Yokohama Fenders Corraled, but not tamed.

 I've you've been following this thread over the past few posts, you know how Volunteers have been puzzling over, experimenting at, and making several attempts at restoring the three huge rubber Yokohama fenders to their purpose, protecting the wooden  schooner from slamming against the vertical pilings of the fixed face dock where she's been docked since  before 2014.  

The Yokohama's became a problem a little over a year ago, when high winds, and pressure, snapped in two places the telephone pole on which the three fenders were "strung', and arranged across the pilings.  Subsequent attempts to restring with combinations of rope and chain have partially failed, leaving the large fender-barrels stuck uselessly under the docks or trying to float free of the docks with each outgoing tide.  

The problem is complex because these floating barrels, no longer restricted by a linear "pole" axis, must be controlled individually.  Their restraining lines must be slack enough to allow the fenders to stay in position at low tide.  At high tide, those taunt lines slacken by 3-4 feet, sufficient for the barrel to float with the tide or wind, more than five feet off position, exposing the piling or worse. Any breeze on the 180 degree spectrum north-east-south will push the hull against the dock, preventing any manual pushing, dragging, pulling the fenders back into proper position. Lastly, the situation is exacerbated by the lack of full-time crew to resolve the whole thing. Instead, volunteers,  available only on a Saturday morning, rarely with more than 4 mustering at a time, are stymied by the other conditions not cooperating. 

This last two weeks were most critical, because one Yokahoma had come totally loose from any tether, being held under the dock only by the schooner's hull and and easterly breeze. Subsequently, the washers rusted out. They were installed to fasten a chain's link to the telephone pole section, in turn stuffed into one end of a Yokohama fender.  Subsequently, poles as well as fenders were loosely bouncing around under the dock, awaiting only for a westerly breeze to blow the hull off the dock, freeing the mess to drift merrily out into the harbor. 

So, two Saturday mornings of a few volunteers, armed with handy-billy tackles, boat poles, and loose ropes salvaged from the rope locker, were able to restrict that Yokohama fender and pole mess from getting out into the harbor.  Tuesday, Bryan brought out a reel of electrician Fish tape, pulled a messenger line thru the free-floating Yokohama, then bridled it to the dock. Another rope, looped over the end of  the of the telephone pole/snag, and cleated to the dock further locked any thing from floating free. 

With  favorable tide, weather, winds, and  five volunteer hands, to launch the small boat to ease the hull off the dock, others can push the Yokohama's back onto their poles, pull the chain thru the Yokohama's with the messenger line, and restring the whole bunch into a working arrangement.  Today, Saturday, none of those conditions came together, so we'll stay tuned to the next chance.

Stay tuned. 

All Glory is Fleeting

  I was so proud.  The six of us volunteers who, last Saturday the 16th, using some creativity, three handy-billy's. various lengths of rope, took advantage of a westerly breeze and slack tide to align the three yokohama's up against their pilings on the dock face, rather than hiding behind them. We all understood however, that the arrangement was iffy. We had no way for restraining parts of the collection; one yokohoma and an unconstrained telephone pole segment, from floating free at the next high tide and westerly breeze.   

Sometime between then and last Friday, those conditions came to pass, probably several times-enough to allow our carefully positioned arrangement to float free and resume their useless positions under the dock.

Such was the situation I found when I came aboard this last Saturday morning in a pretty good driving rain.  In a further complication. The unusually high king tide, raised the schooner's caprail a good 10 inches higher than the dock benches, stretching the capability of our gangway falls to hold the gangway off the cap rail.  With the later arrival on board of Volunteer Hugh Sheldon, the two of us hauled another four feet of boat falls out of the already stretched configuration, to lift the gangway free of the deteriorating sword matte, that had long ago lost its protective capability.  We three additional lines over the free floating telephone pole to arrest its floating away tendency. 

So, until our schooner can leave the dock and motor off to her 10-year Shipyard appointment, we are consigned to hoping for another favorable combination of wind, tide, and volunteer availability to try again.  

And so, we watch the weather. and check our emails, or texts, for an alert to come down for help down at the Maritime Center to wrangle these d)*&^~! yokohama's back into position, for good. And I think I"ve found the answer.. electrician's Fish Tape.

Yeah Baby! Volunteers Tackle the Yokohoma Mess and Bring Order and Harmony to Dockside

I guess, that to understand why this is a big deal you have to have been on deck over  the past year, since that incident in heavy weather where the telephone pole snapped.  The Pole  normally strings three Yokohama fenders- huge hard rubber cylinders-, separated by several car tires. The whole arrangement wasintended to float in front of our face dock's vertical pilings, protecting the schooner's hull from pounding against the vertical pilings. Well,  in an unexpectedly powerful squall, which saw 75 knot winds pass thru, , the yokohama's all slipped out of place. The telephone pole bent around a piling and snapped, separating the whole system into two independent, useless floating hazards.   Since that time several attempts, some temporarily successful, have been made to reposition  Yokohama's against the pilings. always thwarted by the slack and tensions called by rising and falling tides.  

While Tony and David unlay strands
 to begin their long splice, Bryan, Lance and Maxwell
 discuss the difference between sailor and roping palms.

Our latest attempt, this previous Saturday, was no more successful. We needed a morning with Westerly breezes and low current/slack tide. And those conditions weren't present.  So today, Volunteers mustered at the usual time, a total of six of us, Walter Barton, Tony Marchesani, David Ried, Lance Halderson, and Maxwell Dale, along with his friend, Ashley, and me, Bryan. We started by reinflating the small boat in anticipation of Nick Swarts showing up to do some coxwain work.

 Next, Tony, and David gathered tools and began laying out the starboard boat falls, to turn in a long splice where a fathom of line had unlaid and frayed. Maxwell, and Ashley teamed up with Bryan to empty out then hose down and wipe the yeti cooler. Ashley produced a bowl of ice from the freezer to cool the just filled orange water jug. Between the two of them they should be each due for a 50 Volunteer Hour pin.

Walter, Tony, and Lance work
the aft Yokohama up to the gap
between the hull in the piling, as Bryan,
 out of picture, takes turns
 off the port side Quarter bit,
 to ease the stern further off the dock. 

It was less than an hour into our projects when Bryan looked out over the dock lines and noticed that the schooner was riding at least seven feet away from the dock. All the Yokohama fenders were floating out, away from the dock wall. Bryan immediately mustered all idle hands with boat hooks, fathoms of rope, and handy billy tackles, to the starboard rail, and over the next three hours,  orchestrated a series of attempts to pull, poke, twist, pry, and push the errant Yokohama's and their floating telephone poles partly connecting them into a more stable configuration of resting against their three pilings, as originally designed.  The final phase including easing the stern quarter line, allowing the stern to float outward four feet, enabling the aft-most Yokohama to float into it's desired position.  With Handy-billy's and boat hooks, the stern was pulled back into it's position next to the dock.                                                                                                                              

          

  Just in time to get below for quick final sign-off's of their reenlistment paperwork  and disembarking as a looming dark squall line crossed the harbor from the east. 

All Yokohamas' nicely centered on their pilings, for now. 

 

US Navy Sailor Volunteers Link their future to a Maritime Heritage

 Here's the picture: Four United States Navy Sailors,, more specifically, Petty Officers ETN 2d Class Lance Halderman, Maxwell Dale, Alexander Molaison, and Nolan Clunan, all (Nuclear)Electronics Technicians, have day jobs, as Instructors at the Naval Weapons School up the Cooper River.  But on their own free time, they are deckhands aboard a wooden traditionally rigged 19th Century replica Pilot Schooner.

I get it,, I"m a retired US Army soldier, and I still like to mess around in History, Military and otherwise, and period fire arms, black powder muzzleloaders. These guys like to mess around in ships their great-grandfathers would've crewed. Actually me too, but never mind. 

Boatswain Bryan Oliver (LTC USA, Ret)
administers the reenlistment oath to 
US Navy Petty Officers Alexander Molaison,
 Maxwell Dale, Lance Halderman,
 and Nolan Clunan

These four took it to a new level when they requested permission to conduct their first Reenlistment Ceremony on the deck of SSV Spirit of South Carolina, and offered me the honor of administering their Reenlistment Oath. 

Any servicemember of the Armed Forces can choose, within reason and professional protocol, the location /scenario of their ceremony wherein they are promising anew, four or six years of Service to the Nation. They may also request who will administer their oath, as long as it is a Commissioned Officer of the United States Armed Forces, Active duty or Retired.

All Professions, and the military professions in particular, are defined by values, principles, knowledge, experience, standards accumulated over centuries. The maritime professions are founded on values and principles that can be lumped under the label of Seamanship, as relevant today as they were centuries ago in the age of Sailing Ships and Galleys. 

It's official. 

These four sailors chose to recognize that link to their professional history by marking this  significant occasion in their careers, and I was especially honored to be part of it.

Saturday Morning's Long Splicing Demo frustrated by Priority to work the Dock -fender situation.

Saturday, the 9th was to be a straight-forward maintenance projects day. Tony Marchesani had been practicing his long-splice technique in preparation to demonstrate a master class in long-splicing a worn our section of our starboard bow falls line. 

All that was set aside when, the day before, Dock Master, Jeff Davis called Bos'un Bryan to point out the deteriorating situation of the wayward Yokohoma fenders on the face dock. The three oversized hard rubber cylinders were intended to be positioned between the schooners hull and the vertical pilings supporting the face dock. Over a year ago, they had long since shifted off the pilings after the telephone pole that strung the three together, had snapped. 

An attempt by past Captain Bobby Nobles to rest the line of fenders ultimately failed, and now the string of loose yokohoma's were floating uselessly under the dock, protecting nothing. As Jeff pointed out, the resiulting wear of a telephone pole remnant,rubbing against the piling, was weakening the structure. 

And so, Four of us, this Saturday shifted our focus from long splices and cooler cleanups to seeking a solution to the fender problem.  For the rest of the morning, Bryan Oliver, Tony Marchesani, Ken Fonville and David Ried, made several different attempts,, using different methods, from different angles, using boat hooks and handy-billy's, to align fenders with poles, adjust existing chains, all to no avail. 

Tony and Lance team up to force a ball fender
 into position on the face dock.

The prime obstacle was inadequate space to maneuver the 4 ft x 5 ft yokohama fenders out of their positions under the dock. Easterly breezes and ebbing tide was forcing the ship's hull up against the dock, robbing us of needed maneuver space.  Until the wind shifted, and tide eased, or a powerful motorized push boat could get the schooner off the dock, or the schooner departed the dock for shipyard, we'd be unable to solve the problem.  The crew rearranged as possible, available ball fenders to force between the schooner's hull and pilings.

Breaking the sense of Stagnation while waiting for Spirit's Shipyard and beyond.

 I think it was Thomas Paine that wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls".. whadya know! I was right, actually,, just googled it. more significantly, they were the first words of his series of pamphlets "The American Crisis" in 1776, written to inspire and encourage the Continental Army. 

I can't help but feel a similarity to what we volunteers for Spirit of South Carolina are facing.  Of course, we are not trying to birth a new nation - only save a wooden traditionally rigged schooner. Still, the situation feels stark.  Since the departure of our last Captain, there are: No programs, no shipyard, no perceivable operating budget, no crew, and most unsettling,, no communication from, well, anyone up the chain. The last message in February alluded to plans being made.  Nothing else since. It appears to be, just us.  So, appearances are just that, appearances.  This week, I'll be taking extra efforts to identify what's ground truth.

Volunteer Bos'un Bryan Oliver building a picture
 for his student tour group of this schooner
 hiding enslaved African Americans
  in their escape to New Bedford

  In the meantime I'm exploring organizing a volunteer cadre of tour guides, with a specific mission; engaging  in conversation, the people who routinely walk down the dock;

•  offer them teasers of  information they likely had never known before, 
• offering a deck tour, 
• while telling a story or two, based on Spirit's historical role as a 19th century pilot schooner, 
• or more broadly,  ships of her class and the part they played in the sea-borne Underground Railroad from the early thru mid 19th century. 

Volunteer, Carin Bloom; Educator,
Historian, Reenactor,
 and former deckhand on Delaware's Tall Ship, 
Kalmar Nykel is helping organize
 our knowledge material into easy-to-digest
 Tour-guide sound bites.

Our Donations Box sits ready, beneath the saloon table, to be hoisted up onto the dock and made easily visible to visitors, when pointed out by our deckhand/tour guide at end of the tour.

  That's part of the purpose of Spirit of South Carolina, and its something we volunteers are capable of continuing, while we weather these other uncertainties.  Look for SignUP opportunities on our SignUP Genius web site. 

Link to Volunteers SignUP Genius

There will be some sessions of orientation and familiarization with our source material, Some walk thru's, and then going out and doing it! 

This can't be a one-person show.  If you love this schooner and want to honor all the things she stands for, then this should be an easy step. 

Bryan describing for an impromptu group invited aboard,
 the competitive world of 19th century Bar Pilots

Captain Heath Hackett using charts as visuals
 to lead his student tour thru the difficulties
 of ships getting into and out of this harbor
 before the Jetties were constructed.

Bryan with group of young racing sailors,
 getting a hand's-on lesson
 in 19th century seamanship.