Storm Watch dockside on Spirit of South Carolina

 It's Friday 26 May;  In my head I'm hearing 8 Bells. .. meaning it's either 8AM, Noon, 4 PM, 8 PM, or midnite.  In this case its midnite.  Old-timey seafarers measured passing of time by the number of rings of the ship's bell. The bells rang every half-hour, beginning with one ring at the 1st half-hour of the 4-hour watch, adding a ring with each half-hour passed, until the end of the Watch, "8 bells." The sequence is repeated with start of the next and subsequent 4-hour watches. 

 I"m still up, sitting below in Spirit of South Carolina's Salon at the table, in the dark, except for my bunk light over my shoulder. I had just finished a viewing of Master and Commander,  via YouTube on my laptop.  Hunter long ago had climbed into his berth after catching a soccer match on his phone.  There's a pretty good gale going on up on deck, but its amazingly, eerily calm and quiet below decks; water gurgling around the hull next to the dock, occasional light thump as a wave crashed against her port (side exposed to the harbor) side; occasionally a gentle rocking.  Spirit of South Carolina was extremely well built. The extreme conditions sweeping her decks and rigging might barely be noticeable from the comfort of a berth in the salon.  Too quiet.

I'd been on board since 1100 installing an experimental jackline stanchion-post just forward of the gangway. About 1400 in the afternoon, winds in the harbor predictably and rapidly picked up from 5-10 to 20 knots, driving a decision to storm furl the two halves of the main awning over the foresail gaff, saving them from blowing away.

 As wind steadily increased out of NNE, I decided I had better stay around for the night.  The three Yokohoma fenders, now working independently since their unifiying single log shaft had shattered in the previous week's gale,  were well situated for now.   I couldn't predict how they would behave when the forecasted 50-knot gusts hit around 9 pm; or worse it clocked easterly pushing our hull against the dock.  

Deciding to check fenders, dock lines and do a bilge check, I  pulled on foulies, grabbed a headlamp off the hook in my berth, climbed the ladder and slid open the hatch cover.  Whoa!  a shock to my senses the second my head pops out of the companion way, crossing a plane from the quiet peace below to roaring, stinging rain and spray in the face, water already finding a way into my boots,  blackness and a deck that wants to tip me over.  A little chilly for late May, rain stings my face carried by a 35 knot blast from the north-north east-straight down the harbor.  Actually half the water hitting my face is spray thrown up by 2-3 foot  confused seas smacking our hull and the dock with enough force to send it over my head. Combination of fogginess, rain and far off lights illuminating the Ravenel Bridge makes for a surreal scene. I'd try a photo but my phone would be immediately soaked.  You can feel as well as see the water churning, aggravated by the north wind pushing against an incoming tide. 

Stepping slowly over the stowed main boom rig trying to maintain three points of contact, I worked my way across the deck to the dockside rail at the Main shrouds and focused my headlamp overside and down on the single huge black Yokohama fender. It was stabilized; pierced bruschetta-like by the  18-foot stub of a broken telephone pole thru its center. Rolling loosely on its telephone pole axle, the assembly was held in place against a dock piling by four separate lines criss-crossing to hold it in place. A cluster of sausage and ball fenders pressed between the stub ends of the pole and the hull. Watching it's surging and rolling it seemed to be doing it's job pretty well with no risk of shifting or coming loose. 

 From there I made my way forward to the forecastle hatch and climbed below to check the bilge under the forecastle head. All was well, a normal level of water holding steady, that I'd leave to pumping out in the morning. Next, the aft cabin and finally salon. All showed normal nominal levels, requiring no immediate action.  So far so good,, now to get back below, out of these foulies, and into my berth for a few hours sleep.

0300 Saturday morning: Mostly snoozing, I'm jarred by the feeling we well as hearing a distinctive thump, like something hitting the side of the hull.  Enough to spring me out of the high bunk onto the sole and start throwing on clothes and foulies. 

Back on deck with headlamp, I'm searching the length of the ship's hull looking some something loose, floating, dangling.  I check the Yokohama's watching and waiting to see if the schooner's hull is rising and falling with them or drifting off, then slamming back into it.  Nothing, just some small rubbing. 

For the next two hours, I'm alternately on deck and below, attempting to isolate the source of the noise, which continued irregularly the remainder of the night and into the morning.  I'm checking bilges, possible shifting fenders. I'd finally isolated it to vicinity of the rudder, which appeared to have some play in it- up to 10 degrees.  I open the lazarette hatch and look back toward the direction of the rudder post, have no visibility on it. I decide to wait till morning and ambient light to lift the steering box cover to examine the worm gear.

Looking aft and down at the Yokohoma
between our hull and the dock piling;
 the stump of the telephone pole
held off the hull by two fenders.

0730 Saturday morning. My phone chirps in my ear;  it's a text from Capt Heath who has arranged for a diver to go down and look at the rudder area -will be there in the next half hour. So, dressing up, covering up with my now pretty damp foulies, I first stepped into the galley and pressed the power button on the coffee maker that Hunter had already set up the night before. 

Filling my mug and grabbing two donuts I climbed up on deck to assess the situation.  Rains had diminished, mostly, but winds remained strong and gusty, still NNE. Fenders and Yokohamas were holding station.d
Since starting watch yesterday evening I experienced 1.5 complete tide changes, enabling me to observe the effects on dock lines tension, specifically spring lines. I took up another 3 feet of #1, made it fast than walked aft to the steering box. After first, spinning the wheel hard port and back starboard, it appeared that the rudder was answering satisfactorily but was displaying some "slop"-maybe 10 degrees worth. The worm gear, and rudder post inside the box indicated no issues.

The diver inspected the below water line area of the hull, and relayed to me some findings which he was passing off to Capt Hackett. He did confirm some looseness in the rudder. 

Conditions around 0800 Saturday morning.

With diver recovered and departed, Hunter and I shared another couple donuts and waited around till 0930 for any other volunteers that might have decided to show up.  No one else came.  Must've been the weather. Too bad.  I"d brought donuts.

.The Big Awning is Rigged up and Capt Heath's team is back aboard painting and sanding

 Our last Saturday Volunteer Da(May 20) was disappointing only in the light turn-out for muster.  The proximity to Mother's Day recovery weekend, and pre-Memorial Day preparation weekend must've had some influence there.  

Nevertheless, two of us did muster Saturday at 9 AM.  Weather was perfect, nothing to distract us.  A few more hands could've put a dent in the punch-list. Dave Brennen and I agreed that a priority should be up-rigging our just-repaired canvas awning.  It's two halves laced together over the foresail gaff would provide most of mid-ships a shade and even protection from rain. The redefined awning design required  some experimenting in setting correct guy-line tensions over  twelve sections of the outer edge. By early afternoon we had the awning spread over the deck area between the two masts. The one starboard-aft corner remained a problem since it could not be stretched under, over, or thru the gangway assembly.  Some alternate solution  was needed to secure that corner without interfering with the gangway operation.

And so, just this latest Wednesday, Bryan reappeared with a six-foot long poplar wood two-inch diameter dowel to rig up a a corner post for the starboard aft guy rope. I tell you, photo's don't do it justice, so there won't be posted in this blog entry.  Suffice to say that ample shade is now available across Spirit's deck, fore-to-main mast.  

Now the schooner can host productive maintenance and training sessions in comfort, rain-or-shine.  

And it appears that premise will already be challenged this coming weekend, Saturday the 27th.  Weather forecasts Gale warnings in the harbor Friday into early Saturday morning.  Decreasing winds Saturday might give opportunity to reset the awning, with fruitful activity underneath. 

Meanwhile, two of Project Manager Capt Hackett's team have been aboard all week sanding, prepping and painting/varnishing, both in the engine room, and the quarter-rounds around hatches and cabin trunks.  Apparently another team of two was called in from North Sails to go aloft and replace the radar dome and wiring.  Maybe I can can arrange to get them aloft one more time to uprig the main boom lifts and peak halyard. That would be a movement.

Main Awning is Recovered, Reconfigured, and Ready to Rig

 Two weekends, two sewing machines, two square feet of sunbrella patch material, and two-dozen additional brass grommets.  That and some creative sewing techniques invented on the fly; all together resulted in a two-piece awning rig that should provide shade and rain protection on the mid-ship's deck thru the summer.  

Starting last weekend, Doug Hartley, Dan Maurin and Tony Marchesani started work on the first half-section using the ship's Juki. See last week's posting for how that went.  This coming week, Doug brought along his personal "Sailrite" Sewing machine to complete the second half. It's a well-known brand among the yachting and boating world, and promised to be much less fidgety than the Juki. 

Doug and Tony in the groove, running a seam
 25 feet up and down one edge.

Sure enough, once set up on the dock, Doug and Tony rapidly tabled about 25 feet, pounded in 12 grommets and added six different triangular reinforcing patches over existing stress points.  Running out of brass grommets, Bryan Oliver pulled out palm and needles, cut a length of seine twine, and created two traditional grommets in the remaining corners.  Don't examine them too closely-it was late in a long day.    

Ken and Dave laying on
 the second coat of D2 Varnish

As Doug and Tony set up their canvas repair operation on the dock, Ken Fonville and Dave Lazar gathered up brushes, jars, a ground cloth and D2 varnish to lay a coat onto the jumbo boom and jib boom.  

Wayne Burdick and Mike Evatt took on the project to create a temporary seal over a section of waterways midships where suspected water could potentially leak into the saloon.  

Dave Lazar measures out a length
of sheeting while Mikell figures
where to anchor the end of
the seal.

At that point, Bryan remembered he'd brought out a section of oak stair rail to replace the broken section at end of the gangway. 

Just in-time for lunch.  Hunter had returned from Harris Teeter with the makings for high-stacked Tuna salad sandwiches, a jug of iced tea and cookies.  Wayne and Ken were called back to shore for other priorities, so missed out on the sandwiches, but that left more for us. 

After lunch, as the morning projects finished up, hands turned to the dock to adjust the large Yokohama fenders, which had broken off during the storm earlier this week on Tuesday. One was in danger of slipping off the telephone pole-shaft. Using spare dock lines, volunteers sprung lines in opposing directions to pilings, effectively pinning the Yokohama against the piling.

 

Ernestina Morrisey pulls away
from the fuel dock

Ernestina Morrisey, the schooner who had visited us two months prior, was rafted up to us since Tuesday afternoon. Just prior to lunch she began taking in her lines in order to shift over to the  fuel dock prior to departing home for Massachusetts.  As our projects began to wind down and we secured tools and materials, we watched their departure. 

  All secured, what was left of us settled in under the small awning under  the forecastle hatch.  Bryan crushed some ice into plastic cups and poured out  generous doses of Mint Julep he had made up in a batch for a cancelled Derby Party.  Was a good way to close out a productive say on the water. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Half-Awning over the deck complete and ready for rigging up. Now, Repeat.

 Saturday was a great day to be on the water.  Undoubtedly many volunteers were on it somewhere else, or at graduations, or other engagements, unfortunately not on deck Saturday morning. 

Five of us, however, did muster on deck Saturday morning, and we'll say "you're welcome" in advance when the next Volunteer Day comes around under a sunny, much warmer day and y'all can take shade under a refurbished main deck awning.  Well, half of one anyway. 

That was an urgent objective this weekend, before the days get hotter,  to reconfigure what was left of our old wind-shredded awning, into a functional awning over the "waist", the center deck area between masts.

Bryan sketched out a plan to retrieve the old enormous spread of awning that stretched across port-to-starboard over the furled foresail.  We'd cut the old awning in half, fore-to-aft; creating two halves whose edges would be tabled, then re-grommeted to enable the two halves to be laced together over the gaff, then stretched outward to the cap rails. Shredded edges would be folded over and tabled, effectively creating a new triple thickness edge. 

Tony and Ken check final
measure for the cut line
 to separate the old canvas
 into 2 halves.

While Tony Marchesani, and Dan Maurin retrieved the old awning from the forecastle and spread it out on the dock, Doug Hartley lay out on the jib boom with a small bucket of D.1 to apply a third coat. Ken Fonville located "Juki" our highly temperamental but super-fast straight-stitching sewing machine from the salon, and hauled it up on deck and over to the dock.  

Doug Hartley checks plug-in of "Juki" while
Tony, Dan, and Ken stretch out the awning
 to locate the corner for marking.

Shifting deck boxes around, Doug and Dan set up Juki on the deck box, pulled out the Instruction manual and refreshed themselves on the bobbin-loading, threading, and tensioning steps. Ken and Tony stretched out the awning, Ken tape-measured distances taken from the gaff-to caprail, transferring them to the awning with a magic marker.   So far, the plan was working.. Success now rested on Juki's cooperation. 

Juki has a reputation.  If you've worked with her before, you know what I mean.

Doug, with foot on the gas slowly accelerates his 

feed  under Juki's needle while Dan keeps the 

six sunbrella layers from puckering.

Extremely finicky, she balks at any perceived slightest violation of  thread tensioning, thread-routing protocol.  If you can get the set up right. chances of an amazingly speedy, uninterrupted run was.. pretty good.  If you didn't,  Juki would cruelly tease you with four inches of smooth run before abruptly  snapping the upper thread, or jamming with a horrendous thread gordian knot just under the plate, requiring, five minutes of digging out, then rethreading.

 

   

We would face much time experimenting with everything in effort to mollify Juki.  It was worth it, because we were facing about 140 feet of straight stitching, which would take days, weeks(!) of hand flat-stitching with needle and sailor's palm-really not an option.

Thank's to John Crane's sturdy storage box construction, Juki's storage box doubled as a seat while Doug started the first edge.  It went swimmingly.. 12 feet of tabling flew under Juki's needle in about 45 seconds.  We started on the next edge,, then it all went wrong. Juki turned on us, jamming, busting threads, every four inches.. We returned to the manual, discovered a hook where the thread should've run, but came off.  And started again.. 4 feet of good run, thread broke.  Adjusted tension.. another jam.  Frustration.. 

Thankfully, Volunteers were distracted from possible violence, possibly float-testing Juki, when Hunter's called up from the galley  announcing "Lunch!"  Volunteers clambered below into the saloon, threw hats into a bunk and lined up for plate-full's of Paella.. That's right,, Paella!  Saffron rice, spices, and peppers, with a seafood shellfish medley.  Oh, we happy few. 

I believe Paella has a magical mellowing effect. After lunch, volunteers came back out to the dock determined to make an amends with Juki and finish this one Awning half. A turn of the thread tensioner, a decision to avoid trying punching thru 7 layers of sunbrella in reverse,, a few other techniques I forgot, and the rest of the edge tabling went fairly smoothly.  As Bryan and Dan, sweet-talked Juki thru the last 25 feet, Tony and Doug marked out  grommet points spaced 12 inches apart on the inner edge that would lay over the gaff. 

They pounded in the last grommet at 1500 hours, and all stopped to put away, secure, and clean up. All that remained for this half-awning was to  cut and install guy lines and lacing ropes.  

Hopefully next weekend, with an additional volunteers, we can repeat the process for the 2d half. 

  

Volunteers Evolving into self-organizing teams.

 Spirit of South Carolina Volunteers are evolving onto what business guru's have called "self-organizing teams",, those groups of people who quickly recognize and sign on to a specific objective, agree to take directions from a team member with best fit for the particular project, appreciate each other's skill sets and taken initiatives to work together,  and communicate. 

Mikell Evatt and David Brennon lay out
on the headrig with sanders to wood
and prep the jibboom for it's first few coats
 of preservative/sealant Dek solje D.1.

Last Saturday, Four Volunteers made an example: Tony Marchesani, Dave Brennan, Dave Lazar, and Mikell Evatt mustered aboard, picked up the Punch List of projects, selected three and went to work. They knew where the tools, abrasives, paints and solvents were stored. 

Having finished oiling the four belaying pins,
 David Lazar uses a corner-tool to sand out
 the details of the Mainmast Fife rail
 prior to wiping on first coats of  D.1
preservative sealant.

David Lazar and Tony down rig
the Mainsail peak halyard tackle
 to repair/restore the blocks 

 In the course of the day, they also identified some problem areas and added them to the punchlist. 

At end of the workday, tools, materials were secured in their places, messes cleaned up and the vessel left ship-shape. 

April was a Big Month for Tall Ships in Charleston.

 ..and it should mean something to us.

If you're reading this, and enjoy being around Tall Ships, April was a fruitful month to be around the Charleston Harbor.  In the span of two weeks, we hosted, besides Spirit of South Carolina, three other ships, the 3-masted Barque, Gunilla, from Sweden, the schooner Denis Sullivan, and the Staysail Schooner, Corwith Cramer, of Massachusetts.   A fourth,  the Maine Schooner, Harvey Gamage, decided not to put into Charleston, but instead, take advantage of a weather window, and keep on sailing north, home to Portland. 

 The rest were also northbound, homeward to restart up their programs of education under sail- with much the same general mission as our own aboard Spirit of South Carolina.  

 I only point this out as an encouragement for all us volunteers, and others with an affinity for South Carolina's Schooner, that there are other traditional sailing vessels out there which are successful in their mission, same as ours.   We could be, should be doing that too.

Just in case you never read the Mission Statement of "Spirit of South Carolina", it's printed inside the first pages of the Crew Manual, and will highlighted on the ship's website once it's published.  You can read it yourself here:

Mission

SSV Spirit of South Carolina is dedicated to honoring and curating the Seafaring History and diverse Maritime Heritage of South Carolina by offering a unique educational platform for the people of the Palmetto State, in particular her youth.  Participants will experience programs designed around an interdisciplinary hands-on curriculum integrated with the history and literature of South Carolina and our relationship to the sea.  Just as important, Spirit of South Carolina will challenge and engage students with a unique Tall Ship experience which:

·       Builds Pride and a sense of achievement

·       Increases self-confidence and belief in one’s self

·       Encourages Self-reliance/independence

·       Develops Resilience

·       Exercises Self-control/personal discipline

·       Appreciates values of teamwork and cooperation

·       Respects and understands perspectives of others resulting in their own broadened perspective

·       Increases knowledge/awareness of different social groups and increased ability to bridge social differences

·       Fosters Organizational skills and time management

As Volunteers we have potential to play an active role in advancing that mission.  The role is not  defined yet. But perhaps we can help define it ourselves.  How would you see yourself fitting in? 

Let's talk sometime.