Next Day

I am slowly getting this down. This was weeks ago. It was a big day for me, though...seems all very fresh in my mind-butter.

On my way to work, Tuesday January 15, I mentioned to Stace that I wasn't sure when or if Don's Boat Transport would call. But if they did, did she want to come along, and the answer was a fervent "YES!" which to me was quite gratifying. I am happy that she is bonding with the boat. Most of these huge boat projects have a reputation for outlasting both pets and girls. Me, I want my boat AND my wife. I overheard a conversation at the last wooden boat show I went to...the guy walked up and said, "How many years and how many marriages?" What followed was rueful. I don't want to be one of those.

I went to work, and at 9:30 AM, Rick, the dude who stood me up the day before, calls. And says how about thursday? I am still seething from the previous day, and I answer that thursday won't work for me because I am now paying $XXX a day for moorage. I expect a battle, and he goes "fair enough. I'll bump today's guy to thursday. How does 12:30 sound?"

Wow. Ok. Me first? That only happens when I pay extra or when we are cliff diving (ya, right.) I phoned Stacey and said be ready at 11:00 and she said yay. Thankfully, my boss Jim is an upright and understanding guy...and besides, this is January in the motorcycle business. And after dithering about the shop for an hour, I leave to get Stacey. We jump in the car, the sun is shining, and it feels like a road trip! Let's drive to Texas! Whee! Instead, we drive to Extreme Pita in Langford to fuel up, where we hear about the latest labour crunch. Then we munch our pitas on the way up the Malahat to the marina. Jumping out of the car, the sun is still shining, and I start snapping pictures of my beautiful girl with my boat, and it's almost 12:00 when the boat truck shows up early! He scoots it to the water, leaps out with a smile and a "Hi! I'm Rick!"


I feel like I'm on the Truman Show or something. He surveys my little boat and explains how the trailer works, making it seem like this could take quite a while.

Then he backed the trailer up, pushed the boat onto the trailer, and pulled the boat halfway out! Swoop! Halfway because he wanted to make sure the keel was on the crosspiece. It was, so he pulled it right up, and I got my first look at the bottom!

But all I could see was mussels. No wonder the bitch wouldn't tack! She had 80 lbs of mussels on her rudder! It was a miracle she sailed at all with all that macro-fur!

We scraped a few mussels off to allow the trailer pads to actually contact the hull. Rick had big tie-down straps for the boat, and I went to the office to settle up for the last day of moorage. Stacey arranged to meet Rick on Gillespie road, and we'd lead him up to our place. We left perhaps 2 minutes after he did, and we never caught up to him! I was driving like I was being chased by banshees, too! We saw him at the appointed place, and then he drove Gillespie like he was driving an MGB instead of a rig towing a 70 year old yawl.



Down the driveway, he looked around, nodded his head, and laid the boat down right on target. We had to raise the boat a bit, as I made the boat stands about 4" too tall, and I had to hack a few inches off the bow stand.

Stacey started scraping mussels off with a shovel, and I went to settle up. Well, he felt bad about having stood us up, and he drove at mach 2, so the bill only came to $270. Suffice to say I was pretty happy. Even with the extra that the marina charged, the haulout bill came to half of what I budgeted for. Rick took off to try to get another boat moved, and we surveyed our project sitting beside the shop. First thing I had to do was get rid of all those mussels that Stace scraped off...before Layton's dogs started eating them! You know, those copper- and lead-laced antifouling paint mussels? Ick. I loaded them into a wheelbarrow (took about 6 trips of heaped wheelbarrow loads) and I won't tell anyone where they went. But at least the dogs won't get them. (If you want to know where they are, head for East Sooke and look for a big cloud of crows!)

Blew my load

What I cannot really describe is how excited I was to get the boat out of the water. I hadn't even had a chance to swim under the boat, yet. I was aching to get a look at the bottom.

I had a vague idea what it looked like, from photos of similar boats as well as the plans that I got for xmas from Stacey (best gift, ever!) But I hadn't seen MINE. I also wanted to see what kind of work I was in for...

I had been excited for more than a month, but the few days leading up to the actual moving of the boat were almost sleepless for me. I woke up SUPER early to get everything ready, drive Stacey into town for her class, and get to the marina in time to move the boat to the ramp. I went over the night before and lashed the mast down on a 2x4 cradle, so all I had to do was move the boat. I got to the marina an hour early, as the guy hauling the boat was due at 9:30. I enlisted Lyal's aid in moving the boat (Lyal is the yard guy at the marina). As you recall, there was no longer an outboard on the boat, and I declined to borrow the one off Layton's boat without asking. This is where things started to go...off. First, the marina (knowing I was leaving) found a way to charge 2 days extra moorage at the daily rate, even though I had been there 10 months at the monthly rate. They also levied a $20 ramp use fee and $25 for Lyal's 10 minutes to tow me around. I'd have done it myself if I didn't have to back the boat out of the slip, first! On retrospect, I should have just done it that way...by myself.

So Lyal (who is a few beer short of a six-pack, really) came over with one of the decrepit work boats and grabbed a boomkin (bowsprit on the stern) and dragged the boat out of its slip. I passed him a line, correctly routed, and he insisted on wrapping it around my spritstay (bowsprit shroud) a few times. Then he started off, HOLDING the line to Larkie, even though a perfectly good cleat was fastened to the work boat in a place perfect for towing. I watched in (relative) horror as he kept gunning the outboard and nearly dragging himself out of the workboat, holding on to the line tangled in Larkie's bowsprit rigging. I stood in the stern of Larkie, doing my best to follow Lyal's waggly course while he struggled to light a cigarette while driving the work boat and holding the Larkie's bowline at the same time. Thankfully, we had a wind astern, so I didn't have to partake in his tobacco fumes. As we approached the dock at the boat ramp he reminded me to move my fenders to the port side of the boat. This was good advice, and I did so.

We arrived at the ramp, but before Lyal would let me tie up he insisted on untying all the fenders I had just mounted, and carefully re-tying them on with well-crafted granny knots. I let this pass without comment. Although it had cost me $138 more than I expected, my boat was now ready at the ramp and was about to come out, as soon as the man with the trailer arrived. I had 10 minutes.

I wasn't sure how this whole boat-trailer-ramp thing worked with my boat, so I had brought my drysuit with me. I hurriedly struggled into it (no mean feat when you don't have a buddy to help zip you up) in order to be ready when the truck arrived.

About 20 minutes later it started to rain really heavily, so I was grateful for the rubber suit. At 10 o'clock I was concerned something was holding the boat hauler up, so I phoned. The guy at Jenkins Marine told me his guy should arrive any minute. At 10:30 he phoned back and said his trucker cancelled. CANCELLED? Not an option!

By this time I had discovered that my drysuit wristseals were a little tighter than they should be, and my purple hands were starting to hurt. I was hungry. I was FULLY EXPECTING to go home with my boat. I was emotionally charged. I was irate. And I told Mr. Jenkins Marine, not an option, get him down here. His response was "I don't know what to tell you, buddy."

So I called every other boat hauling guy around. Mark, the owner of the marina helped me out a bit, and was made aware of my dilemma. He offered some numbers and called a few people. Bottom line, the only guy available was in Nanaimo and he wanted $1500 just to show up. Forget it! I had the suit off by this time and was coming off my anger-adrenalin. I ended up parking the boat beside the ramp and going home. I had no idea how long it would be until Rick, the guy who drives the boat truck, would be well enough to work. And at $60 a day moorage, I had no idea how much it might cost me.

I went home totally emotionally drained. I couldn't sleep. I was still mad/tired/enervated. Resigned. Apathetic. I crashed hard on that. Go figure.

Preparation

The stands were actually finished right around the turning of the year. Well, almost. I had to cut tops and put them on, and Stacey helped me bolt them all together. I pestered Layton about where to put the boat, and ended up taking the space to the left of the shop. There was an old firepit there, along with some junk, but as there was also a tap/hosebib handy it seemed like a good place. I went out on a Sunday to try to level the area.

5 minutes. That is what it would have taken to level that in the Komatsu. 5 hours later I was sweating and still not done. Many odd things had gone into that fire...rat traps (complete with rat if the bones are anything to judge by) old engine components, plastic, paint cans. I sifted through and put all the junk in a bin, metal in a wheelbarrow, and ashes in a pile. Then I dug out the area and raked it. I was concerned that the ground was a bit soft, and later I was proven to be right.

I needed to put the boat on wood blocks. Generally, you lay the keel on BIG chunks of wood, and use the boat stands to keep the boat from falling over. In a perfect world, with your own crane, you can have a cradle made for your boat with casters, and then you can push it all around on your concrete parking lot. See why I want a marina? Of my own? But the order of the day was, well, wood blocks. I had a few chunks of 4x4, but that really wasn't going to cut it. I went on a wood gathering venture early one morning. Where? Why, to the root of all evil, Bear Mountain. I moseyed into the area where I last knew stuff to be, but it was long gone. All covered in fog and hard to scout for scraps. I looked around for houses in the finishing stages of framing, and eventually I found one that looked like it was being built by a first timer; tons of scrap all over the place, no bin, garbage everywhere. I poked around and was rewarded by a few chunks of 6x10 PSL and one big eight foot piece of 6x6 timber. One gentleman protested my absconscion of said piece, but I squashed his protests and made off with my spoils. However, it was nowhere near enough timber.
Driving through Langford every night is a bit of a pain, but we have found a few shortcuts. One is down Station Rd. from the parkway to Jacklin. It goes alongside the tracks, and there are piles of old railroad ties...which I had noticed. On my way home one night, I investigated these piles, only to find most of the ties rotten and useless. Not all, however. The real issue was that most of the good ties were 15-20 feet in length and totally outside my ability to lift! I didn't want to show up with a chainsaw, as the legality of taking the ties was a bit questionable. Technically, VIA Rail owns the property and all the stuff on it. They were obviously discarded, and an environmental hazard to boot with all that creosote...I figured I was doing someone a favour. But cloud of creosoted woody dust is not a good idea. And the noise...

Well, I found a couple of 10 foot lengths I could pick up. They were pretty solid, and I had no problem getting them to the car. Then I had to curl a huge (guessing around 150-250 lbs.) timber onto the roof of our poor little tercel, with chunks of gravel and dirt all over. Two of them pretty much put the rocker panels on the ground. Then I strapped the huge lumps of wood down and drove home.

Getting them off the car was an adventure, but gravity helped as always, and the next day I went back for 2 more. Emboldened by my previous success, I chose two 14 footers (length of the car +) and barely got them onto the roof. The car swayed in an alarming way. Looked fun, so I strapped them down and went to Wal-Mart to get some stuff for Stace, and to show off my rooftop prizes.

You know that thing where people ostentatiously avert their eyes from disabled people, embarrassing displays of affection, and people with large growths on their face? That's what I got. Everyone averting their eyes as soon as they saw my disabled toyota with its large rooftop growth and affectionate driver.

I got them home without real incident (if you discount the part where the car tried to swap ends and roll over while I was cornering at a speed best suited to a BMW.) and decided I had better get them off the car before taking stuff into Stacey. It was raining and I was cold and in a hurry, so I tried to push the timbers off the car while NOT wearing gloves. Predictably, the first one slipped out of my hands in a big way (big timber) and bent the antenna while on its way to shearing the drivers' side mirror clean off. I calmly dragged the other one across the roof to the same side, so as to avoid losing ALL my rearward visibility, and it damn near took out my foot. Note to self, get small trailer. It was amazing how sprightly the handling was on the remainder of the trip down the driveway! I guess a 500 lb rooftop load isn't really recommended.

Next day, I set out my huge timbers, hacking up two of them with my sawzall, and placing the big ones along where the keel would go. I set up the stands, and tried to imagine what the boat would look like.

I phoned Don's Boat Hauling, and made an appointment to pull the boat out the very next day...Monday, January 14.

Fall on our faces

August and September were a flurry of activity...we had to move twice, and the move out to East Sooke was a big one. As far as Larkie was concerned, I had a couple of options.

Initially, I wanted to haul her out, slap a diesel into her, and shove her back in the water. But if I was going to pull her up, it was evident some other repairs had to be made. Water was coming in at the chines (where the hull changes shape at an angle, longitudinally) and while I expect an old wooden boat to be a bit wet, this was more water than I liked to have in my bilge. A solar panel was keeping the battery alive for the bilge pump, but winter has less sun for battery charging...

What I really wanted was a period-correct marine diesel...something like a Lister or Petter type "hit and miss" engine with a massive flywheel. Unfortunately, these are huge and heavy, and totally wrong for this application. I looked around and found one Lycoming diesel for sale. I thought that was really weird, since Lycoming is an aircraft engine manufacturer. Turns out a French company, Bernard, manufactured diesels, and they were marketed in the USA under the Lycoming name. Parts were all but impossible to come by, though the engine looked clean and the transmission was excellent. But it was only 6 hp, which is less than I hoped for. I found one engine coming out of a Cal 29 that looked ok. It was a Farymann A10, which is a single cylinder German engine, raw water cooled. It was noisy with an exhaust leak upon start, but quieted down after warming up. I agreed to buy it, not knowing what hell it would cause me.

At the time, I was still driving the excavator, so I yanked the Komatsu down to the boatyard, where the fellow Chris was working on his boat, pulling out the diesel, and making a well for an outboard. Leaving the Komatsu on the trailer, I was able to lift the engine entire onto a pallet. Chris gave me the controls, fuel tank, electrical stuff, gauges, muffler, alternator, and spares.
I sat on the engine for a few months before getting into it to have a look. The major issue was the raw water cylinder sleeve, which was leaking both water and exhaust. I pulled it off to find it pretty much unrepairable. A new cylinder would be $560. I decided to sit on it while I tried to find an overbore piston so I could try to hot-tank and then hone the old cylinder. I didn't examine the lower end, silly me. That would bite me later. I paid $1000 for the Farymann, and to be fair, the prop, shaft, tank, and alternator alone was probably worth that much.

The idea was to pull the boat out with the masts still up, do some work, and put her back in before she dried up too much. This is my first classic wooden boat, so I sought advice on pulling her out. Everyone told me to use a travel-lift (a big four-wheeled crane that pulls the boat up on straps) to be gentle on the hull. All the travel lifts were in Sidney, and the outboard I used to get to the Marina was no longer available. My not-quite-working one was...well, long story...let's just call it gone. I thought about having the boat kept at the marina on the hard, but I would have to pay. We asked Layton, our landlord here in Sooke, if we could put it here. He reluctantly agreed.

Ok! Now, the travel-lift fee was to be $22 a foot, that's $660 (round-trip), outboard rental would be $120, trucking $130/hr from Sidney to East Sooke, plus crane rental for taking up the masts...this was starting to look like a $1000 dollar plus job!! Stace and I decided to put it off till we could afford it.

September rolled by, and we successfully managed to eradicate the fleas that came with our new home.
October flew by with our public Samhain ritual, not to mention a blessedly uneventful Hallowe'en.
November was cold, and we started to look at moving Larkie. Moorage was paid until Dec. 12, so in early November I started phoning. First good news, Don's Boat Hauling could get it from Goldstream Marina. Would it be ok without a travel-lift? In fact, after some more research, it turned out that the compression put on the hull by a travel-lift could do MORE damage than it could potentially save. Great for an old power boat, not so great on a full-keel wooden sailboat...

This would eliminate the outboard rental, and a significant portion of the trucking. Masts. I hemmed and hawed and finally decided to try it myself. Well, not quite. My family (mom, stepdad, sister) came out to help me and Stacey and our friend Steve Hodder unstep the masts. I had already come out and pulled the booms, gaffs, and running rigging off...all that was left was the shrouds and stays. With one person each on a line to the top of the main mast, we slacked off the shrouds and Steve and I lifted the solid spruce mast straight up. We walked it forward to the bitt (strong place to tie stuff to on the foredeck) and the family lowered it down nice as you please. I did the mizzen alone. No sweat. No crane rental!

Oke, next I had to make a place for the boat, so I phoned up Bosun's Locker and asked about buying some boat stands. These are tubular metal tripods with adjustable tops. I was stunned to find they cost $200-$250 each, and I needed to have five or six!! All of a sudden it looked dire. Figure $1300 at least after taxes. I simply didn't have the money. I stared at the stands online for a long time, and fantasized about stealing some from a boatyard or finding them on Craigslist for $20 a piece...and then realized that they were pretty easy to make.

Using the Motorcycle Shop's account, I bought 1" black iron pipe from Andrew Sheret's. And a sawzall from Rona. I had a grinder. The shop had a MIG welder. And over the xmas holidays (shop was closed for a week) I fabbed up 5 boat stands, just like the ones online. Superior in some ways. Total cost? $128 for pipe. $12 for u-bolts. $44 for threaded rod. $16 for nuts, washers, and paint. Oh, and $11.98 for a new pair of welding gloves and some tips for the welder. That's $212 or thereabouts. Plus $190.80 for an extra month of moorage. $402.80 is still a damn sight less than $1300. Win. Me.

Now we were into January with 5 beautiful (untested) boat stands, a reluctant landlord, and a boat sad and wet in the snow. Haulage was imminent.

Larkie History

It has taken me some time to find time to get this blog started. It really should have started last year, when I aquired Emerald. Alas, between having my laptop stolen, getting engaged, quitting my job, moving, and holding onto my shredded strands of sanity...well, I'm gettin' to it now, awright?

Brief history, here. I saw what was to become my boat on good old usedvictoria.com. I had been looking for a boat to restore/play with for a while. This one, at least, was floating (one dude from Oak Bay Marina was trying to convince me to float and repair a sunken boat) and the price was doable, if not perfectly reasonable. I mean, she had a bilge pump, all her sails, and a little outboard. And a mooring, for a while. And she was the real thing...real wood. I know fibreglass well enough to do underwater surveys and major repairs, but wood is something I have always wanted to know how to deal with. Beyond making plywood furniture and framing in closets, I mean.

So I started a little research, hoping in the meantime, nobody else would snatch her up. The design was a Seabird Yawl. For those of you (most, I suspect) who have no idea what a yawl is I will explain. It is a sailboat with two masts, the one aft (at the back) being shorter than the one in front. Furthermore, a yawl has that mizzen (back) mast stepped behind the rudder post. The mizzen mast carries only a single sail, known as the mizzen sail, or jigger. The mainmast carries a mainsail and a staysail, often mistakenly called a jib or genoa. The Seabird design carries a rich history as well. It dates back to the early days of the last century. There was a famous and important American yachting magazine known as The Rudder, and
the editor of The Rudder was a well known old salt by the name of Thomas Fleming Day, and he had some contentious opinions about yachts and boats in general. With the help of Charles Mower, a boat designer and naval architect of some note, he set out to design a seaworthy boat with enough room to actually make passage on...one that most novice or intermediate builders could make in their backyard. The result was the Seabird. The original design called for a centerboard, and sailed well, but was a bit "tender." That is, she heeled over easily in light gusts of wind. In order to "stiffen her up" Day had her re-fitted with a shallow draft keel incorporating 700 lbs. of ballast. It also opened up her already-small cabin space. To further prove his point, he sailed her to Portugal from Chesapeake Bay (and back) with two other men. Day referred to the Seabird design as "ugly" but was quick to note that she'd handle any sea, any storm.

The design was brought further note by an intrepid farmer named Harry Pidgeon. In the summer of 1925, he decided he'd like a boat...and chose the Seabird design, only enlarged to 34' in length. That particular type is called a Seagoer (and there is a larger version as well, known as a Naiad).



In 1927, after building the Islander by himself, he set off from Los Angeles...returning in 1929 after circumnavigating the globe by himself...and only the second man ever to do so (Joshua Slocum was the first in 1895-98).

I romanced myself into wanting the boat, and managed to pony up the $3200 to buy her.

Ok, so she was out on a mooring in Cadboro Bay...part of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club. The guy who sold her to me (a sculptor named Derk Wolmuth) took care of the RVYC moorings, and before I even got a chance to SIT on my new purchase, she had changed moorings 3 times. I finally bought a little tender so that I could get to my boat!

Well, sitting on that old gaffer, I realized that singlehanding her on a maiden cruise (with no flares, marine radio, or life jacket) was pure folly, but that's exactly what I did...realizing that there were no fairleads for the staysail only after I was underway. I sailed her off her mooring, around Discovery Island, and back onto her mooring, nice as you please. I sailed her Main and jigger, and she pulled to windward like a horse. Having no experience with her outboard, I sailed her right back to her mooring, dropping the main, and nudging her up with the jigger...which gives little if any push.

OK....next was to get her to a location that didn't involve me sailing or rowing all my tools out to her. I looked all around, and decided Deep Cove Marina was the place for me. But never could I get hold of the guy to book a slip. So I finally settled for the Goldstream Boathouse Marina, formerly known as Hall's Boathouse. I decided I couldn't move the boat alone, and recruited my friend Matt to help me. Well, that was an unmitigated disaster. First, we were late. Blame Matt. Blame me. Blame Subway. Then my little outboard kept stalling as we left the mooring...no wind to sail with. As I messed with the outboard, Matt decided to break my boat in several places, and once I got the auxilary outboard going (I borrowed a Honda just in case) we had to motor around in circles trying to pick up the pieces he dropped overboard. Suffice to say, it was a bust, and we headed back to the mooring.

The next day I got a call from RVYC saying they needed my mooring for people coming for Swiftsure, and I had to get the boat MOVED. This time, I recruited Dean, and he is as reliable as the Rock of Gibraltar. The move went off almost without a hitch. We stopped and explored a bit along the way, ate our sandwiches, watched a house burning on the Saanich Peninsula, sailed a bit, and generally had a great day. Stacey came out to the marina with my van to pick us up. I cunningly pulled into the wrong slip at the marina, and correcting that was...interesting, but all went rather well.

Over the summer we took Emerald, now called Larkie, out a handful of times. Each time I discovered new rigging issues, and learned that she really really hated to tack without backwinding the staysail. I imagined she must have a lot of crap on the bottom, and I resolved to get her out of the water by September.