16 Volunteers  use Sunday morning to advance the Winter Maintenance Project by over two work days.

Sunday morning, 16 volunteers mustered on deck.  They were a mixed bag; an Old Salt, Joe Gorman,  long-time volunteer, Bryan Oliver, several regulars like Ken Fonville, Danny Johnson, Gary Pope, Carter and Alexa Edwards. A few, like Wayne Burdick, Charley Johnson, and Shawn Patience, returning after months of handling higher priorities, were coming back to the ship. And most notably, the largest group were first or second-time newcomers; Tim Geoghegan, Darren Casale, Blake Scott, Pearson Chesney, Tony Marchesani, Ricki Washington.   

For Spirit of South Carolina, this was good news. A third straight week of increasing Volunteer participation,  a promising sign that she might someday see a tipping point of regular volunteers regularly supplying the power, skills, and effort to sustain her mission.  

But for this day, the immediate priority, was to tackle oiling of her mast hoops, add a 6th varnish coat to her booms and gaffs lying on the dock, and haul in the anchor chain off the harbor bottom and deck wash. 

So, while a small group of volunteers joined crew member, Matt at the windlass to haul up anchor, then hose down and wash the deck, the remaining group hauled out to the dock, cans of preservative/sealant D1 and Varnish, bags of disposable brushes, yogurt cups, rags, groundcloths, and mineral spirits.  Lining up approximately forty recently scraped down mast-hoops along the dock benches, volunteers started an assembly line of wiping down every surface of the 'unwound" mast hoops with a D1 oil based preservative and sealant. 

Tony Marchesani finishes oiling the last mast hoop
 with its 3d coat of D1 oil.

 Once all forty mast hoops had been thoroughly coated, and the oil absorbed into the wood, Volunteers started on them again with a second wiped-on coat, followed by a third,  at which the absorpsion slowed down, indicating saturation.

Gary Pope and Tim Geoghegan team up on coating the
Foresail boom

At that time, the Volunteers shifted effort to the spars.  Some volunteer chamois-ed down the surfaces to wipe off condensation, then tacked the surfaces with mineral-spirit saturated rags. Meanwhile others marshalled-up foam brushes and measured out D2 varnish in re-purposed yoghurt cups.
After volunteer, Bryan Oliver, led a detailed demonstration of the Porzelt Marine Varnish Application Method, volunteers lined up on either side of all four spars, and began a deliberate sequence of  blotting and feathering, interrupted by frequent eyeballing for hard edges and holidays.
By shortly after noon, volunteers had completed coated all four spars.  Mast hoops were still drying from their third oil coat, which left nothing left to do but go to lunch.  Chef Hunter had prepared a nice Shepherd's Pie-style beef-stew casserole.
Following lunch, with coatings done and drying, the tempo shifted to deckhand training.  Volunteers broke into two groups, one following Old Salt, Joe Gorman to the line locker to dig out training aids for some knotwork. Another group followed Bryan Oliver aft, to the main shrouds pin rail for some demonstration and practice in line handling, coiling, and hanging. By end of day, volunteers had checked off several tasks of the Volunteer Deck hand Skills list, (available for download on this blog).

Joe Gorman and Wayne Burdick finishing up the Main Sail boom.