A New Deck for Clearwater, 2001 & 2002

See photos from --- |   2 0 0 3   |   February to May 2002   |   January 2002   |   December 2001   |

The Clearwater Restoration Project, Main Page
 

5/1/02   Beautiful! 5/1/02   It's Done! 3/1/02   Looking aft along the port side, the deck seems to be virtually done. The covering boards, which slide down over the green rail stanchions, are made but await the replacement of the uppermost hull plank, into which they are fastened. The shed is being restructured in the background to give the crew access to that plank. The starboard side is being planked as we speak. 3/1/02   Looking forward along the port side. It’s beginning to look like a deck! 2/12/02   Jim Kricker of Rondout Woodworking and Clearwater captain JC Parker are doing the dreaded accounting of hours expended, work accomplished, and work remaining. It is a legendary fact among wooden boatbuilders that your best estimate will still fall far short of reality—and today's accounting proves to be no exception. 2/12/02   Longtime Clearwater ‘spare part’ and member of the Zimmerman clan of Clearwater crewmembers, Christian is taping over areas where the cotton and oakun caulking ‘tails’ have been bundled together as a dam. The pitch they will pour into the seams tonight won’t spill over the seam end or contaminate the caulking tails, which must be interwoven with new material tomorrow. 2/12/02   Job supervisor Wayne Ford is using a light to ensure that the deck seam up against the cabin trunk is as tight as it can be made. This seam is notorious for vulnerability to leakage in wooden boats. 2/12/02   Christian Zimmerman is apprentice caulker on this job, and is doing a very professional job of driving the cotton strands, followed by heavier oakum (a material like un-spun manila rope) into the new deck seams. 2/12/02   Don Taube has been around Clearwater since the beginning, as crew, as relief captain, as shipwright and boat committee consultant. He’s the caulker, and is caught her in mid-swing, bringing his homemade caulking mallet down upon the iron. The long cylindrical shape of a caulking mallet is no accident. It focuses the full force of the blow on the head of the caulking iron, and avoids twisting or glancing blows which can easily happen when you use a more conventional mallet with a wider head. 2/12/02   Don Hover is Wayne Ford’s assistant, from the crew at Rondout Woodworking. He’s checking the fit of a deck plank into the nib joint along the cabin trunk. Port side, looking forward. Deck planks are nibbed this way to resolve the problem of straight-laid (fore-and-aft) decking which must end securely along the curved lines of the cabins and other deck furniture, and the outermost plank called the covering board. Every winter the Clearwater docks at Lynch’s Marina in Saugerties to do maintenance work. This allows us to get to all of the projects that we never have the time to get to during the sailing season. Every once in a while we get our hands into a really big project like replacing the mainsail or refitting the galley. This year we are undertaking the biggest project in recent years. We have hired Rondout Woodworking (run by Jim Kricker with Wayne Ford in charge on site) to replank the quarterdeck. The quarterdeck is the aft half of the boat that rests about one foot higher than the rest of the deck. Anyone who works with wood knows that its worst enemy is rot—rot that is capable of turning a piece of wood into a soggy sponge. After putting in over twenty years of hard work, the Clearwater’s deck has begun to rot and it is time to replace it. The deck planking that we walk on is a little more than two inches thick and is fastened onto wider, thicker beams that run athwartships (from side to side). That planking is much more prone to rot than the beams for several reasons: the daily wear and tear it receives; the material (some pine, some fir); and its constant exposure to the weather. The idea is to get rid of the rotten planking before the rot spreads to those deck beams. Replacing planking is a very challenging and costly job, but considerably smaller than replacing deck beams. Eventually, all the deck planking will be replaced, and most likely a beam here or there (hopefully not too many). However, we will be doing the work in two phases, over two winter seasons. This strategy eases the financial burden by spreading it out over time. Creating two smaller, more manageable jobs affords us the necessary breathing room in the schedule to ensure that we will be ready for the sailing season. Our three winter crew members (Coordinator Brian Olson, Chris Brown, and Kristin Hill) have spent much of this month in destruction—removing deck structures that would be in the way and ripping up the old planking —in addition to their regular winter duties. In January, we will be joined by two extra crew members (Paul Tomcho and John Finkle) so that we may go full steam on both the deck and all the rest of the maintenance that needs attention: the engineering, carpentry, rigging and finish work. As for the deck, we expect to receive the materials within the next couple of weeks. We will receive over 3,000 board feet of long leaf southern yellow pine from a mill in Georgia, with some white oak for possible deck beam replacement. The planking will be fastened on with 4 1/2” long galvanized boat nails. February will most likely be spent caulking and waterproofing the seams between the new planks; this means pounding cotton and oakum (a coarse, fibrous material) into those seams, then covering that with melted black pitch that hardens up and keeps water from getting in. This is an exciting project to be undertaking, and the boat certainly deserves it. We look forward to both the structural and aesthetic benefits of this project and to its continuation on the foredeck next winter. We will be having a Saturday open house at the end of January/beginning of February, so be sure to check to website for details and come on down and get a look. Until then, keep an eye on the website for frequent updates to our photo log of this fascinating project. Captain Samantha Heyman We cannot do this without you. The sloop needs your help. It’s up to you to help give our beloved sloop a new start. This is the first major hull restoration project in over twenty years. Not since I was one of the shipwrights, working on the ice in Saugerties in 1979, have we faced a project of this magnitude. This winter we will need $65,000 to complete the first phase of this very important task. Please contribute as generously as you can. Andy Mele, Executive Director

See photos from --- |   2 0 0 3   |   February to May 2002   |   January 2002   |   December 2001   |
 

1/31/02   Captain JC Parker driving a galvanized deck spike. 1/31/02   John Finkle trimming wooden bungs. 1/31/02   The first piece of covering board—the outermost deck plank, which must fit down over the taffrail stanchions. 1/31/02   Tom Briggs setting wooden bungs using epoxy with a bit of graphite for UV resistance. Tom is setting the grain of each plug in alignment with the grain of the plank. We cannot do this without you. The sloop needs your help. It’s up to you to help give our beloved sloop a new start. This is the first major hull restoration project in over twenty years. Not since I was one of the shipwrights, working on the ice in Saugerties in 1979, have we faced a project of this magnitude. This winter we will need $65,000 to complete the first phase of this very important task. Please contribute as generously as you can. Andy Mele, Executive Director

1/22/02   John Finkle, part of Clearwater’s winter maintenance crew, and Steve Conley, from Rondout Woodworking, are sending a deck plank through the shaper, milling the caulking bevel. In the forground is a stack of the yellow pine decking from South Carolina. 1/22/02   Steve Conley, an employee of Rondout Woodworking, moves a deck plank through the shaper to bevel its edge for caulking. 1/22/02   Wayne Ford, the lead shipwright from Rondout Woodworking, is scribing the end cut on one of the new deck planks. 1/22/02   Wayne Ford and Clearwater Captain J.C. Parker make the cut just scribed over the sloop’s transom. 1/22/02   At last! Planking is going down fast. 1/22/02   A few of the planks weren’t quite up to specs for the density of annual rings, but it was far above specs in terms of being knot-free—a good trade-off. It is very high-quality lumber, and far better than what was used to build the sloop originally. 1/22/02   Beautiful stuff!

See photos from --- |   2 0 0 3   |   February to May 2002   |   January 2002   |   December 2001   |
 

12/21/01   The deck beams after the enormous and rusted old deck spikes have been arduously removed. The beams are ready for the nail holes to be filled with wooden pegs and epoxy. 12/21/01   Brownie, one of the sloop's winter maintenance crew, and a volunteer using vise grips to grab onto the rust-worn spike, and a heavy pry bar to lever vise grips and spike upward. This method worked like a charm. 12/21/01   Brownie and the volunteer displaying tools and trophy after a particularly stubborn spike finally yielded. It is important to remove as many of these fasteners as possible because any steel left in the beam could raise havoc with drilling and setting the new fasteners as the new deck is being applied. We cannot do this without you. The sloop needs your help. It’s up to you to help give our beloved sloop a new start. This is the first major hull restoration project in over twenty years. Not since I was one of the shipwrights, working on the ice in Saugerties in 1979, have we faced a project of this magnitude. This winter we will need $65,000 to complete the first phase of this very important task. Please contribute as generously as you can. Andy Mele, Executive Director

Photos from December 14, 2001 These shots were taken by Andy Mele with his Canon A20 digital camera. They show a substantial amount of decking being removed, and the remains of the deck spikes sticking out of the deck beams. The taffrail has been removed, and new patterns for the covering boards (the curved outermost pieces of decking, which must fit down over the green taffrail stanchions) are being made by Wayne Ford. We are all astonished to find that the deck beams are still in excellent condition. The fact that we don’t seem, at this time, to face deck beam replacement means that we may have time to replace the cabin top this winter. Stay tuned.

See photos from --- |   2 0 0 3   |   February to May 2002   |   January 2002   |   December 2001   |

The Clearwater Restoration Project, Main Page

Photos by Andy Mele