, you pull on the sheets to break the bands, and the sail deploys. Yes, the angles of the yard are limited by the shrouds.

On a sloop you'd have to use lifts as well as braces, because you have no mizzen mast.

In use, the sail takes an extra crew member. If the course changes, or the wind direction, you may have to adjust all 4 lines. Lots of adjustment.

I don't have a contained way of reducing sail. I lower the whole yard to the deck. Another hand hauls the sheets in at the same time, but its a flog.

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

Sailing with only 2 of us, I rarely use it. Instead, I hoist a smallish spinnaker from the MIZZEN. This is vastly simpler than deploying it from the main.

Most ketches have main back stays that mess up the space where the mizzen staysail or spinnaker should go. On Drake I re-rigged these stays with the giant pelican hooks which are shown on this thread. They are key. I can get the slack stay out of the way.

I love the square, but ideally you need a long track with a favourable steady wind plus an extra hand. We rarely have the luxury of all that.

BTW, my square is a test unit, made from white poly tarp. Easy and cheap way to explore new options.

Dave

[peterchech]

Thanks for the info dave! Can the lines to the yards come up directly from a block on the rail, is there some reason you ran them back to the top of the mizzen mast first?

+1 on the polytarp, I had great experience building a small jib in a few hours with the stuff using only scissors and high quality duct tape, lasted all season

[Zane Lewis]

Mizzen Staysails Rock !!!
Love ours on our Yawl.
The Mizzen is aprox 100 sqft and the miz Statsail is aprox 200 sq ft and it hauls wind in and adds a lot of speed but is also easly pulled down when it gets too much.
Just don't Jibe with it up.
Photo's to come once I get back on to Photobucket
Zane


not a good shot with regard to sail set etc but you get the idea. PS avarage age of the crew in these pics was 76 doing the wendesday night racing.
Youngest was 72 ish



much better looking shot but the genoa needs to be sheeted in untill it's just kissing the spreaders.

[P.L.Lenihan]

Some body just went out of this world. Hope all goes well!

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuz_tma07m.html


http://www.cbc.ca/news/

[Reynard38]

Great thread. Don't know how I missed it until now.
You mentioned flying airliners. Who do you fly for?

[Dave Hadfield]

Yeah, I just got back from Baikonur, Kazahkstan, after watching Chris launch. It was an experience full of wonders.

That Soyuz is a superb example of elegant simplicity of design. The finest spaceship on the planet. You have to be there to appreciate how well the Russians do Rockets. Not a wrong move, even in intense cold.

As for me, I fly 777s for the major Canadian carrier. 34 years. YYZ to HKG these days.

Dave

[Ron Williamson]

R

[Dave Hadfield]

Peter, I ran the lines (braces) back to the mizzen head because that's about the height of the yardarm. Thus when I adjust the braces, I am swivelling the yard, but it stays in a horizontal plane. If the braces ran down to the deck, pulling on one would skew the yard, one end up and one end down. To counteract this, lifts are required -- these are standing lines that go from the yardarm ends up to the mast head.

I had no need to rig lifts since I had the mizzen mast at the right height, thus 2 lines and some complexity were saved.

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

Zane, lovely yawl. And that mizzen staysail is giving you a huge spread considering the small-ish mizzenmast on a yawl rig. Very nice.

Looks a lot better than the snowstorm happening here at the moment...

Dave

[John B]

Merry christmas to you and yours Dave , have a good one. regards from Kirsty too.

[Zane Lewis]

Thanks Dave,
Plenty of other thingings happening to keep your mind off a snow storm by the sound of it.
We are just starting to feel the effects of a downgraded tropical storm here. Will be with us for the next 36 hours so don't feel too bad about a snow storm.
Still I got to spend the afternoon in a big boat shed playing with a friends new 2nd hand Flying fifteen
Zane

[Dave Hadfield]

Thanks, John. Merry Christmas to you and Kirsty, and to all your family a healthy and prosperous New Year.

Dave

[peterchech]

Thanks Dave, I posted a thread a few months ago asking if anyone else had put a squaresail on their sloop rigged boats and although plenty of people chimed in, you are the only one so far who has actually done it. I don't think it will work for me as a general downwind sail, since the spinnaker is probably easier to use from what you are saying, at least when sailing angles. But I often sail wing on wing within say 20 degrees of ddw, poled out jib and preventer on the main. I think if I hoisted up a squaresail to the masthead it would fill out the upper third or so of the sailplan, making going wing on wing that much more effective...

What is your yard made of? How strong does it have to be, think a fir 3" diameter birsdmouth section will due?

[Dave Hadfield]

Peter,

I was able to rig the Square because there's an eyebolt 4 ft down from the masthead. I hoist the yardarm to a block shackled to that. For a modern sloop with a formed aluminum mast, I don't see how you could do anything quite like that.

An alternative method from 100 years ago was to rig a jack-stay. This was a vertical cable rigged from the masthead to the deck just forward of the mast. The yard went up and down on that. But they were using big sticks as masts then. I don't know if you want to increase compression-load on a modern aluminum mast, which this would.

Can you post a picture of your boat, or start a separate thread?

Anyway, my yardarm is of hollow tapered spruce, 16 ft. It's about 2 1/2" at the ends, about 5" in the middle. Some very small knots. I believe that I made it as a simple glued-up 4-piece block, then shaved away more at the ends than in the middle. I hoist it with a bridle to spread the load.

I'll see if I can take some photos today.

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

edited for duplicat post

[Dave Hadfield]

Well I'm a bit late, but I had an excuse -- my brother rode a rocket to the International Space Station, and I went to Kazahkstan to see him get launched.

But anyway, getting back to yardarms, here's a photo of mine hanging from the ceiling of my shop.



Here's a closer view of the bridle...



Here's the thumbcleat that holds the bridle in place...

[Dave Hadfield]

Those little buttons are for the sail gaskets, which are rubber bands. I hoist the sail with those rubber bands hooked onto a button, then round the furled sail, then onto the button again. And when the sail is all the way up, I pull down on the sheets and the rubber bands break and the sail drops properly.

The yard is 16 ft.

[Dave Hadfield]

Here's the D-ring at the end that a clew lashes to.



This is the end -- you can see it's about 1.5"



And here she is in the middle -- about 3' across, not 5" as I mentioned a few posts back.

[Dave Hadfield]

In a pleasing change of pace, I actually put some wood back ONTO the boat. Here I am cutting the first foredeck piece, trying not to make a mistake with that very expensive plywood.



And it fits!

[Dave Hadfield]

Meanwhile, in the shop, Robin has gold-leafed and outlined a new nameboard, to replace the one that got ripped off in a storm a few years ago. (Always bolt nameboards on, don't merely screw them.) This is the 4th coat of varnish.



And the companionway ladder was looking scruffy, with tatty brown carpet tacked to the steps, and beat-up ancient varnish. I took it back to wood and started over. (Thank God for cabinet scrapers.) Again, third coat.



The bowsprit needed its oaken massiveness properly addressed. Here is the underside getting 40 years of stuff removed.



Which was followed by a first coat of paint. The underside will be green -- the top will be Cetol Dek.



What a pleasure it is to do these things in a calm, unhurried way, inside a building in the middle of winter. It definitely cost me money to have the boat moved near to where I live, but I don't regret it at all.

Dave

[johngsandusky]

Thank you for the updates. I've been working on my ketch in the water, but I brought some parts home.

[Dave Hadfield]

Bump, to show some friends what I've been up to lately.

Actually I've been sailing a Stuart Knockabout for the last two days. What an impeccable boat....

[Dave Hadfield]

God that boat handles beautifully....

We tacked up through a crowded anchorage in her in the San Blas islands while on a cruise on a large power yacht. We did this because earlier in the day, shortly after anchoring, we took jet-skiis for a look around. We had motored through the anchorage amongst the world-cruising yachts at absolute lowest idling speed, no wake, but still gathered fowl looks and muttered remarks. (I don't enjoy jet-skis, and would never own one, but will use them as a tool -- you can certainly cover a lot of water in them, even when shallow.) So, when the SK was in the water, we rather enjoyed demonstrating the perfect manners and impeccable handling of this Herreshoff design.

The combination of light-boat appearance, with the momentum of substantial ballast in it's partial keel, means you can carry a huge amount of way into each tack. Plus, the jib was on a club, so all that was involved in tacking was to put the tiller over. Pure, effortless, sweetness....

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

I've been working on Drake steadily. One of the jobs in the shop was stripping the chainplates of 70 years of paint. They are galvanized, from W/C.

I started with a bath of a modern soy-based paint stripper.



What a ridiculous waste of time. The thing was in that bath for a hour and the paint hardly bubbled. I had 5 of them to do. So I reverted to older technology. I laid them on the wood stove...



... for a carefully monitored length of time -- didn't want to lose the original zinc -- and then laid them on a workbench.



Then with an electric heat gun and a piece of soft aluminum (in the picture) as a scraper, the paint came off in large pieces. After that I reheated them, painted the backs with a thick coat of cold-galvanizing, and laid a coat of white primer (Tremclad Galvanize Primer) on the fronts.

Today they are going back onto the hull.

[Dave Hadfield]

Before the deck plywood goes on we're painting the underside of it -- it's a lot easier then, of course.



And also sanding and painting the faces of the deckbeams and carlins. Vastly simpler.



Dave

[P.L.Lenihan]

Great to see some nice progress Mr.Hadfield, with the weather getting ever more summer like, you must be getting excited about having her back in the water sooner than expected.

I certainly hope it is sooner than later for you!


Cheers!


Peter

[Dave Hadfield]

Thanks, Peter. Yes, we're moving along bit by bit.

Got the chainplates on, all new stainless bolts, and better backing inside.

[IMG]ftp://DaveHadfield@hadfield.ca/Drake/chainplates on.jpg[/IMG]

Boatworker's lunch.

[IMG]ftp://DaveHadfield@hadfield.ca/Drake/boatworker's lunch.jpg[/IMG]

Deck finally on for good, and screwed down.

[IMG]ftp://DaveHadfield@hadfield.ca/Drake/deck screws.jpg[/IMG]

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

Thanks, Peter. Yes, we're moving along bit by bit.

Got the chainplates on, all new stainless bolts, and better backing inside.



Boatworker's lunch.



Deck finally on for good, and screwed down.



Dave