Rigging up a Storm

Project riggers Carrie Glessner and Will Young have been here the last couple days making up the standing rigging. It’s quite the process, splicing rope and wire, whipping ends, and “serving” cable by wrapping it tightly with a combination of rags, twine, and pine tar. Much of the area underneath the pole barn where the work is taking place seems to be covered with pine tar, including the table with various snacks on it, and some of the snacks themselves. These guys are pretty serious and unfazed by a little surplus tar here and there.

Earlier on I mentioned the cordage would be hemp. My mistake. It’s manilla. Carrie and Will have very good judgement in matters rigging related and I tend to defer to their material choices. It’s funny, a visitor to the project questioned whether it was still possible to find riggers in the world today, saying such people no longer exist. But the disproof was just 20 feet from where we were having the conversation. Here they are! They exist!

I have been working with Jordan (Finkelstein) making up the mainmast the last few days. We started with a huge fir log so heavy two of us teamed up could not manage one end of it. We have cut down the original weight quite a lot but it is still a heavy piece, with a big square base that will fit into the tabernacle, or mast hinge. Yesterday I fitted the “hounds” which are pieces of wood that bridge the connection between the mainmast and the topmast. Combined the mainmast and topmast have a height of about 36 feet.

Ceres herself is sitting off to one side largely ignored for the moment. But since rolling her a week and a half ago we have installed decks and some of the cabin furniture, and are also well underway painting the belowdecks spaces. The deckhouses are in process too, so now it requires less imagination to imagine the finished product than it was a month or two ago. The decks have large cargo hatches, which will be sturdy enough to walk on when closed up. One priority is to have room to set up a big trestle table on deck for meals, and we can only do this with a structural, low-profile hatch. Most of the main deck is taken up by hatches.

Lots of pictures are soon to come, but I wanted to post a quick update first and add pictures later. At the rate we are progressing now it is not too hard to imagine that in 30 days or so there will not be much left to do. So, now I am off to go fetch some items of metalwork from Champlain Metals in Burlington. More soon!

For the time being, here is a graphic that we will be using for shirts. With the boat inked in white and the logo in black we can DIY print any color shirt except a white one or a black or very dark one. I hope to make these shirts available soon!

Rolling the Barge, episode 2

Fiberglass work on the underside of Ceres is now complete. We have also added a skeg and a shallow keel (about 4″ x 4″ in cross section) which has a steel shoe for grounding protection. After three coats of epoxy resin we marked out a waterline at 1’8″ above the chine, which gives a total displacement of 36000 lbs in fresh water. We intend to load her to 1’6″ draft but the extra couple inches of bottom paint will stand up better to splashing than the topside paint.

Both the bottom paint and the topside paint went on really easily onto the smooth surface. Some “triloboats” have been built without any fiberglass sheathing at all, but one builder suggested it was worth investing in fiberglass just for its merits for painting. Paint applied directly to plywood often cracks or peels due to the expansion of the veneer, but with a film of epoxy between the plywood and the paint there is a much more harmonious and stable bond. You can’t quite see your reflection in Ceres’ paint, but almost.

So, with little left to do in this upside-down position, we set about rolling her back upright. Last time we performed the roll with 40 volunteers, but this time we decided to go the mechanically-assisted route, and use tractors. Generally it went according to plan, and we have Ceres on her side right now. However the framework attached to the running gear, made out of engineered lumber I-joists, cracked as Ceres slid sideways off the running gear and will have to be replaced. I had been suspecting that that framework might not stand up well to repeated use launching, loading and hauling Ceres, so now we have good cause to upgrade it before subjecting it to real duty.

We’re making plans to attend New Amsterdam Farmers market on June 23rd. Hope to see some readers there! I have another full plate of appointments in the city laying the groundwork for the project, possibly not my last trip down and back before arriving by sail. That plus interesting meetings in Albany and Beacon with new potential partners should make it an interesting trip!

Glassy

A long time ago I worked in what you might call a fiberglass tree factory. Not making Christmas trees, but everything except Christmas trees. A ridiculous assignment in pretty nasty conditions and although I got a lot of good stories out of the experience I won’t dwell on it here, except to note that I am pretty well seasoned in fiberglass work as a result of it. Fiberglass is not terribly fun to work with but my goodness, you can make a lot of watertight integrity in a small space of time if you know how to manage it. And if you don’t, it’s a fairly plastic medium. All mistakes are correctable, some more easily correctable than others.

Now that our hull is inverted we have puttied all the gaps and screw holes with short-strand polyester-based body filler and sanded down to 80 grit. New recruit Brian and I began laying glass in Epoxy resin on Saturday. It went fairly well, covering about 25% of the boat in maybe 3 hours. If all goes well we should be glassed from stem to stern and painted by the end of the week. Then we will right the hull again, build decks, hatches and doghouses and then proceed to rigging.

I am very excited about the rigging aspect. Rigging specialists Carrie and Will Glesner have been providing invaluable help in this regard, and from the deck up Ceres will be rigged with traditional materials and principles, using hemp rope, canvas and tar. We can make the blocks and belaying furniture with wood cut largely from our own farm. As traditional a task as our current task is synthetic.

There is still a lot of work ahead but a launch by July 4th seems within reach!

A while back when a reporter was interviewing me about the project she asked, “what are you thinking about when you work on your boat?” My answer: “What I’ll do different when we build the next one.” A little bit of a flippant response, sure, but also somewhat accurate. If this idea is good enough for one barge it’s good enough for ten. If this concept takes off like I hope it will we may at some point not be able to build the sailing barges fast enough.

Are we at VSFP the only ones loopy enough to believe in a future powered by the wind? Not in the least. Let me introduce new friends at Dragonfly Sail Transport Co. With a suitable vessel for small scale trade in the Great Lakes already in possession and a plan to begin moving cargo for local merchants, Jan Barlow and company are now raising funds to launch their venture on Start Some Good. Check out their project at Start Some Good

http://startsomegood.com/Venture/dragonfly_sail_transport_co/Campaigns/Show/into_the_wind_fare_trade_by_sail

and help spread the word about the return of working sail. I can say with utmost certainty that we need more practitioners in this field. Salish Sea Trading Coop in Washington State was friendly and collegial with our project from the start and helped convince us Vermonters it could all be done. We owe Salish and Kathy Pelish a lot, and we will pay that forward wherever we can to help others like Dragonfly succeed. We all need sustained interest to create and expand this movement. Crowdsourcing is one way to help make that happen. It worked for us, and we hope it will work to help our fellow Sail Transport Network

Rolling the Barge

Last Saturday under a brilliant May sky, about 40 volunteers converged on the farm to roll Ceres over so we could apply a keel, rudder skeg, and fiberglass to the underside. At this point the hull is structurally complete apart from decking plywood and the deck houses. We have about 20 days of real work into her at this point, with two people at work for about 8 hours. Progress has been actually a little on the slow side as I have been busy watching my boys over school vacation and gearing up to plant rice. But all told I’m happy about where we are at, and even more happy about the great connections along the way and new talents and passions brought into the mix, giving us snowballing potential to achieve more together than we could on our own. Certainly, at least, the project will, in the end, be more compelling in every way as a group effort than it ever could be as my own individual nutjob windmill joust.

Want proof that there’s strength in numbers? Ceres hull at this point weighs about 4500 lbs. Ganging up on her all around, the 40 of us dead-lifted the hull off the trailer, an effort that a quick poll of our volunteers said required a less than 50% effort. With that confidence, we tipped the hull off the trailer and onto her side, lowered her back down to the ground belly-up, and then lifted her 3 feet straight up and rolled the trailer frame back underneath to support her. Total time at work, about 2 hours. It didn’t happen without a tense moment or two, or without adjustments to the plan, but these things are par for the course. But it did in the end happen smoothly, safely, and more or less according to plan. The moment we finished the last sequence, as if on cue, Evan served up pizzas he had baked on site and we partook of some some great hard cider.

Experienced boatbuilders might wonder why the barge wasn’t built upside down to begin with. Answer: lack of foresight. I thought we might be able to manage finishing without a single roll. But in balance rolling upside down and then, later, back upright again began to seem worth it in terms of how it would benefit the flow of the work. And it was a great opportunity to get the community out to see her. I think many of our group were surprised, even a little euphoric, at our combined ability to flip this barge.

When we do the reverse flip I am contemplating a mechanically assisted hoist system that might take some of the excitement out of the operation.

Photo credits Richard Hiscock.

We began with the hull on the running gear right side up

we heaved her up onto her side, with control ropes to keep her from tipping too far

The original plan was to tip the hull onto the running gear, but we abandoned this approach and lowered her right to the groud

With the bulk of our force grappling hand to hand we could gently lower one side to ground level.

Then we lifted the entire barge and inserted the running gear through the open end of the barge. We used barrels to support the weight while we did this.

Sail Transport Network and Culture Change

The Vermont Sail Freight Project is a member of the Sail Transport Network, an organization created by petro-activist Jan Lundberg that aspires to serve as a logistical and advocacy network for the (re)emergent industry of sail transport. There are exciting prospects here of stitching together the trade routes of the early adopters to accomplish even longer-distance trades that are currently being accomplished by sail. My big hope is to help VSFP link up with projects already carrying fair trade goods from the tropics, like sugar, cocoa, and coffee as well as mediterranean products like olives, olive oil, dates and figs, and to be able to distribute these products up the Hudson and in the Champlain valley.

Jan was kind enough to give me a forum at his site, so in lieu of a prolonged post here I’ll send you over there to read a piece I wrote describing the cultural shift that I believe is making VSFP and other good works like it possible.

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/877/73/

Sailpunk

Well, what kind of punk are we here if not steampunk?

Word is getting out about the project. Are we in danger of becoming an internet meme? Probably not, or at least not yet. But as folks hear about us, it seems it gives cause for some to pause, and to mock the idea or praise it or somewhere between. Often I hear the tired old saw that sailboats are too slow. That low tech approaches are not competitive or viable in general. I’ve been hearing this kind of critique as a small scale farmer for years, and it’s never struck me as a reason to turn away from useful work one is called to do.

Back to steampunk, though I found this funny exchange posted on the website “The Stoutorialist” I think I caught a Monty Python reference in there!

• Ask me anything
The Stoutorialist
Miriam: check out this awesomeness http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1746378042/the-vermont-sail-freight-project?ref=home_location
Monique: ooh!
Miriam: “but as for me/the wind is free/and they haven’t run out yet”
Monique: AND IT’S ABOUT IMPROVING LOCAL FOOD NETWORKS.
Monique: …see I look at this and think ‘this is what Steampunk should be doing; focusing on how/when anachronistic tech worked in a superior fashion for certain functions’
Miriam: totally!
Monique: But no instead it’s lots of upholding militarism and imperialism.
Miriam: srsly
Miriam: Look, all I want is a fleet of green, vegan-friendly, anarcho-syndicalist, worker-controlled ships that support ethical organic farming and collectives. Is that so much to ask?
Miriam: Why do I get pith helmets instead?

Also we were featured in Gothamist, a trendy arts and entertainment NYC publication.

For all of you that are fans of our little ship with big ideas, I’d like to say let’s keep it up!

Meanwhile, here on the farm, we’re at work building Ceres. We’re getting the bow and stern stitch and glue curved sections assembled. The math is a little tricky but hopefully the agony I suffered in high school geometry will pay off, and there won’t be a huge pile of unusable plywood cut to incorrect curved shapes in the scrap pile. (Ha, Mr. Bleyer, see! I can do it!)Documentation of that process with photos soon to follow.

At the conclusion of that process Ceres will look like a boat! Maybe still the kind of boat that gets boos and catcalls at high-end marinas, but I don’t care about that. “Handsome is as handsome does,” goes the old New England saying. Or, as the ever-wise Red Green of CBC’s Red Green Show (http://www.redgreen.com/) would put it, “If the women don’t find you handsome, at least they can find you handy.”

Words to live by.

Brave Tars

I have a facsimile of an old English broadsheet used to recruit for the Royal Navy, calling to “Brave Tars of Old England, all you who love King and Country (and hate the French) Now is the Time to Shew your Love.” We here at the Vermont Sail Freight Project, the would-be tars of the 21st century Champlain-Hudson agrarian merchant marine say to you, dear readers, if you support the ideals behind this project as I have been laying them out on this blog for this past year, now is the time to Shew your Love.” Lend a hand if you can. If you can’t there’s this:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1746378042/the-vermont-sail-freight-project?ref=home_location

The video is neat (executed by Finn Yarborough) and of course you can check out the rest of the campaign too. Please pass along to whoever you know who takes an interest in sustainable transport, NYC farmers markets, creativity on the water, and regional resiliency. Truth be told, if this campaign falters I will still find a way to make Vermont Sail Freight a reality–I am not discouraged very easily–but it will be harder. And slower. And more personally costly. But I’m confident we’ll succeed, and will therefore continue to nail the benchmarks in the timeline of this project right up to the point of sailing our load of cargo under the G.W. bridge this September.

Here at the farm we are anticipating success. Winter is the time for pondering, considering, drawing inward, but winter is ending. Spring is coming, and spring is a time for action, for investing the reserves of energy we’ve built up over the winter to make this season the best it can be. In short our sailing barge is coming together swiftly, and coming together well.

Here you can see the frames for the stern section. These will help define the bend in the plywood, reinforce joints and stiffen the deck. I assembled both on the shop floor in a few hours, then hung them on the end of the barge, as you can see next. The after ends have to be temporarily supported with some bracing. The rectangular space between the frames in the back will be recognizable as the transom before too long.

Today we had a good crowd at the worksite, with Damien and Dale from Walden as well as Mac and Hannah. Channel 5 news coming to scope out the project, and of course Dante the dog was very much in evidence, wondering why with so many people around there was so little stick-throwing going on.

Also, you can check out the evening news segment at WPTZ news here:

http://www.wptz.com/news/vermont-new-york/burlington/Farmer-hopes-to-sell-Vermont-crops-via-sailing/-/8869880/19496074/-/10htidp/-/index.html

Spring snow, and our new website

With last week’s winter weather the project has been physically stalled but electronically accelerated. We now have a new website, vermontsailfreightproject.org, not quite complete but almost! Please check it out!

I will continue to post project news here on the wordpress blog on an approximately weekly basis. We’ll be back in the boatbuilding shed next week and there will be some fun stuff to document. All the supplies we will need for the next month of work have been laid in, and I expect some swift progress.

Last week before the weather set in nasty I did at least get the bow framed out a little and friend Evan Dale spend a few days helping to clean out and organize the workspace. The woodstove in the shop was humming! Another great bit of news is that our kickstarter campaign was approved to go live, so once we finish a few last-minute edits we’ll be announcing the launch of that campaign. It’s a very important piece of our fundraising strategy.

More soon.

“Looks more like a giant rectangle on wheels than a boat.”

The honesty of five-year-olds.  The title line is Robin’s assessment of the barge in progress.  I will try not to take this as a design critique.  The fact is, that is exactly what it looks like now.

Guest artisan Will Gusakov was around for most of last week helping lay the groundwork for the project.  We cleared space and prepared a special running gear to both support the barge during the work and carry it to launch.  It’s just a heavy hay wagon running gear which we extended to a super-long wheelbase, and then added two I-joists as rails.  These rails provide a great surface on which to assemble the boat.

It wasn’t until Thursday that our unit of 10′ plywood arrived.  Once it was here we were able to really start to sink our teeth into the project.  The following day we laminated the dead-flat center section, which ran the entire length of the 24′ rails.  The curved bow and stern sections will overhang them by 8 feet each.  The dead flat panels are staggered 2 feet on-center and glued into a giant panel with epoxy.

Then on Saturday I removed the clamps and screws that held this lamination together for gluing and added the engineered-lumber chine logs at the sides of the panel.  These tie the whole deadflat structure together.  The floor timbers run between these chine logs, 20″ on-center.  Everything below the waterline is affixed with 3m marine glue.

We’ve deviated in the design a little from orthodox “Triloboat” construction (can such a form be said to have an orthodoxy?  Probably not) considering the duty the barge will perform.  The heavy engineered chine logs and the proliferation of framing members are my twist on Dave Zeiger’s concept and the result of feedback from former Coast Guard and designers of larger composite boats.  We have to consider that our barge may be subject to differential loading (unequal distribution of cargo) in a way that a liveaboard barge hull might not.

Probably by next post the bow and stern should have some form to them that will suggest the final shape. The last of the three photos below is shot from aft looking forward.  The rectangular hole you see in the bulkhead will be an internal passage door between the aft cabin and the cargo compartments.

Barge Builders!

Materials are arriving on the farm every day and we are getting ready to begin construction of the sailing barge next week.  I will post in more detail once we begin.  I am very uplifted by the many offers of volunteer help coming from the community.  Many hands make light work!

In the above graphic you can see the logo (the circular part) done by my brother-in-law Adam Hurwitz.  It is inspired by the old East India Company logo of which Henry Hudson’s 1609 expedition was a part.  Notice any resemblance?

Adam put a lot of thought into the font, which has echoes of the printing presses of that age.  I love it, being kind of a 17th century history nut.  Not to compare our sailing venture to Hudson’s, of course, but I guess you could say that if a sailing vessel as unweildy as Hudson’s Halfmoon can ascend the Hudson river then we ought to be able to manage it somehow.

Exciting times ahead for VSFP in the next several weeks.  Please check in regularly as I will be sure to post updates to construction progress weekly.