Mast tube part II.

This post is for Alden, over at the stream of consciousness blog.  On my previous post about building this mast tube he commented that he'd be interested to learn how easy, or not, the plug would be to remove from the tube we were constructing around it.  I was away this weekend but John Z. decided to answer that very question.  And so here it is:

Hi George,

Well, the plug didn't just slide out as it would have in my dream world.  I had to drill a hole out the middle with a spade bit and then bang away with a sharpened pipe, pry bars and maul.  I finally got all of the pieces out and it didn't hurt the tube a bit.

The tube is snugger than it should be so will need a little sanding but it just barely rubs in spots and shouldn't take much to open up with some 60 grit wrapped around a pipe. 

John Z

It took a fair amount of persuasion to clear the foam plug from the mast tube.  

But in the end it did come out.

Next on the list of  "items to do" before the tube can be installed in the boat is to make sure that the mast will smoothly rotate inside of the tube.  That will be the aim of our next joint session.

A mast tube for Pegasus

Project Pegasus is at the point where interior layout and "furniture" installation must be considered.  When new, Pegasus had a Sitka spruce, keel stepped mast with a three stay rig.  Both the bow stay and the side shrouds could be adjusted while racing.  The rake of the mast was controlled by a block and tackle system which connected with the bow stay and was lead back to the cockpit.  The side shrouds could be slacked off, downwind, via Highfield levers located under the side decks.

Boat end of adjustable bow stay.  The jaw seen here was swagged on a short piece of wire which fed through the tube soldered on the tang.  In turn, the opposite end of the wire connected with a block and tackle system which led back to the cockpit.

Cockpit end of origianl bow stay block and tackle system.

Boat end of the port side adjustable shroud with which Pegasus was originally equipped.  This bit of wire with a marine fork connected to the shroud, via a corresponding jaw, and terminated with a Highfield lever on the under side of the deck.  The starboard side was similarly equipped.

While Pegasus's original wooden spars survive they are not in serviceable condition.  I do have a spare Europe dinghy mast and have decided, since this is not a slavishly accurate restoration, that in principle Pegasus would still have an adjustable bow stay and no downwind interference from shrouds if I adopt the current semi-free standing rig that some of the other Classic Moths have employed. In order to do that I need to make an oval topped mast tube.

Recall that when John Z. built his Mistral he created an oval mast tube.  In order to do that, he first found a PVC pipe with an i.d. large enough to slip over the heel of his mast.  He then laid up enough carbon  fiber around the pipe to make a tube with roughly a 1/16th inch wall thickness.  After that he split the tube, introduced an oval form at the top while retaining the original diameter at the base of the tube and then closed the sides with more carbon fiber.  That was a lot of work.  This time around he and I took a different approach and made a foam plug of the desired shape and laid up multiple layers of 6oz glass around that plug.  I used fiberglass rather than carbon fiber mostly because (a). I already had an abundance of 6oz glass cloth left over from an earlier project , and (b). I'm cheap.  Will a glass lay-up be strong/stiff enough to do the job?  Don't know.  We'll find out. The pix that follow show most of the steps for this alternative approach for making the mast tube.

First John build up a foam blank by gluing together a couple of rectangles of pink insulation foam with five minute epoxy.  This was done to create a block of foam with enough thickness for the finished plug Next we took a hot wire knife and squared off the ends of the block against a pair of carpenter's squares so that we could accurately attach cardboard templates, an oval on one end to provide the ability to rake the mast at the deck partners, and a circle large enough to accommodate the heel of the mast on the other end.  We then took the "hot wire" foam cutter and allowed it to follow the templates.

After cutting out our plug we had some fairing to do since the hot wire was a little slow on my end and created ridges in the foam.  We filled those in with dry wall spackling compound and when dry, sanded the plug fair.

A few days later we got back together to continue.  Here John is checking the size of the plug to make sure it's fat enough for the mast.  It was a little too small in various places so we added duct tape to increase the plug's size until it passed muster.  Once the plug was deemed satisfactory, it was covered with clear packing tape to give a smooth surface.

The next step was to paint the plug with polyvinyl alcohol (a mold release agent) so that the fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin wouldn't stick to the plug.  While the PVA dried we got busy cutting layers of cloth to a paper pattern that fit the plug.

Your old diarist painting one of the early layers with epoxy.

Our lay up is eight layers thick.  We are shooting for a finished tube with a wall thickness of roughly a 1/16th of an inch.

After all layers were added.  A large, burrito-shaped thing covered with peel ply.  John and I will reconvene once the epoxy kicks to take the tube to the next step.

An update on the Pegasus update

During the 35 day Federal Government shutdown, Bill Boyle and I were able to  meet regularly to work on Pegasus.

In the course of that time we've gone from this,

to this.  The hull is now off the building molds and jig.

Yesterday John Z came over to see our progress and offer some guidance in how to proceed with future aspects of the rebuild.

With the hull sheathed in new ply skins, the boat weighs in at 37.5 lbs, or roughly half of the CMBA's 75 pound minimum for the hull minus removable gear.  This means we have a sporting chance of staying close to min weight after adding bulkheads, decks, side tanks, hardware, epoxy and paint/varnish.

Our target goal is to have the boat ready to race at Brigantine in June.  Hopefully we'll make it!

Pegasus Update

The wheel turns slowly.  Some readers may recall that when former Moth Boat World Champion Bill Schill passed away, I was given the remains of Pegasus, his World Championship winning boat.  Pegasus was and still is in dilapidated condition.  Recently, fellow Moth Boater, Bill B. told me it was time to restore the boat before she was a total loss.  We moved the hull to Bill's work shed earlier this month and have started work.  We've deconstructed the hull to the saveable parts (basically the keel, centerboard trunk and a few other bits of the boat's original fabric) and are now going the other way with the restoration.  Those interested can follow along on Bill's blog.  We hope to have the hull rebuilt by spring.

Pegasus plus 3mm ply, loaded on the trailer for the brief ride from my house to Bill's shed.

PEGASUS, Moth Nr 2345

Many of you who come to this blogspot have seen my earlier post about Bill Schill. Interestingly, within less than a week, that post jumped to the top ten all time most viewed posts for this blog. Clearly, many people remember Bill. 

In his will Bill left me with the remains of his 1963 International Moth Class Association World Championship winning boat Pegasus.  The boat has an easily remembered hull/sail number: 2345.  For those of us who raced Moths back in those years, Bill, Pegasus and her distinctive alternating blue and white striped Seidelmann sail are permanently etched in our memory banks.  Last week I went up to the Schill family home in New Jersey to help Bill's brother Dave sort through the accumulation of Moth boats, spars, sails etc. and at that time we loaded Pegasus onto the roof racks of my station wagon for the ride back to Maryland.  Bill had sold the boat in 1964, after an unsuccessful bid to defend his title, in order to generate the funds to buy a new boat.  Pegasus quickly disappeared but was rediscovered years later by Mike Albert's father in a boatyard down on the Sassafras River, a tributary of the upper Chesapeake Bay.  Mike repaired and  raced the boat for several seasons and won the CMBA's National Championship in 1997.  Mike was accepted for Medical school the following year and Bill approached him about reacquiring Pegasus.  Mike agreed and Bill was reunited with his old boat.  By this point Pegasus was getting very long in tooth and although Bill did install a new deck it became clear that she really needed a total restoration.  The boat was put into storage, new ply panels and other materials were ordered but sadly Bill didn't get the opportunity.

For me Pegasus is a very mixed blessing.  I'm happy to have the opportunity to take this important item of Moth boating history under my wing but right now I'm swamped with several other Moth restorations!  Some adjusting of priorities will need to take place but I'm determined to bring Pegasus back to the same condition as my other World Champ Moth Mint.  The photos which follow document Pegasus as she currently stands.  Wish me luck--I'm going to need it!

Pegasus in the early morning light.  She still retains her aggressive keel line.  While not as tricky to sail as a Mistral, many sailors unfamiliar with Moths would still find the Cates-Florida design a trifle unsettling at first blush.

Although from this distance the boat appears to need only minor repairs and paint a closer inspection reveals holes and blisters through out the ply bottom skins.

The hull is riddled with holes, blisters and soft spots.

The plywood panels have perished.  Victims of both the weather and fungal rot.

Clearly this project is not for the faint of heart.

Turning the boat right side up one finds a number of things which make Pegasus unique.  First, is this special builder's tag.  The stock Fletcher Marine Products tag mentions only the firm's name, Fletcher Marine Products, and the town where the shop was located.  Bill told me a story about this tag.  He said that Jimmy Greenfield, a master boat builder who worked for Blair actually built the hull but Blair had this special tag made up to reflect his shop's importance in Bill's growing dominance on the race course during the early 1960s.  Bill indicated that Jimmy was more than just a bit put out when the boss and owner of the business took credit for the boat.  Jimmy Greenfield is still a member of Cooper River YC.  The next time our paths cross I'll have to screw up my courage and ask him about this little story.

The famously pinched transom of the Cates design is perhaps its most dated feature.  While a Cates Moth can plane on the off-wind legs of the course, later Moth designs could also plane while going up-wind.  With a wider transom maybe a Cates could as well.  One of life's unanswered questions.

This photo shows the latest replacement deck.  The original side decks were skimpy open shelves that extended perhaps to about where the inner-most light colored strips are, rather than the roll tanks seen here.  Although those decks made  Pegasus very light they also made the boat very vulnerable to swamping.

Pegasus's dagger board trunk, unlike the stock Cates item is unsupported at the front and instead, gains lateral stiffness courtesy of the center traveler horse.

Like many of the current Moths, Bill could adjust the rake of Pegasus's mast while under way.  The jaw terminal seen here is attached to a piece of stainless stay wire running through the small bit of tubing emerging from the stem fitting.  The jaw attaches to the bow stay on one end and the block and tackle system inside the cockpit in the preceding photograph.

The side stays were also adjustable via highfield levers.  This rigging was quite advanced for a Moth Boat in the early 1960s.

But is this boat really Pegasus?  If so her distinctive hull number "2345" should be stamped in the keel.  The number is obscured by the ratchet block mount and floor boards.  Much like the doubting St. Thomas, I want to see with my own eyes and place my fingers in the indentations.

There it is 2-3-4-5.  Originally this number was assigned, in a block of hull numbers issued by the IMCA, to John Wright a boat builder in Germantown, Pennsylvania.  Blair Fletcher negotiated with Wright and got the number transferred to his shop for this boat.  One wonders what Fletcher offered Wright for that hull number?  I'll probably never know.

Bill's alternating blue and white stripped Seidelmann sail.  Bill's parents bought this sail as a way of telling which boat was their son while spectating at regattas.  Almost everyone else had a plain vanilla sail and in those days it was not uncommon for a Moth regatta to draw 60 to 70 entries.

Bill actually got this sail a year before he took delivery of Pegasus.  He was then still sailing his first Fletcher-Cates, Nr 2081.  If one looks closely, the outline of the zero can just be seen as a darker blue area between the "legs" of the number 3.  In person, one can also make out the needle marks left over from when the original numbers were removed and the 3-4-5 were substituted.  This was well before the days of stick-on numbers and insignia.

The sail still carries the golden circle-M insignia that was awarded to the World Champion in those days to replace the red M within the blue circle.  The National Champion was awarded a silver circle-M.  In 1963 Bill won both but naturally used the gold insignia.

Although the dagger board and original rudder could not be immediately found in Bill's workshop, the original spars survive. Sadly, like the hull, they are in poor condition.  As seen above the boom is cracked all the way through both sides from the stress of the loads imposed by this fiddle block which is part of the original center traveler main sheet system.  Two separate blocks spaced a few inches apart would have spread the load and perhaps prevented this failure.  The mast is similarly cracked at the gooseneck area.  Both spars are useful only as patterns.

Yes, I'm carefully labeling things as I disassemble hardware from the boat.