After several months of dedicated effort, the Schooner Hindu was returned to the water in Key West today, very exciting news! I only post this notice because the news has not yet hit the official blog, which I told you to follow some time ago. Judging from the pictures on facebook they are either recovering or still partying, in the grand tradition of Key West and wooden shipbuilders the world over.
The 1925 William Hand bald-headed schooner has been a mainstay in Provincetown, MA for 50 years, and is credited with starting whale-watching tours out of that port. I understand the it has been greatly missed the last couple years, and I am sure it will be warmly welcomed back this summer. It was laid up and neglected in Key West because of some financial misunderstanding or other, until some foolish friends of mine decided to step in and save it. They are remarkable folks, most of the time, and managed to turn the 59’ 11 and 1/2” boat around in record time. Great praise and congratulations are due!
I am sure soon enough you will be able to find much more info on Bonnie Rowan’s blog, svrowan.wordpress.com, which chronicles her various projects and enviable lifestyle. (But if you sometimes just want to run away to the Caribbean, maybe you should not expose yourself to temptation.)
Now maybe they can get to that boat they left in my barn…
Good news! I recently received an invitation to a party for the re-opening of South Street Seaport Museum in lower Manhattan. The goings-on down there have been pretty mysterious for the last few months, but it looks like they will be opening back up after all, though there are still lots of questions. If you haven’t been following this at all, the basic story is this: South Street Seaport was New York City’s maritime museum and tall ship livery, located just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. It closed due to poor management last year, and then was taken over by the Museum of the City of New York. No one knew what that was going to mean for either museum or for the thousand-odd-feet of historic vessels. In November, MCNY announced that it would re-open South Street with 20,000 square feet of new exhibits in January 2012. They hired some new staff, or rather MCNY did for South Street, and presumably they didn’t have much of a Christmas break. Haven’t heard much from them, and I don’t know anyone in the maritime heritage community that is working with MCNY. So I am very curious what this invitation-only, 800-person event will consist of. There is now some coverage of what will be on display, such as an exhibit of photographs of the Occupy Wall Street protests. I also know they have reached out to the on-water arts community in NYC. So, it sounds like they are re-branding a bit as a museum of Lower Manhattan and also intend to show where traditional watercraft land in other cultural movements, all of which is encouraging. As for the ships, who knows. There are rumors that some may be sold, like the 377’ barque Peking, but on that I have no info. A good way to keep tabs on the ship collection is the Save Our Seaport blog.
South Street Seaport is open to the public on Thursday morning the 26th of January, and you should go. Let me know what you find out.
In Seattle we have known for some time that Neil Young’s 101’ Baltic topsail schooner W.N. Ragland was for sale. She is moored out on Bainbridge Island in the Sound, awaiting her next assignment. I enjoyed this profile of her in the latest issue of Yachting, in which her unique aesthetic is described, aptly, as “Haight-Ashbury-hippie-pad-meets-Swiss-Family-Robinson-treehouse.”
Although, I am actually more interested in Young’s other classic, Meteor, which is now up in Port Townsend. Meteor was designed and built in Seattle by Jensen Boat Co in 1938. It is a kind of a wild boat, very streamlined and styled like something out of Metropolis. The boat is often described as having been “ahead of her time,” but thats not actually true in most ways. Lots of runabouts were designed with that streamlined, double-ended look in the 20s and 30s, probably inspired by Gold Cup speed boats of the 1920s like Baby Bootlegger. The credit for that style really goes to George Crouch, who designed Bootlegger and similar boats. Unfortunately, I don’t think Jensen really looked at Bootlegger’s lines; if they did they would have realized that the point in the stern was actually just to carry the rudder post aft of the planing surface, and that there was a step that the stern rode on. Meteor was originally designed with a double-ended planing surface, which didn’t exactly work out. Those “wings” were added to correct the design defect.
Still, it is a stylish boat, and I like that. So is Ragland, and I especially appreciate yachtsmen with such diverse tastes. Way to go, Neil.
I heard a really cool anectdote about the Morgan’s restoration from a freind this morning, and found more info on the blog above. Apparently, many futtocks and other timbers being used in the restoration of the ship are almost as old as the ship itself. That may seem ill-advised, but these timbers came from a 100+ year-old timber basin, also called a “pickling pond.”
These were shallow ponds in shipyards where fresh-cut wood was left to soak in heavily salted water. This cured the wood so that it would resist rot, while also allowing it to “take up” to the moisture content which would be inevitable once the ship was in the water. This particular timber basin was covered over many years ago, and was uncovered by contractors building a parking garage recently near Charleston Naval Shipyard north of Boston.
You can read more on the blog above, and see pictures at the bottom of the page.
That damn winch was a pain, far too heavy for my forklift. Luckily GHHSA has a spar shop to support the vessels Lady Washington and Hawaiin Cheiftan (as seen in Pirates of the Caribbean) and was able to bring some good rollers. I enjoy moving immovable objects, but after horsing that load of iron around by myself a few times I let the GHHSA boys figure out how to load it on the trailer.
I focused on inventorying the 6 pallet boxes of blocks, rigging screws, and other hardware that made up the second trailer load. Quite a haul for one day! Coming soon, maybe, to a theater near you.
Deborah Bach came out to our site last week while the lead rigger and shipwright working on the C.A. Thayer in San Francisco were there to pick up blocks and hardware for the restoration. Thayer is a sister-ship to Wawona, and is owned by San Francisco Maritime Heritage National Park, operated by the National Park Service.
Well this ought to heat things up.
