What I did on my summer vaca: Part 2.

After loading the boat on my wagon,  Sandy and his wife Suzanne treated us to lunch (Thanks!).  We then took a look at the Viking exhibition.  The artifacts are on loan from Sweden until this September.  After that they move to another museum in Washington state.  The exhibit hall was dimly lighted and these pix although not the best, provide a taste of the exhibits.

Afterwards. Sandy and Suzanne heading back to Massachusetts and we sought out our motel for the night.  The next day dawned bright and sunny with temps in the agreeable mid-70 range.  We returned to Mystic Seaport for the first day of the Wooden Boat show.  The following pix provide a small look at the various boats on display.  One of the nice perks of visiting the Viking exhibit late in the day was that our admission tickets were validated for the following day, which was the first day of the wooden boat show.

Big boats.

Smaller boats

We finally got to meet Lynn and Dale Cottrell.  Dale built a pair of Moths based on the MINT design which can be seen here and here and here

Details of one of Cottrell's rowing dinghies.

Beautiful work.  Love the copper rivets.

Who couldn't use a 10 gauge starting canon from time to time?

This guy had a variety of models to choose from.

The Landing School had one of their boats on display.

A nice Lyman.  These were quite popular along the Jersey shore when I was growing up.

Nothing better than being able to dock your whale ship out the back door...  The Charles W. Morgan is the only surviving whale ship out of around 2700 which were built and sailed during the mid-half of the 19th century.  She is designated as a National Historic Landmark.  Maybe that ought to be "Seamark".

Bow shot of the Morgan.

Mystic Seaport has a lot of period correct buildings.  Here we have the Ye olde banque building.  Even back in the whaling days banks were substantial. 

The Spouter Tavern--now we're getting somewhere.

Sadly they weren't open at 9 am.

You could get religion before boarding your whale ship.

Back at the vendor's tents Lou Sauzedde (left, white t-shirt) was touching on the finer points of the sports dory he was building under the auspicious of Jamestown Distributors.

This dory although planked in a traditional manner features high density plastic frames.  The youtube videos for this Total Boat project are up to episode 27 or so but you can start off with episode 1 here.  Lou also did a couple wood boat show videos that are here and here.

Williams College, in collaboration with Mystic Seaport had this paper mache whale to advertise the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies program.

These guys were selling drill bits and cut off tools that could go through stainless steel plate, rocks, you name just like butter.  Every boat show has a display like this!

Speaking of Wooden Boat--here's the magazine's tent.  Yeah, I broke down and bought a t-shirt.

This little Beetle Cat caught my eye.

And of course there were vendors selling old marine hardware and other bits and bobs.

Need a slick or a broad axe?  This guy had 'em.

More nice junque.

Maybe you're in the market for mast hoops.  Here they are, finest kind.  Well, maybe not since these are marked as "seconds".

But then, maybe your supply of wooden cleats is running low.  Fix ya right up, shipmate.  I was proud of myself--my wallet stayed firmly in my pocket as I passed all these tempting tents.

Every direction one turned there was another interesting boat.

Silent Maid was up from Bay Head, New Jersey.

The women in the dory, the bow of which can be seen, were singing a work chantey.  The three people in the dory which is broad side to our view were hauling a net in time to the singing.

"Heave away, mateys".  Don't know if they caught enough for supper or not.

Some of the Beetle Cat fleet in the mooring field.

An electric launch.

Looking back at Mystic Seaport from the docks.  The mixture of permanent displays in the various buildings would be too much to take in during a single day even without the extra hub-bub of the wood boat show.

We barely scratched the surface.

We walked on to see a few of the other exhibits which were not part of the show but rather part of the museum itself.

This engine makes a lofty 135 horse power, weighs 10 tonnes and displaces 67 liters!

A large ship's saw.

Storage racks for air drying timber.

The Mayflower II is down from Plymouth Plantation for a restoration by the Museum's staff.

I think part of the cost of restoration of the Mayflower II is being underwritten by the H. B. du Pont foundation.

Mayflower II planking.

Can you say massive?

An old dory used on the Grand Banks.

The Jerky Hut--truly something for everyone.

This geodesic version of a Wee Lassie canoe was interesting

She's skinned with dacron cloth

No doubt quite light.

I just liked this view. I stopped and looked for a while.  It's restful.  You're welcome.  The day grew late and we still needed to stop in New London and pick up our two new Moth sails from Kevin Farrar.

Here is one of the sails on the loft floor.  Hopefully they will prove competitive.  Rain was in the forecast for later that night so we didn't hang around.  I wanted to keep that old boat dry and the plastic sheeting was already starting to rip here and there.

We did make it to Brigantine just as the first drops were falling.  I was able to get good tarps out of the garage and get the boat covered before the heavens opened up.

After we returned home to Maryland I got the Cates into my boat house above Blondie and Mint.  I'll update my progress as the restoration moves along.

We did other stuff with our remaining vacation time.

But I'll not bore you with that.

What I did on my summer vaca: Part One

The last two weeks of June were busy-busy for your old diarist.  First a Classic Moth regatta to prepare for (both as a competitor and as an organizer).  After that there were new sails to pick up in New London, Connecticut, plus a Moth to pick up.  These two errands coincided with the annual wooden boat show at the Mystic Seaport Museum.  I'll being with the 27th annual Brigantine YC Moth Boat Regatta.

Photos are in short supply for this event as one of my usual photographers was busy studying for a test and her mother was busy preparing lunch for Moth Regatta competitors.  But you've seen most of the boats already.

Ten boats showed up to race.  Three in the Gen II division and seven in Gen I.  No vintage Moths raced this time.

We planned for the first signal to sound at 10:30am. But the bay still looked v. glassy at that point.

So we postponed for a half hour's time and mostly sat around on the porch.

Limp sails

More of the same.

Finally, around 11am, the sea breeze started rustling.

And that's about it for photo documentation of this event.  After the first race in light conditions, the sea breeze did fill in as promised, and with enough strength to cause one rig collapse and one goose neck failure.  So, all in all, a good regatta.

Well, I do have this shot of the Gen II winner, Joe Bousquet, holding the perpetual trophy.  Note to self: next year avoid having the windows of the new clubhouse behind the peeps in the pix.

My son Erik won the Gen I award.  I tied for 2nd but lost on the tie breaker.  That's show business. 

After the regatta diaristfamily relaxed for a few days, then diaristson and daughter returned to work and school.  Diaristwoman and I prepared for the next event in our vacation: driving up to Connecticut to (a). pick up an old Harry Cates-built Moth which had been offered to me, (b). go to Mystic Seaport and take in the exhibit of rare Viking era artifacts which were on loan from Uppsala, (c). go to the wooden boat show, also at Mystic, the next day and finally, (d). pick up our new sails from Kevin Farrar in New London.  Lots of moving parts.

We'll start off with that Cates-built, Cates-designed Moth Boat.

 A period photo of Sandy Renna sailing Renegade, Nr 1999 at his home waters, Spray BeachYC.

Sandy and his younger sister at the yacht club docks.  Renegade is a word play based on his surname.   These two photos date to the late 1950s or early 1960s

 Sandy received the boat as a Christmas gift from his parents in 1958.  They purchased the boat directly from Harry Cates.  Sandy sailed the boat for the next several years with both local club and major regatta success.  He graduated high school in 1962 and due to working that summer didn't get back into the boat until late in the racing season.  Never the less he was able to win the Junior division of the North America Championship, held that year at Ocean City YC.  When Sandy went off to college, his parents decided to sell the beach house in Spray Beach.  The sale included the furniture and contents of the garage--including Renegade.  Sandy didn't like it but that was his parent's decision.

Scroll forward a few years.  Sandy, now finished with his education decided to go back to Spray Beach and take a look at the old family stomping grounds.  As he drove by his former summer home he saw his old boat in the driveway!  After stopping and talking with the current owner he discovered two things: (1). the boat was still more or less intact, missing only the standing rigging which the current owner pirated off the mast to fix a broken garage door lifting wire, and (2). the current owner was getting ready to donate the boat to a local open air museum.  Sandy and the owner quickly came to terms and the boat returned to her first owner.  Sandy moved the boat to his home in Massachusetts and contacted me asking questions about various repair issues.  This was perhaps 20 years ago.  Since then I had often wondered if Sandy had gotten the boat sailing again but hadn't heard from him until this spring when he told me he wanted to move his old friend on to someone who would actually fix the boat and get her sailing again.  I agreed to take the project on.  Since I was coming up to pick up sails and also attend the Wooden Boat show at the Mystic Seaport Museum we agreed to meet at one of the Museum's big parking lots.

The boat had been stripped of her varnish and since the weather forecast seemed iffy, Sandy decided to wrap the boat in plastic sheeting.

After a bit of back and forth cell phone calling we found one another.  We moved the hull from Sandy's Honda to my Volvo without incident.

The boat came with her original spars, blades and sails.

Along with the major parts of the boat, Sandy gave me a small zip lock bag containing many of the hand made, boat specific hardware items such as chain plates, splash board brackets, and so on that hark back to a time when "off the shelf" items for small racing dinghies were not readily available.  In the late 1950s companies such as Race-Lite and Rolledge were just in their infancy and companies such as Harken and Rodstan didn't exist.  A wonderful find in the bottom of the bag was Harry Cates' little black builder's tag.  With the boat transfer complete we went into the Museum to check out the Viking artifact exhibition.  I'll talk about that in the next post.

Weldwood

This past weekend I sold one of my Moths that needed a full rehab and I hadn't gotten around to doing that.  The buyer had owned a boat just like the one I had so I sold him back his childhood.  He left a happy man.  While I was waiting for him to arrive I took one last detailed look at the old dear and rediscovered a small decal just forward of the cockpit:

"WATERPROOF WELDWOOD".  Weldwood was an early trade name of the United States Plywood Corporation for it's marine grade plywood.  How that decal has survived almost 70 years of sanding, re-varnishing and benign neglect is mind boggling.  But never the less, there it is.  A tiny bit of the forgotten history of waterproof plywood.  This boat was proudly built from a quality material and its manufacturer clearly wanted people to know.