Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!

The reason for the delay between posts is because only recently can you really see progress of what we have done and I forgot my phone and couldn't take pictures for one weekend. I may have also had been so cold one weekend that I refused to take my gloves off and couldn't open my phone. We can't take photo's on Ted's phone because he doesn't have any space. So if you want to blame someone for the lack of posting blame Ted and his addiction to apps! 

So, when I posted last we had discovered that part of our bow stem was rotten - not good! We have removed the rotten section, we were lucky that the stem was made out of several layers of wood. The rot only ruined two of the layers and we were able to salvage the top two layers. Trust me we made sure that the wood we left was in perfect condition because this is not a job I want to do again on Restless! We are hopeful that this repair will fix the river of water that has been coming in when we sail. When we first started exploring the bow we thought we had to replace some of the planking because there was epoxy in the seams which caused the planks to rot at the front. As we removed more and more planks we discovered more and more rot! As much as we wanted to ignore the fact that the boat was once again out to ruin our lives we decided to do the right thing and remove the rot. I can't remember how many planks we took off the front but I think it is about 5 per side...maybe more? We are hoping that we will be able to close the bow in in the next two weeks and then move on to other rotten planks that we want to replace! We have our eyes on at least 6 more this season. 

Ted with the saws-all to start the scarf to repair the stem. Pretty sure I was ready to unplug him if things started to go sideways!

For strength you need to do these angled cuts (scarfs) in the wood. There would be no strength just butting the joints together. If you think about the strength needed in this part of the boat for when Ted cranks on the backstay then we need all the strength we can get as this is where the forestay is attached. After advice from my father we ended up bulking up the section we replaced. 

Working on the scarf to go in

Action shot! Being the clever person I am I set myself up in the heated section of the shop to do this. Well Ted was freezing in the other room I felt like I was on a tropical island. All that was missing was a beer and a sunburn. We used to drink beer when we worked but last year we decided that the more technical the work and the more power tools we were using, the chance of making a mistake was greater. We also found that when we are not looking for our beer we work a lot faster! 

While I was in the heated room Ted was getting in touch with his artsy side. This is an up-shot of the stem. I think he was working on getting the scarf on the boat started. 

First Scarf fitted! I like Ted creeping in the background

Sometime we get elves to come and help us! Anna and Jamie spent some time removing the epoxy from the seams in hopes that we can save the other planks. I should note that epoxy doesn't make wood rot. What happens is that each year the planks swell when the boat goes in the water and shrink when the boat comes out for the winter. Epoxy is hard and glues to the wood and when the planks swell it can crush the wood and over time the damaged wood begins to rot. I am learning to build boats as my fathers apprentice and I use the methods that he teaches me, which at the moment is composite construction. For this repair we do use epoxy but we use it to our advantage not in a way that can damage the boat. 

Scarf number two complete and ready to be installed. Ted is in the boat drilling the holes for the bolts before we laminate the stem (laminating glues the wood together - effectively making different pieces of wood one piece - this is the same way we make our ribs.)

I would be lying if I said that Ted and I did not get covered in epoxy when were doing this. Gluing upside down and making sure the bolt holes are lined up was hell. We dry fitted everything and drilled the holes because we didn't want to be fiddling with lining everything up perfectly and being dripped on. I think it was the right way to do it because we have a great fit. 

So that plank you can see hanging out the side... I used it as a block so we didn't dent the new stem. 

A little break from the bow! Laminating ribs. We use thin strips of white oak and bend them into shape. Laminating ribs like this is said to be stronger then steam bent ribs. This is more time consuming and expensive. We have to buy special epoxy that can withstand the acidity of the white oak. If you use the epoxy that we used on the bow stem (which is made from mahogany) the acid in the oak would basically eat the epoxy.

One morning was very cold and I refused to leave for the boat and made Ted play Scrabble. And yes, that X landed on the triple word score. 

Finally dried after a week of mild temperatures 

Rabbet (the grove that the front of the planks fit into) is complete and the planks are ready to be fitted and put in. I think we were able to save two planks. The others were either rotten or way to short.

First plank almost ready!

Ta-daa! Just needs some fancy bronze jewelry. 

This is the before shot from last weekend. We had the luxury of being in the heated section of the shop. It was pure bliss! And the lighting was far superior. 

Just so you understand how nice it is to be in a heated shop. Will be a few months before it is warm enough to launch!

Getting started on more planks. It is really nice having the space to be able to clamp the plank down and have a look at what needs to be planed down. 

It is a bit daunting sitting at the front of the boat. I always worry that I am going to slip out. 

Ted was impressed at my idea to use the trailer as a prop for painting the floor that we had taken out. We took this floor out because the bolt that was through it to the bow stem was broken. It was also not fitting so one of the elves (Jamie) spent some time making it fit.  

Leaving the boat Saturday night. I gave her a hair cut and a colour. We had the cotton caulking hanging out at long lengths. She looked a little rough and I was using a router to cut back some of the planks and I didn't want to get tangled in the cotton. We took the heated room opportunity to paint everything at the front as well. 

We had the paparazzi down on Sunday to take some stellar shots of me and Ted. The first plank is going in - I don't know what we are looking at. But I know that there is a photo of me as a child with the exact same face.  

The paparazzi paparazzing themselves! Take note, these are also the elves.  

The power of plaid! Ted and I some how both have plaid working jackets (totally on purpose). My head is inside the boat as I fit a butt block and Ted is preparing to fasten the second plank. He got worried when I was doing this and he started using the drill. 

Last summer I noticed that the chain plates were leaving the hull.  This year I have decided to remove the current bolts and re-bolt them and I sent Jamie to start finding the right plugs. This meant that he had to figure out which were plugs for the frames and which were plugs for the chain plates. 

Ted looks like he had a tough day. We have three planks in now and the 4th, 5th, and 6th should be going in this coming weekend! Don't worry, I took him out for a beer after this. 

Back in the unheated shed for the week and slightly more whole! 

Deformed, Unfinish'd, Sent Before My Time

What are the chances that this boat hates us and is looking to ruin our lives? What are the chances that this boat is really happy that Ted keeps poking her with a chisel and saying 'Wow! That's soft!' If I were a betting women I would put money on both. But I am not and instead a sit and write about the boat and remind myself that Sunday Brunches are not fun - freezing Sunday boat work is where the real fun is at! 

We are, yet again, in a race against time to try and get as much done on Restless before launch day and yet again we made a plan and the boat threw a curve ball at us. We decided once the boat was hauled we would sand much of the topsides and bottom to not only see what everything looked like but also to find the plugs on the planks we wanted to remove. We also did an intensive inspection of everything. Which includes; cracked ribs, rotten ribs, loose fasteners, wiggly rudder, rotten planks, epoxy in some of the seams, tons of bondo that needs to go, and now a rotten bow stem! 

We had our suspicions but as the eternal optimists we thought that there was no way we could be so unlucky and that Teds list of 2018/2019 boat work would actually be finished. But the Stem is a bit of a bigger project to add to the list. We are lucky in the sense that it appears to be rotten only in a section and not the whole Stem, but as we dig you never know what we might find! Unfortunately some of the smaller issues will not be fixed this year because of our limited time and the reality of how important this repair is. If not repaired Restless will continue to ship water and eventually the front will fall off and that would be embarrassing! And thus, now is winter of my discontent! 

 The big sand - The first day of December. I forgot to mention that I am going to replace the bolts in our chain plates because I noticed this summer the chain plate was lifting away from the hull while we were racing... That was a fun day! 

 Bondo - Lots of Bondo. It is just an auto-body fairing compound and after awhile it will wear out in the marine environment. The horn timber appears to be okay... I may be in denial but at least for this year it is FINE. 

Ted sanded the bottom... He got the ear muffs I got the goggles. We do wear respirators when we sand anti-fouling. But some dust does get through when you are taking them on and off to talk and take breaks.  As a result Ted turned into a smurf and I used an air compressor to try and get rid of the dust.

When you find a galvanized nail in the bow of a boat surrounded in epoxy you know that you are not going to find anything good. 

The nail had been eaten away by the bronze fasteners. You read about it and dream about it but you never think that you will be lucky enough to see it! When your boat it fastened with bronze you should not use other metals below the water line because will suffer from rapid corrosion (as seen above). 

Interestingly, it is not the head that will show the corrosion but the part the fastener that is actually doing the work. So you will not be able to tell until you either replace it or it is too late.  

If you want to know more about this I suggest extensive research -  there are many books on the subject that describe in detail the corrosion process of each metal. 

That is a large hole - we could see through to the other side.

Planks removed on the Port side to get to the Stem. We discovered the Stem by starting our original project of replacing planks with a bit of rot. It was really like opening up a can of worms. 

Here it doesn't look that bad...

But the more we dug....

It got worse... Look at his face! 

This was after I told him we had to open up the Starboard side of the boat so we could get a really good look at the scope of the rot.

'Wow! That's soft! 

We removed the rotten section of the cut water - That is the piece of the wood that sits on top of the Stem that literally cuts the water at the bow.

So here we are again bigger project but not impossible! Every year we are learning and as a result the boat will continue to race and we will continue to be part of the IOD community and travel to exotic locations like Sweden! 

We're Back To Work!

Ted and I took advantage of the one of the last warm weekends to move all our boats to their winter homes. Which means blog season is about to begin again! If you want to see us this winter it means you better book in with Ted... he is currently busy organizing our weekends for boat work. I have requested two weekends off. But I don't think I am allowed to take anymore time away!

Ted thought it would be a good idea to do a little write up of the sailing that we have done this summer. We did a lot! And we'll need to do some more boat work this winter to do that again next year. Our plan is for this year to be the last big push for boat work, and then we'll scale back significantly to maintenance tasks for a while - I worry about what we will do with all our time in those winters if we have free weekends! I think I should teach him how to bake. 

The wind caught us off guard during the last week the boat was in the water and I received a slightly frantic phone call from my mother saying that one of the mooring bridles had let go. I left work and Restless (still with her full cover on) was sailing sideways. Some how we manage to row out to the boat in 40kts (we wore life jackets). We stripped her down and tied another line to the mooring and tied it around the mast and then another safety to the winches. On our row back in we though we might go out to sea, there was a lot of rowing with no movement! 

After that adventure, I made arrangements to take Restless around to her winter home so that I did not have any repeats. Besides, after looking at Ted's boat work lists the sooner the boat comes out the better.

But before the blogs about work and sub-zero temperatures begin, it is nice to reflect on the sailing.

Our last race, the Fowl Run, on Restless happened to be the same weekend as my birthday so we had a little celebration!

Restless, the IOD and Rondo, the Nordic Folkboat

As many people know, we qualified to compete in the IOD Worlds championship in Sweden. We raced on the west coast of Sweden in August and had a great time (there will be photos below). Ted and I really liked the Swedish Pennant and decided that we need to get one for Martins River. I took this photo after we returned and I hoisted the flag. The couple that hosted us in Sweden had a pennant just like this one and one of our hosts was the Folkboat Champion a few years ago! (the 60s)

                                                             

After Sweden Ted and I made our way up to Norway before heading back to Canada. Of course we stopped in at Fredrikstad to have some drinks in the boat yard where the first IOD's were built and where ours was built. It was nice being shore peasants for the day. Ted decided to wash his hair with the bottle I labeled "S". It was soap. He couldn't figure out why his hair looked so bad. 

Ted saw an IOD tied to the wharf and needed to touch the tiller

He also tired of my company and made a fluffier friend. Boat cat!

Bjarne Aas, the designer and Builder of the IOD

But let's get back to sailing in Sweden during the IOD Worlds! This was the Norwegian IOD team. Everyone was okay but I think they needed a stiff drink after racing, especially the bow person... they must have suction cups for feet. 

We had a variety of different conditions during the regatta as you can see from the photo above. There was a bit of wind on some of the days and then zero wind on the others. It really mixed up the results, we did well in the windier days but on the fluky days we did not. We ended the regatta in 6th place, not bad for our first Worlds in an IOD and being the youngest team. IODs have been around for over 80 years and Ted only started sailing them 4 years ago. 

The following photos are from the first day

From Aft to Bow; Ted Murphy, Jonny Seller, Dave Wedlake, Jamie Blunden, Me, and Minette Murphy, Ted's sibling... in case you didn't know!

Minette and Jamie always posing for the camera

On the first day we managed to explode the shackle that was part of the vang system on our last downwind leg. "Luckily", two weeks earlier we had a similar situation during Chester Race Week. As the fine oiled machine we are... we managed to fix it just in time for Ted call 'gybing!'  

We raced in some seriously light winds. That is Ted on the back of the boat sleeping as he waits for wind - we are actually racing in the picture. There was nothing to do as the entire fleet sat like painted ships upon a painted sea. In times like that it is good to have a sense of humour. The race committee took pity on all the boats and they towed us in after the race and gave us beer. 

 

 This was us finishing in first place in a nice sea breeze. They have an interesting tradition in Sweden, when you get a bullet they say you 'nailed it' and the prize for this is a piece of a plank from a ex-IOD with a nail hammered into it.

Mandatory couples selfie with the bridge to Tjorn (the island we were staying on)

Sailing back after the last race. If you think we look cold... we were! At the beginning of the regatta we arrived back at the docks frozen. My parents had come along for the trip (they had never been to Sweden and they thought it was the best time to go!) and I asked my mother to get me socks if she came across any... she did... she bought socks for all of us! 

All the boats that we sailed on had these shot holders (I can only assume for the sub-zero temperatures at that time of year)... I am determined to make one for Restless this year. You will notice that there is only enough room for 5 shot glasses... so we are going to have to make a slight modification! 

So that was IOD Worlds 2018. We sailed against some really amazing sailors and we learnt a lot from the event and for me it was my first Worlds event so that made it even more exciting. I should also mention that the hospitality that they entire crew received from our different hosts was amazing and the hot tub at our little house saved all of us!

The view from the hot tub!

Before Worlds we had two local IOD regattas; the Indian Point Yacht Club One Design Regatta and Chester Race Week.   

Sitting on the leeward side is our good friend Hugh that sometimes sails with us and visits us while we are working on the boat. He is the reason that my blog posts are not as tardy as they could be. He always asks when the next one is coming and I always promise him it will be out soon! 

Those photos are from the event at IPYC, I don't have any of us sailing during Chester Race Week because they were all done by a professional photographer and I don't want to get into trouble for using photos that are not mine!

What I have are a few photos that sum up Chester Race Week pretty well I think.

A great photo of Ted after our yearly IOD party. His blanket is the cover from the boat; he stayed there until we left the mooring and refused to open both eyes at the same time. 

It rained a lot and a boom makes a great clothes line! 

And here is one of people that made my day on the last day of racing. In the morning I sent Ted out to the boat with the lunches and my bag with a towel, a hat, a phone, and a wallet while I collected the battery we had charged over night. When I got to the boat, my bag was not there and I asked Ted where it was. A frantic search ensued for thirty minutes before we had to leave the mooring and head to the race course. I pushed this out of my mind - what did I care if we were leaving for Sweden in 10 days and I had no Visa or debt card or Driver's Licence - that was land Dayna's problem. 

The race ends and I begin frantically phoning it again and nothing. My mom and I decided that it has been stolen so I cancel all of my cards. But as soon as I do that a ping shows up on find my phone and the search is on again. ( I have to thank the young man that sat with me and showed me how to use the find my phone website as I quietly sobbed). The people in the picture above found my bag floating in the water. I guess when Ted got on Restless he flung my bag into the sea! After several dark 'n' stormies I decided to talk to him again and inform him that because I did not have a Visa he would be paying for all my wine during the entire trip.  

But there is more!

Here are a few photos from the July Series that happened in Chester 

It's really easy going around the mark when you are the only boat. I think we are launched in this photo

On the odd occasion we use Restless for fun and we take all of our land loving friends out to sea! To get to your classic yacht you must also travel in a classic Tender as seen below...

A few of my friends being taken to the boat by Ted in my parent's tender Alla Turca, my mother's boat is called Rondo and she was named by my grandfather that because he loved 'Rondo alla Turca' by Mozart. This tender was designed in the 1930's. 

The saga of Dayna and Ted in a dinghy continues! 

This will be my album cover after my friends and I start a band. 

When one takes their friends sailing they are obliged to walk to plank. 

The Skipper 

Our private classic yacht raft up, Rondo turned 50 years old this year and Restless will be turning 60 in 2019.

When I first met Ted over 4 years ago he promised to take me to a place called Rogues Roost it is along the coast of Nova Scotia between Halifax and Peggy's Cove. This year he finally took me away on a romantic weekend. 

This is what romance looks like on a J 24

We actually had a great time. We left on a Friday in very little wind and dropped anchor in a little harbour. Woke up to wind and rain and headed out. We were met with 2+ meter sea and dinghy spent the better part of 2 hours trying to sink. I had a knife handy to cut the tow line if it came to it, we were not able to pull it on board underway because of the amount of water it took on. We decided to take shelter in another cove and dragged the dinghy on board and lashed it to the bow. We used Ted's phone for navigation as we could hardly see beyond the bow of our boat. We decided to 'thread the needle' in some areas to hide from the waves. I think that Ted and I found a new form of trust in one another after I navigated him in 20+ knots through a 3 meter passage between rocks in one of his race boats. It is much nicer to run aground in a a full keel boat then a fin keeled boat (so I am told). We sailed by Rogues Roost and went to the PB Yacht Club so Ted could get a very special burgee. 

We also went to Nantucket -  But I already did a post about that. When we are not sailing on the IOD, we sail on the J24 or my parent's Folkboat. Sometimes we like the simplicity of a dinghy and we sail his 29er or my sister and I take off in our paperjet. I think we took one weekend off from sailing and only 3 from racing... a lot of rum consumption happens during the summer! 

My favourite photo of Jamie and Ted EVER! 

We are, however, still trying to get Slocum as enthused as us!