John came onboard to help us with getting out some keelbolts. He’s a good fit for the project. John’s experiences include building his own trimaran; working some years in a wooden boat repair yard in Canada; as well as furniture making. He’s a self-professed “tool junky.” Every week or so, he comes in the yard with a helpful hand-tool addition to the project.
John and laminated frames:
David pretty much does anything that needs to be done to keep the work flowing efficiently. Translate–anything that keep the (high $$) yard carpenter focused on projects that actually take a little skill to do right; this way we’re getting a good bang-for-the-buck spent. Example: the yard carpenter makes a couple doublesawn futtocks and fits the bevels, then David bolts them in place and into the planking. Before John’s arrival in November, David was taking out and installing floors and keelbolts pretty much alone while the yard carpenter worked on making on the floors and forward double sawn frames. Now, David’s got someone to hand over the bottle jack and sledge hammer to…
Me–In general, “I’m the price it, buy it, or go get the tool sharpened” person as well as the project manager (David says “field marshall”) who tries to keep everyone coordinated and moving in the right direction. I’m also the “rebuild the mechanical stuff person.”
Though we count on the yard shipwright (and have a naval architect on call just in case) for keeping the project in line with appropriate wood boatbuilding standards, as an engineer myself, I find myself scribbling load calcs in my spare time to make sure I’m happy with our structural repairs (I sure don’t want to be stressed out about things out in the middle of the big blue sea). Hands on, I’m helping out on epoxy-ing things like the the laminated frames and pin-point plugs for the planking. Since I’m documenting the project, I’m taking all the pics, too, it seems!
Earlier in the fall we had great help from Renee. She’s a college student with a background in carpentry. She’s jumped in and worked on numerous of our projects from heavy demo to finishing brightwork (on the deck lights we removed). In this photo, she’s on the outside of the hull using a socket as a backing for David who is pounding out boat nails from the inside of the hull.
We have had a boatyard carpenter working fulltime on Mahdee since late in September; additionally the yard’s shipwright jumps in and does work on what I teasingly call the “sexy projects” like the lofting the stem, and the stem knee. We’ve really welcomed the shipwright’s knowledge of the wooden boat world, materials, and traditional methods of construction using hand tools.
