A Labor of Love
Labor of Love
Laying a boat up out of the water is always a chore - one thing vessels do not like to do is stop sailing. Traditionally, sailing vessels are named after women and referred to as “she,” a mother or goddess guiding the vessel safely upon the sea. There are times when we “lay her up” that she is unhappy with the prospect, and re-commissioning her becomes a chore.
The schooner “Deliverance” was no different this season - after an extended layup due to the pandemic, she expressed disdain at having been out of operation, and laid a long list of chores to accomplish in the yard prior to launch. She knows we love her, though, and that we would put our noses to the grindstone.
We started with the necessities - her bowsprit, the spar that juts from her bow and holds her jib, had some damage when she came to us. When we unshipped the spar in 2019, it had a fatal crack, and a new spar would need to be built from scratch, in the old way, by hand. We secured a timber of Atlantic White Cedar from Medford Cedar Products in Southern NJ, which is close to Thompson Marine and Engine - the yard where Deliverance had been at rest.
Unfortunately, the only available timber was a bit larger than required and needed to be resized. After choosing the spar for straightness and clarity (lack of branches and knots), it needed to be squared off. After de-barking the timber with a draw blade and oiling to avoid checking and cracking, guidelines for squaring were drawn, and a chainsaw carefully used to square the spar to the appropriate size. The next step was to cut the square to an octagon - we built a spar gauge to draw the lines for this. It is a simple tool that continues a ratio of 1:1.4:1 down the length of any timber. As we had cut the spar along with the chosen timber, she narrowed from the base to the tip. This gauge draws lines down the spar keeping that ratio along the way.
Once the lines were drawn, a skill saw set at a 45 degree angle was used to lop off the corners to create our octagon. One step closer to a rounded spar! The next step is to make that a 16 sided shape using hand and power plants, a sander with 60 grit paper, and from there continuing on with rounding - a process that is lengthy and not without toil using sanders and stepping up the sandpaper grit for smoothness. We left a block at the tip of the spar for fitting the cranse iron - this is a metal fitting that attaches the bowsprit to her rigging, and “stays” the spar in for directions: the forestry to the top of the foremast, the bob stay to the stem of the keel, and the whisker stays to the sides of the hull. At the base of the spar, a square mortise would need to be cut to fit it into the bit that is her main attachment to the vessel.
As all of these fittings are custom fit to the vessel, great care needs to be taken to fit the joints as snuggly as possible, allowing for some added thickness for when the spar is varnished. Cedar is a wonderful material - locally sourced, lightweight, and straight as an arrow, it is truly a joy to work with. Its downfall in this case, though, is its lack of “crushing” strength. The cranse iron will be constantly pulling the spar back into the bit at its base, into the end-grain of the cedar. To strengthen this part of the spar, mahogany “cheeks” were added to the tip of the bowsprit. Not only functional, it really added a lovely aesthetic feature.
Once her bowsprit was shaped and properly fit the cranse iron and bit, it needed to be varnished for protection. One of the great benefits of cedar is its near imperviousness to water damage, but spars should still be varnished for longevity. This is not a process one wants to repeat often! We chose to give her spar 4 coats of an oil-based traditional varnish, then top it off with 2 clear coats of epoxy. As you can see, each added layer brings out the beauty and grain of the wood even more, with the end result a gorgeous crown to her rigging!
That’s all just a small part of the adventure, and the process took several days. In addition to a new bowsprit, Deliverance received a new paint job on the hull, a new presentation of her name, a new cap rail custom-milled from Trex decking, copious work on her hull (painting everything from bow to stern, above and below the waterline) to say the least. There were 5 of us, including our 10-year-old, and we worked every day for 15 days straight, spending 8-12 hours per day in the yard. Beauty doesn’t come without toil…
Our many thanks to Thompson’s Marine and Engine in Egg Harbor Township, NJ; Kirby Paint Co. in New Bedford, MA; Medford Cedar Products in Sewell, NJ; and most of all to Christel, Jarad, Arden, Riley, Mark, John, Dave, Mark, Bob, Don, and all the residents of Thompson Lane for your undying friendship and support of our venture. Without you, none of this would be possible!
Now let’s go sailing!
Yacht Rock Charters Crew