Art, Beetle Cats, Model A Fords, more Art, old cannons, Moby Dick, Lobster rolls--a busy day out.

My head is spinning just thinking about the busy itinerary which former Moth Boater Clayton Fuller had lined up for us on the Monday morning of our Cape Cod adventure.  Recall that Clayton, who will turn 95 this November, sent me the 8mm movie clip of Moth Boats racing down at Miami YC in the mid-1950s and also the lovely old Egyptian cotton Moth sail a few months ago.  We met Clayton at his home in Wareham and quickly got on the road for a busy day of guided touring.  Clayton first took us to a park in the town of Onset where he showed us his "Aquene"

Clayton Fuller shows Elisabeth his bronze statue of "Aquene".  The statue, dedicated in 1989, was at first controversial due to the bare breast presentation.  Attempts to clothe Aquene, including a bra which Clayton still has in his collection of Aquene artifacts, where part of the early reaction to this work of art.  Clayton indicated that things have since calmed down and Aquene enjoys the passage of the seasons unmolested.

Next on tap, Clayton guided us to the Beetle Boat Company, formerly located in Padanarum,  Massachusetts is now located in Wareham.

Michelle graciously took the time to give us a very thorough tour of the Beetle Boat Shop.

In the fall the Beetle boat shop collects customer's Beetle Cats and cleans and stores them over the winter in a pair of sheds.  There were several hundred Beetle Cats "resting" for the winter on the day when we visited.  More were coming.  I need a boat house like this!  Click to enlarge the photos.

The boats are cleaned and the centerboards and rudders are removed for painting and varnishing.  Each blade is tagged for return to the proper boat in the spring.

Here is the work room where spars are sanded and revarnished.

Along with building and maintaining Beetle Cats, the Beetle Company also builds custom boats like this Herreshoff Alerion.  The Lyman lapstrake runabout is in for winter storage and maintenance.

Another shed full of Beetle Cats waiting for spring.

One of the employees is building this peapod on his spare time.  She's reminiscent of a Beetle Whale Boat.

A close up of the peapod showing the clamps used to hold planks in place during shaping and fastening.  The shop had that wonderful smell of cedar.

Need a cedar skiff?  Beetle will make one for you.

We enjoyed our visit to the Beetle Boat Shop but it was time to move on.  Clayton had many things for us to see before the sun set.  He directed us to the town of Marion to see his son-in-law's A-model Ford trucks.

Clayton's son-in-law Charlie with two of his three model A trucks.  The truck on the left was restored from a derelict which had been buried by a falling tree and left under it for many years.  This truck spent its entire life in the eastern Massachusetts area.  The Model AA on the right came from Montana.  Both have been restored to Apple Pie order.  Charlie also has an A-model roadster pick-up which he refers to as his "summer car".

Next Clayton took us to the Millicent Library in nearby Fairhaven.  This library, built in the Italian Renaissance-style, was donated to the town by Henry H. Rogers, a nineteenth century industrialist in memory of his daughter Millicent who died at age seventeen in the year 1890. Millicent was fond of poetry and so her father decided that a library would be a fitting memorial.  Mark Twain visited the Millicent and described it as the "ideal library".  More can be found here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millicent_Library

The Millicent Library

The Millicent library houses a collection of memorabilia from the rescue of Manjiro Nakahama in 1841 by a Fairhaven whaleship.  Manjiro eventually returned to Japan.  A very interesting account of Manjiro's story can be read here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakahama_Manjir%C5%8D  The samurai sword on display is a replacement for one presented to the library by a descendant of Manjiro in the early 20th century.  The original sword was stolen from the library in 1977.

The library has a fine collection of Geisha dolls.  Here is a representative example.

This stained glass window shows us a depiction of Millicent Rogers portraying Erato the Muse of Poetry.  Note the carved paneling.  This, friends, is one special library.

This statue of the Messenger of Love by Caroni was first displayed at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 (aka the Chicago World's Fair).

Column detail.  My library back home isn't like this!

We could have stayed all day at the library but the sun was waning and it was time to move on and see other wonders on Clayton's agenda of which I'll relate on my next post.

A quick trip to old Cape Cod

Ah, old Cape Cod, the land of quaint "thickly settled" villages on narrow curvy roads, lovely old buildings, clam shacks, chowder, Pilgrims and, during the summer months, soul destroying traffic jams on those quaint,narrow, curvy roads.  Your diarist prefers the "off season".  Lodging is cheaper and many (but as we shall see, not all) things are still open.  Diaristwoman had a couple days off from the school where she works and so we decided to stretch that into a long weekend and head up to the Cape.  We left on Saturday morning in the midst of a Halloween Nor'easter--rain lashing down and temperatures falling.  The weather progs were bleating about significant snow accumulations but we went anyway figuring we'd be close enough to the coast to miss the white stuff.  We got to about Newark, New Jersey and the rain transitioned into snow.  Traffic slowed to a crawl as we approached the George Washington bridge which leads into NYC.  Long story short, the snow did make the roads greasy and people were doing stupid stuff with automobiles but by the time we got to the Connecticut/Rhode Island border the snow switched back to rain and remained in that state all the way to the Cape.  The slow pace gave diaristwoman plenty of time to research lodging and we eventually called in at the "Earl of Sandwich" motel in East Sandwich, Massachusetts.  After the long drive, the highlight of the day was a fine dinner at a restaurant over at nearby Mashpee Commons called "Bleu". The chef is irresistibly named Fredric Feufeu.   Bleu us not cheap, we dropped a cool Benjamin with Chef Feufeu, but we highly recommend it.  And yes, Gunnar, evenings at truly great restaurants are part of why diaristwoman lets me accumulate a backyard full of Moth Boats.  You can check out Bleu here: www.bleurestaurant.com

 Sunday morning dawned grey and rainy.  Although the Cape missed the snows that indeed did fall west of route I-95, it got the full brunt of the winds which were also associated with this early snow storm.  Gusts during the night and up to mid-morning were in the 50 to 60 MPH range.  We were almost the only ones staying at the Earl of Sandwich Saturday night, but by the time we returned Sunday evening from a dash to the outer Cape the joint was jumping, mostly with locals staying at the motel (which still had electricity) after losing power at home.  But enough of power outages--what did we see that day as we drove out to the fist end of the Cape?  To start off with, we took route 6A, which runs along the north shore of the Cape rather than the faster but less scenic route 6 which runs through the middle of the Cape.  Route 6A is that typical narrow, winding Cape Cod style road which would be perfect in my Bugeye sprite but requires restraint as it goes through small villages such as Barnstable.  Sadly the shoulder-less. two lane road didn't provide many good places to  pull over for photography along the way, but in truth, the rain discouraged exiting the car for photo ops as well.  In the village of Truro we stopped at Truro Vinyards and sampled their offerings: trurovinyardsofcapecod.com  Refreshed, we carried on toward Race Point which is just north of Provincetown.

Approaching Race Point.  One can see the wildness of the dunes and the buckling of the road surface.  In many places the tarmac was well covered with sand.  Don't forget to click on the photos for larger views.

By the time we got to Race Point the rain had stopped but the wind was still up.  The sea was boiling.  We attempted to go for a walk along the beach but were immediately driven back to the car by the sand blasting we received as soon as we opened the door.

Herring Cove is a clothing optional beach.  No doubt something of a showplace in summer.  There were no Moth Boats to distract your diarist this day.

 Another look at the dunes and shattered roads along the outer Cape.

Looking across the dunes one can see the Pilgrim tower which is in the middle of "downtown" Provincetown.

Zooming in on the tower.  It kinda reminds me of the Bromo-seltzer tower in Baltimore!  See if you don't agree:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson_Bromo-Seltzer_Tower

Finally, we leave you with a look at Wood End Light, one of three lighthouses found at the outer end of Cape Cod.  I'll continue with more of our Cape Cod adventure in the next post.  Stay tuned.

Missing identity

Readers of this blog spot no doubt appreciate my addiction to all things Moth Boat and Europe Dinghy related.  One little mystery that I've failed to work out is the identity of the builder of my all wood Europe dinghy, GYPSY.  A previous owner thought that she was built in Italy but offered no proof to back up that assumption.  I'm fairly confident that my boat is NOT a Roland or a Christalli (the excellent craftsman who took over Roland's shop in Belgium) for reasons which I will advance in the following photos of both GYPSY and a genuine Roland-built boat.

First, let us exam a boat known to be a Roland

Note the athwart-ship frames running across the cockpit sole of this boat.  The aft one serves as an attachment point for the hiking straps.

Here we have GYPSY prior to her restoration.  Note the absence of those athwart-ship frame elements.  Instead GYPSY sports a pair of  fore and aft stringers on either side of the timber keel which the Roland-built boat does not have.  Another distinctive feature between this boat and the Roland is the shape of the hatch cut out in the main bulkhead: triangular on GYPSY and rectangular/oval on the Roland. Finally, although not visible in this photo, GYPSY's toe straps terminate at a clam cleat on the keel just ahead of the transom. Thanks in advance for any help identifying the builder of this boat!

Skol! (Rondar Skol, that is...)

No, not Skol, as in the traditional Swedish toast, or Skol like in snus (snuff to English speakers) as in "just a pinch between the cheek and gum".  No, this Skol is the name given to a Moth Boat designed in Britain and built by Rondar Boat Works when they did business in New Milton, Hants.  To make a long story short, last Saturday was fall work day at the Brigantine Yacht Club and after  floating docks were broken down and hoisted out of the water, hoses drained, race committee boats tidied up for winter shrink wrapping, etc. your diarist had a bit of time on his hands and so I met up with a friend who knew of a Moth that wanted liberating from her long period of slumber.

This was my first view of Moth Nr 4065.  She was leaning against the side of a garage building and appeared, from the layer of grunge, to have been undisturbed for many winters.

Here she is flopped down on her keel.  Love the pine needles trapped under the 'whales.

Her owner (from new) told me that the boat had been picked up by a wind storm and dropped onto dock pilings.  I can believe it.  This photo, while representative, doesn't begin to show all the damage to the decks and bulkheads.

Here's a view from the stern.  This boat is clearly crying out for some TLC.

The builder's tag is missing part of the Boat Work's name.  She was built by Rondar Boats Ltd. doing business in those days on Stem Lane in the town of New Milton in Hampshire.  Rondar is still in business but at a different location.  I ought to write them to see if they can supply an intact builder's tag with the old address.

Well, what can I say?  I'm a sucker for a Moth Boat what's down on her luck.  I made the owner an offer and he took it.  The hull was promptly loaded on my trusty Volvo's roof racks and off we went to Maryland.  On the way back to Maryland every time I touched the brakes, brown murky rain water gushed from the holes in the deck onto my windscreen!  After arriving home she was a good deal lighter than went we hoisted her up to the roof racks!  A few days later I decided to wash as much of the filth as possible off the hull to see what I'd purchased.

After a vigorous bath she looks great from 10 feet away! She doesn't look like the same boat does she? I love the Swedish flag blue.

The Mk I Skol has a very fine entry and less rocker than either a Duflos or a Mistral.  Also, towards the transom she's as round as an apple and thus trickier to sail than the Mistral design which flattens out towards the transom.  The difference is that when these two designs heel, the Mistral gives her pilot a few vital seconds to mend his evil ways before going for a swim.  The Skol on the other hand is much less forgiving: once she starts to roll she keeps right on going!  And that ultra fine entry is also a mixed blessing.  Yes it knifes through the chop with the greatest of ease but it lacks the buoyancy of a fuller bow shape and thus is some what prone to "submarining" down wind when a big gust hits the rig.

Washing a boat gives one the opportunity to really see what's what.  Here we find a puncture in the bottom near the transom that wants mending.  Also visible in this photo is evidence (extreme lip of the hull) that the boat was dragged along the beach during launchings.

Here is a repair of an ancient war wound--evidence of a port/starboard encounter at some long  forgotten regatta.

Yes, the gel coat is rougher than what the photos suggest.  Indeed there are lots of gouges and deep scratches, lumps and bumps but there are no soft spots in the laminate so this hull is worth the effort to breathe back into life.  The next step will be to flip her over and remove the deck hardware in preparation for new decks a la Joe Bousquet's famous roll tank deck system: http://www.mothboat.com/Building/bousquet.html  Stay tuned.

Annapolis Sailboat Show

Columbus Day weekend marks the annual in the water sailboat show in Annapolis, Maryland.  The following weekend is given over to an in the water show for powerboats.  Your Diarist and diaristwoman enjoy the show regardless of the weather.  This year the weather couldn't have been nicer:  mild temps and sunny with a slight, cooling breeze.  Unlike previous years we parked at the Annapolis High School instead of the Navy-Marine Corps Stadium.  The Stadium is where boat show visitors usually park and then ride shuttle buses to the dock area in the old park of town.  This year the Stadium parking lot was filled with "tail-gaters" doing their thing prior to a home Navy football game.  So it was over the the high school to catch the same school buses to the docks.  As can be imagined, Annapolis traffic was rockin' with both the boat show and a Navy home game going on at the same time.

Don't even think about parking downtown during boat show season.  Just go to one of the remote lots and ride the shuttle bus.

Diaristwoman had prepurchased our tickets at the boat show's website so we went to the head of the queue, showed our preprinted tickets, got wristbands and breezed in with minimum fuss.  I love it when stuff like that actually works.

We concentrate mostly on the small boats and the vendor's tents.  E. liked this "little" Herreshoff H-121/2.

My bride has a good eye!  Sadly, even this little boat exceeds your diarist's pocketbook.  I'll stick with Moth Boats!

The boat show exudes a carnival-like atmosphere.  There are lots of demonstrators hawking polishes, glues, odd tools, hardware etc. Here is a sampling:

Of course there are big boats in the water.  I used to go aboard these luxury yachts but don't bother any more.

This one costs more than most people's homes.

In comparison, these seem almost reasonable!

The boat show stands common logic on it's ear.  This sign is the reverse of the ones I more usually encounter which state something along the lines of "No shoes, no service".

When you're done gawking at how rich people live and come off the boat, the rule of thumb is if you can't find your shoes at least get a good pair.

A new and warmly received addition to this year's boat show was the Hendrick's Gin barge.

Free drinks!  What's not to like?

I'm hoping that Mt. Gay Rum takes note of this and steps up to the challenge next year!

After being refreshed by the Hendrick's folks, we took another stroll through the small boats and spotted several nice dinghies, canoes and other small boats.

I can't imagine the number of hours required to varnish, let alone build this lovely canoe.

Details from the  canoe shown in the previous photo:  m'lady's cane bottomed seat.

Another canoe, this one has a small sailing rig.

A local Annapolis builder, Chesapeake Light Craft, had one of their "Pocket Ships" in the water.  This design is perhaps the largest offering from this company, better known for it's line of kayaks and canoes in kit form.

After one last look around, we made our way towards the exit.  The dome of the Maryland State House is currently shrouded for painting.

Tenth Annual Carl Patterson Regatta: Chestertown, Maryland

Carl Patterson (right), with his older brother Harold building a Skip Etchells "Connecticut" design Moth circa mid-1950s. The boy with the lively expression is Harold's son Craig.  Family photo courtesy of Nancy  Patterson Tidy.

Carl Patterson was instrumental in establishing the Moth Class at his home club, the Yacht Club of Sea Isle City, New Jersey during the the 1950s and '60s.  Carl built boats not only for his children/relatives but also for other club members as well.  Carl passed away in 1968 but his memory is celebrated each October when Classic Moth Boats come to Chestertown, MD to race at a regatta organized by his son Bob at the Chester River Yacht and Country Club.

Bill and Shane Boyle rig up prior to the Skipper's Meeting.

Two weeks after the Nationals, those of us who attended this year's Carl Patterson Regatta had even more wind and cooler temperatures than we'd seen in Elizabeth City.  At least the expected rain held off until later that night. John Pugh and I were waffling back and forth on whether or not to try our "big" sail experiment, by entering our Europes in the Gen II division with the Europe Class-legal "fat head" sails instead of using the CMBA's "pin head" sail and sticking with our usual Generation I division assignment, but I reasoned that the 120 lb elite women who originally sailed our boats in the Olympics only had a big sail to race with and they survived. With that in mind, we shouldn't think too deeply about the BIG gusts which were singing through the flagpole halyards while we were rigging up on the beach and just get on with it. And, so we did.

This photo gives a good comparison between the slightly larger Europe Class sail (Nr 110) and the CMBA-legal sail carried on the following boat (Nr 64).  Click to enlarge the photo.

For those not familiar with the Europe Dinghy, that boat started life as the "Europa" Moth design back in the early 1960s.  When newer Moth designs made the Europa obsolete, the Moth Sailors in North-Western Europe broke away from the Moth Class and formed a separate strict one-design class around that particular design.  (Moths are sort of like religious denominations--there are a number of splinter groups...)  Later, the Europe Dinghy, as it was then called was selected as the single-hander boat for women in the Olympics and served in that capacity for four Olympic Games starting with the Barcelona Games in '92 and finishing with the Athens Games in 2004.  Since the 2004 Olympics the Europe Dinghy has been replaced by the Laser Radial Dinghy and because of this a clutch of excellent Europe Dinghies were offered for sale at fire sale prices.  The majority of those boats have been recycled back to being Classic Moths by substituting a CMBA-legal sail for the Europe Class item.

During the time of the break away, the Europe Class introduced a number of improvements to the boat, including an update of the sail shape.  Europe sails still fit Classic Moth spars but the Europe sail has a much more efficient shape, particularly at the head of the sail compared with the ancient "pin-head" shape retained by the Classic Moth Class.  This can be seen in the photo above.  At present, the Europe Dinghy sails as a Classic Moth in our Generation I division, providing the boat remains at the stock weight of 99 lb and carries a CMBA-legal sail.  Compared to the fastest designs in the CMBA's Generation II division, the Europe suffers by being heavier (99 lb vs 75 lb) and by having more wetted surface than designs such as the Mistral, Duflos, and Skol.  John Pugh and I wanted to know if the more efficient Europe sail would off-set the weight and wetted surface penalties with which the better behaved Europe design suffers.  We reasoned that the combination of a better sail and a good skipper might allow the Europe to punch above her weight.

An additional twist in this year's Carl Patterson Regatta was that 6 former Moth skippers, none of whom had set foot in a tippy Moth Boat in about 50 years, were planning to come spectate.  Instead, Bob, operating under the conviction that it's better to race than merely watch, got several of us to bring extra boats to loan out to the "geezer" fleet.  We had three loaner boats for six skippers so a "round robin" series was cooked up with the six skippers rotating through the three loaner boats.  That all looked good on paper but the wind had its own ideas, which I explain directly.

John Pugh gingerly tests the conditions during the early going, no doubt wondering if my notion of using bigger sails for this event was one of my better ideas--or just another fine mess that I'd talked him into!

After rigging the boats and attending the Skipper's Meeting we started to launch into the Chester River.  The wind was blowing around 15 mph out of the NW with gusts just a touch under 20 mph.  A lot of big boat sailors scoff at this amount of breeze but let me tell you something: in Moth Boats, when the wind strength starts to approach 20 mph, with harsh, unpredictable gusts tossed in, these little boats get seriously physical!  After sailing out to the starting area I told myself that conditions didn't seem that bad.  Of course right after thinking that thought, I flipped!  The river water temps in early October are still "refreshing" so that wasn't too bad.  The bad part was that during the capsize I managed to break the hold-down mechanism on my rudder.  This allowed the rudder blade to float like a pop-tart which in turn made the boat uncontrollable.   The upshot of this is that I missed the first race (taking max penalty points) while I floundered around attempting to lash down that *%&!@## rudder blade with  my bow line--a great start to my big sail experiment!

Rudder repairs!

Diaristwoman was the PRO for the race committee and she later remarked that she didn't know whether to score me as "DNS" or "DNF" because while hanging off the end of the boat putzing with the rudder I did actually drift across the starting line to the on-course side.  I suppose I should be thankful that she didn't mark me down as "DSQ" for that race!  Meanwhile, I did manage to get the rudder to "sort of" stay in the down position, but with even a small amount of backwards rake in the blade from vertical, the boat acquires a massive amount of weather helm. At least I was able to sail the boat in the next two races with  4th and 3rd place finishes.  At the lunch break John Pugh produced a length of thin, hi-tech line and with that, he and I were able to make a more effective repair for the remaining two races of the day.  While I was struggling with the rudder, the rest of the fleet was engaging in various bits of drama as well with several capsizes, swamped boats, car keys lost overboard, etc.  Did I mention the winds were strong?

Bottoms Up!

Swamped Shelley during race 2.

Mud on the head of the sail after this boat turtled during a capsize.  Moth masts are about 16 or so feet above deck.  We now know the depth of the Chester River in the racing area off the Club's dock!

Ben Tice flipped and swamped and lost his truck key during the early going.  Much to his credit, he bailed the boat out and continued racing while waiting for a locksmith to arrive.  The boat is my son Erik's former racer "FLIPPER"--a most appropriate name for this yacht!  FLIPPER is a Challenger design Moth from the mid-1950s.  Challenger Marine Corp. was an early leader in using the then new fiberglass technology on a production scale.

So, was the Europe sail experiment a success? I will grade it a qualified success. The busted rudder muddies the water a bit but by the end of the day I was second to Mike Parsons although he was steadily pulling away from me as that particular race wound down. I need another chance to race with that sail to learn how to shape it while sailing. For example, I discovered late in the day that I had way too much vang on.

At the end of the day Mike Parsons was first and Bob Patterson was second in Generation II, while Victor Stango was first and Bill Boyle was second in the Generation I division.

And what of our "Geezers", none of whom had stepped into a Moth Boat in almost 50 years only to be thrown into unfamiliar boats on a VERY windy day? They were impressive! Although the swamped boats and retirements due to gear failure don't permit a full and fair analysis, from what I was able to observe, Frank Adshead, John Hilferty, John Leonard  Harvey Ludlam and brothers Brian and Kevin McAnaney still have fire in their bellies. Harvey took the Geezer prize--don't ask me about Bob's convoluted calculus for making that determination--but I can say that during the last race in which I finished 2nd to Mike Parsons, Harvey was sailing my wooden Europe Gypsy (so he and I were in equivalent hulls) but he didn't have my advantage of a fat head Europe sail. Even so, he camped out on my transom the whole race and if I'd have made one mistake he'd have rolled me! So hat's off to the geezer fleet. I hope we'll see some of them get Moth Boats over the winter and come back next season.

Just like that group photo of the Browns Mills sailors which I posted a while back: http://mid-atlanticmusings.blogspot.com/2011/05/browns-mills-yacht-club-trophy.html

From left to right: Bob Patterson, John Leonard, Brian McAnaney, Harvey Ludlam, Frank Adshead, Mike Parsons (holding large trophy), Bill Boyle, John Hilferty, Shane Boyle, Kevin McAnaney, your diarist and Victor Stango.