Don't Tell Francis

Now that the keel is in place the job becomes putting the skipjack back together with a mind to never having to do another restoration. Jack spends hours cleaning everything he can from the planking throughout. Even slivers of wood fallen between planks can complicate the swelling that must happen when the skipjack returns overboard. It is the swelling that finally makes her seaworthy again.

Jack is bursting with notions -- which is not unusual -- of what can fill the chinks. The last I heard he had taken to discarded pillows.

That is all I know about that.

Here is a video about how the re-fitting of the puzzle is coming along. In the video are Carpenter James Laws, Captain Jack Russell and Shipwright Benjamin Goddard.



(no endorsement of any other YouTube videos are made .... blogger.com just has issues with direct uploads .... this is just a disclaimer)

A half-inch must be OK. U.S. Coast Guard visited again yesterday to keep tabs and again approved of the work done.

A New Keel

This is what the shipwrights found beneath the flooring of the aft cabin -- photos by Jim Laws, 1st Carpenter, Restoration of the Dee of St. Mary's.

This is the new keel -- completed by Francis Goddard, Benjamin Goddard & James Laws.

The keel was the central concern regarding the 30-year-old skipjack. Its successful repair has passed U.S. Coast Guard muster. While a tremendous amount of work remains -- in the hull alone bulkheads must be replaced and pieces of braces and structural ribs made clean and whole -- the successful replacement of the keel is a huge accomplishment. This was the first and primary goal of the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority grant as well as the supporting grant from Preservation Maryland.


To orient the keel within the hull and in conjunction with the decking the standard 6' ladder pictured in most of the following photos has not moved:


The forward legs of the ladder rest on the new cap that runs from the aft bulkhead through the midsection of the hull. The midsection is where the diesel motor will return to a reconstructed cradle.


Stabilizing members are replaced if necessary. Except for a few staves in the bow the hull is intact.





Rot, say the shipwrights, from the keel to the deck comes from fresh water gathering and seeping into the wood. Salt water acts as a wood preservative.


The gaping hole in the foreground is where the fore cabin was removed to replace rotten decking around it and rot in the cabin itself.

Facing forward from the wheel housing the ladder is obscured by the aft cabin , but the flashlight and broom are visible in both deck shots.


The wheelhouse aft of the aft cabin.


The Chesapeake Bay Field Lab is seeking venues to apply for additional grants and for donations to extend the restoration to the decking and exterior hull. They can be located at www.thebaylab.org

Thanks for reading.

The Island Is Sinking

Not only is St. George Island sinking, the water all around us is rising.

This is old news. So old that the Maryland state government, through its Department of Natural Resources, has an agency now that tracks by how much. There's a website where you can make the calculations yourself, if you have the time and inclination to fiddle. http://shorelines.dnr.state.md.us/sc_online.asp
If you really delve you can discover how quickly your very piece of the rock -- probably not a rock anymore -- will disappear from view. My piece disappears somewhere between two and five feet -- that could be two feet sinking, three feet water rising or any combination thereof. Or maybe, actually, four feet will do it for me. It seems this isn't an exact science yet, the future and weather still having something to do with it.

It almost seemed at a meeting last month that we St. George Islanders were slow to the draw. News of the disappearing Chesapeake Bay islands is nearly passe'. "Saving an island in the Chesapeake Bay," Alex Roy of the Maryland Department of the Environment said glibly last month to a gathering of St. George Islanders, "everyone is trying to do it."

Indeed, it seemed everyone and their brother was around last month to help St. George Island start. Representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Maryland Department of the Environment, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (three people from there), the Maryland State Highway Administration (two people from there), St. Mary's County Department of Public Works, a state delegate, a county commissioner and the president of the St. George Island Improvement Association met with about a dozen islanders to start the ball rolling to save St. George Island.

The meeting began with a lot of talk about how much more water sits on the land than has in past years, how much longer water stays around and how deep on the road and lawns the water reaches. Both rain water and tidal water.

The island includes 6.8 miles of shoreline -- not all of it eroding -- and is losing about 1.2 acres of land a year. The maps make this obvious to people who don't even live here. A lot of handouts were passed around confirming that indeed there is higher water, sinking land and less than perfectly maintained roads, waterways, ditches and bridges.

There was some more talk about why all of this has occurred. There were suggestions about which departments of government performing in different ways have caused or might be able to alleviate some of the problems. But as to the larger problem -- the island is sinking and the water is rising -- there were two immediate (so-called) proposals:

The state road people are going to make sure their roads aren't being undermined by the sinking and rising. If their roads are impacted they'll look for some money to make as quick of a fix as possible. Long term fixes weren't seen as particularly likely at this juncture. County road fixes consist of more asphalt and money is running low for even this.

Secondly, the Department of Natural Resources is poised -- if requested and when formal application is made -- to send planning and consulting type folks into the St. George Island community to facilitate and help St. George Islanders' "build a plan," explained Zoe Johnson with the climate change agency. The coming together to form a collective remedy to stave off tidal inundation has already begun in some Eastern Shore communities, she said. As Roy of MDE made clear, there are growing numbers of Chesapeake Bay communities facing erosion, rising tides, sinking land, evacuation and relocation.

So regardless of the proposals, there isn't exactly a solution to the problem. The goal of the planning effort is for citizens to agree on a fix and find a way to pay for it.

The Department of Natural Resources which coordinates both the climate agency and the citizen planning events is already involved with a number of other tidally-impacted communities around the Bay. Smith Island seems the most immediate. Apparently that plan has now moved into the Relocation Planning stage. The sinking and rising calculation for those folks is that they won't have any land left above water in 25 to 30 years.

Once a reporter it's hard to give up the cynicism. So forgive me, but if I were giving odds on these proposals resulting in action I'd start hoping there's something undermining the state road -- roads get funded. Plans, for the most part, just lead to arguments which lead to more plans.

But if I were an optimistic islander I might look again at the maps and note that my tiny hunk of the rock is colored in dark blue which suggests it will take two to five feet of sinking/rising to put my lot underwater. And the good news here -- the road to my house will go before two feet.

Maybe instead of meeting as a community to build a plan that looks destined to ultimately result in evacuation and relocation strategies we could just jump ahead of the game and start learning how to build boats.

Merging Regs and the Zen of Boat-building

Francis Goddard is 78 years old. "Seventy-eight-and-a-half," he brags. He climbs a tall ladder up high sides then scuttles back down onto the floor of the hull of the first skipjack he built. He wields a small chain saw. He built the Dee and appears to recall how she went together splinter by splinter. He shows little compunction at sawing out her guts and rebuilding her. He would do it better just by the fact that he had done it once before.


Of building a boat Francis says, "Once I dream it, I can build it."

Ben Goddard, more than a decade younger, is a cousin once removed, or a second cousin, but more importantly another respected Goddard boat builder of Piney Point.
Piney Point, until the 1980s, was primarily a fishing village and settled in the horizontal traditions of cousins and clans rather than the more vertical father to son set ups. The sweeps of various European cultures across America had clannish, horizontal systems forming the Appalachians, more Scottish than British. And bits of this fell throughout St. Mary's.
Good thing. Ben isn't one for dreaming but for the practicality of the minimal disruption to reach the maximum goal. Where Francis wields a chain saw, Ben will hone a piece of wood into its cradle. And cousins respect cousins. And the same with boat builders.

In the photo above of Francis he is creating a template. In the photo below of Ben he is sawing and planing the new right cheek of the keel.

The collaboration has worked well. The captain remains calm and pleased. Phew.

In the video posted http://justbeforeitsgone.blogspot.com/2010/06/chiseling-out-center-keel.html Jack shows where the center keel and its starboard (right) cheek have been removed. The Coast Guard visited later that week and met with Jack, Francis, Ben and Surveyor Michael Previti. The determination was to also replace the left cheek as well. This was the concurrence of the Coast Guard, Shipwrights, Surveyor and Captain.

This final third of the boat's spine can't be removed until both the new center keel and right cheek, which makes sense to me.




Work on the center and starboard cheek continues.


All these photos were shot by Jackie. Thanks, babe!

It's Been A Long Time

It has been a long time since I've blogged. Since BP's Big Poop I just haven't been laughing very much. But I did go to the beach where I park my pop-up in a state park on the ocean. I try to go every year. This year I wanted to beat the oil. That's how I see it. I wasn't alone on the beach to see it that way. It's like a throwback to before the 60s. We know the end is near and we're determined to see it through with good times. It's what we have left now that it's too late to leave a beautiful corpse.

So the beach was nice. Some great girlfriend laughs -- daughter laughs -- even a nice husband weekend -- just nothing really funny to write home about as the ocean lapped and you kept looking for balls of oil.

Then I get home and my girlfriend Babs -- that isn't her real name but a lot of people will know who she is anyway, which serves my purpose -- has e-mailed "2 great iPhotos." One from the good-time crab feast on the beach inside the big mosquito and shade tent that stayed up THE ENTIRE WEEK for the first time ever because IT WAS A PERFECT WEEK at the beach UNTIL I GOT SAW THIS OTHER "GREAT" iPHOTO where my mother's thighs had been Photo-shopped onto my knees.

No kidding. I'd recognize those thighs anywhere. They were my mother's.

Looking out from behind the long-skirted Women's-Sized swimsuit I wear to the beach puts me out of view of my thighs. That's fine. Back when I was in the habit of looking at them, say about 30 years ago, I pretty much memorized them and hold that picture still. Held that picture. I'm currently working on recapture.

As a Baby Boomer I believe in Walt Disney and the Wizard of Oz who successfully convinced me that what we believe is true, is. You can have it all. I don't think I was alone in taking this to heart. How else do you explain the McMansions, second homes, big cars, four cars, big boats and ski trips and all for a series of minimum payments made irregularly for as long as you own your life.

There is a Faustian ring to all of this, but somehow I fail to make the direct connection, and so I don't. It doesn't really matter. Just dropping the name counts for Baby Boomers.

My generation was graded on the curve. This means you don't actually have to do Good or Excellent to get a B or an A -- you just have to to better than others do.

This could go a long way toward explaining the Big Poop and a lot of other ridiculous events taking place on the Baby Boomer's watch.

Then, Boom! Unexpected and unimaginable consequences. Your mother's thighs and the Devil to pay. Too little exercise, too many mortgages, too late to leave a beautiful corpse. Poop leaking out of the bottom of the ocean and dang if that doesn't float to the surface as well.

You see where I'm going with this, right? Out of sight, out of mind. Magic thinking. A generation (or two or three or so on and so on) graded on the curve.
It's not going to get better. I mean, I still believe I can create truth out of nothing. I was weaned on fiction. I made my reservation for next year on the beach. I accept leaving in a whimper not a bang. I am still capable of living fully in the present, the Disney moment, where truth is fully of my own consciousness' creation. I am a Baby Boomer!

Indeed, my epiphany upon seeing my mother's thighs stuck onto a woman who, actually, now that I check back, doesn't look much like me at all, was not about BP or global ecological disaster. It was much more positive.

I thought of the foresightedness of the Midwestern reunion planners scheduling our 40th in the fall. At that time of year weather permits three-quarter length shirts and pedal pushers.

I even had time to remind myself -- before I went on to think about BP and oil blobs and entire global catastrophe -- that these three-quarter length pants are called something else now and that I have to be sure and get that from my 20-year-old before I pack.

Catch-Up

Just to catch everybody up.

1. There is a skipjack in my backyard.


This is because a long long time ago I married her owner. Catch the pronouns.


2. He doesn't look exactly like this anymore. But there are times he can still pull it off.

3. A skipjack is a Big Deal in the rarefied air of Chesapeake Bay Preservationists. A Really Big Deal. And a skipjack is astronomically, insanely and not to any definite economic end point -- Expensive. Really expensive.

4. So a foundation was created.




(no endorsement of any other YouTube videos are made .... blogger.com just has issues with direct uploads .... this is just a disclaimer)

They clearly need help. Please visit www.thebaylab.org

5. Meanwhile work continues.

Cutting-Up A Skipjack

It started out as simply a good idea to replace the dredge chocks, as long as first class shipwrights were on-site and something as extreme as a keel was being replaced. And of course railing. It is always a good idea to update railing. That led to some decking. Then some more decking. Then the decking around the fore cabin. Then the hull.

By the time the U.S. Coast Guard arrived last week for inspection and endorsement there were holes in the skipjack where a captain never wants to see holes.

But it started so simply, with the chocks:

And that led to this:

The starboard side doesn't look much different.

Hull replacement work is limited to primarily these planks at the bow, seen below from port and starboard.

Among the volunteers working to keep the vessel readied for the next day's shipwrights are Dave Cronce of Bainbridge, Pa. and Matthew Clements of Roanoke, Va. Both men are from the Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship at the Paul Hall Center of the Seafarer's International Union -- a generous and long-term supporter of the Chesapeake Bay Field Lab, Inc., the 501(c)3 that owns and operates the Dee of St. Mary's.

Visit www.thebaylab.org to learn more about educational programing and tours.