Its like any new project, particularly a complex one,, the closer you get to execution, the sharper your focus becomes , and the more to-do's, issues, and details become visible that need to be prioritized and resolved. Our crew for Georgetown now reduced to a complement of 12 with drop-outs,and add-ins, will be converging the day before cast-off, and a few coming aboard for the first time, the day of. That's 12 souls with skills and experience ranging from vast to well, almost never-ever.
However, before our crew could board with their personal gear, space needed to be made below for them. , In the past 9 months, most of the 28 berths in the forecastle and saloon had been made into staging areas for tools, cords, paint supplies, cases and crates of catering dinnerware, glassware, utensils and all kinds of hardware. Additionally, the head in the forecastle remained inoperable pending a good clean-up and rebuilding of the flushing pump. So, the challenge became, the freeing up as many saloon berths as possible.
So, this past Saturday, with guidance and priorities set by Capt Bobby, Bos'un-Bryan, Dan Maurin, Dallas Spencer, Lance Halderman and Walter Barton climbed aboard, using their best trapeze moves. [The gangway remains non-operational, necessitating boarding either by tender-ferrying , or stretching from the dock across to the Main shrouds, high overhead of the rolling yokohama's.] Dallas and Lance stayed on the dock the first hour to advance the repair of the Dory's oarlocks and caprail, to make her ready for launch.
The rest mustered on deck to clear the remaining hardware, miscellany out of the saloon berths, then hunt down, bag-up, and stage on deck every last piece of the existing bed linen, pillows and blankets. One of Capt Bobby's priorities was to rid the ship of the old stuff. Walter Barton had proposed just the right solution. Most of the bedding was perfectly usable, and recently laundered in volunteer's laundry rooms. He and his wife and a few others had been gathering household goods to deliver north into the devastated communities in North Carolina. Volunteers staged a fire-brigade-style line from below decks onto the deck then up onto the dock where approximately 40 bagged sets of linens, pillows, and blankets, were piled onto dock carts, and rolled to Walters waiting SUV.
As the bulky stuff was cleared from below decks, the effort shifted to the odd hardware piles remaining scattered across six different berths.. Some of it went to the dock for storage, some went to the garbage, some was consolidated into other bunks, but the net result was, that we freed up another half-dozen berths for their intended use.
As the below decks operation was coming to a stopping point, Dallas had shifted from the Dory to the damaged 8 feet of starboard cap-rail gouged by the broken gangway. With a couple of recently procured exotic-looking rasps, and experience from his two weeks at the Wooden Boat School in Brookline Maine, Dallas chiseled, scraped and smoothed out the damaged areas, readying them for the next step of some 120 grit, and coats of Australian Timber Oil.
In the course of the morning, Capt Bobby gave us a better picture of the near term activities for the vessel. It's now been over a year since our last COI Inspection. We are due for another one, which may be a bit more involved since it will certify the ship from In-shore to(hopefully) Off-shore operation sailing. Without it we are unable to carry passengers out to sea. The preparation for-and COI sail are being scheduled.
In the interim. the schooner is not authorized for paying passengers. So in this interim, Capt Bobby is planning for a number of training sails, similar to our cruise to Georgetown. At the other end of this cycle is the delivering of the schooner to shipyard in late Spring 2025 for a few months, for it's 10-Year Inspection. which will involve really in-depth, mast-unstepping examinations; shipyard location, not yet confirmed.
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