That is a beautiful ship.

How many people does it take to sail it? Do you guys go out there to learn, or to party?

Did anyone say...."FLOGGING MOLLY'S"?

Roger_That wrote:

Learn, party, pillage, plunder, rabble rouse...cavort with other dirty deckhands.  Climb the ratlines drunk, swing from a masthead...harass the land trapped and generally miserable visitors.  Sing along to Flogging Molly and any other worthy music.  Throw large objects at anyone who mentions Jimmy Buffet, boose cruises, Jamaica, or parrots.  Generally thumb our noses at anyone in a floating object with more than 15cc's of engine power. Spend most of our time praying for good wind and smacking down anyone that dares bring a banana on board.

That boat there takes a company of 12.  2 captains, 2 mates, deckhands, engineer, and a cook.  Of course normally it's about 6 crew unless it's a long trip.

My current takes a company of 4.  1 captain, 1 mate, 2 deckhands - but it can be run well with 2 who know their stuff.  Any of which may also double as engineer and cook.  I've learned a lot about diesel engines, dual tank switching, stuffing boxes, yawl boats, wiring, oil changing, and other things I really am not sure I want to know about.

You find a good crew and these types of boats can be loads of hearty fun mixed with moments of sublime beauty.

When my friend first got our 105 foot square rigged topsail ketch and we were launching the charter business the initial CG liscence requiremnt was just 3. I don't think they took into account what it takes to actually sail and based that on the extremely adept manuverability of the dual adjustable prop configuration and powerful auxillery engines. Before we attracted a  pool of crew we took a couple of day trips on the bay with just a captain, stewardess and mate. Even managing to set all the working sails which only required the manipulation of 90 of the 140 lines of running rigging terminated around the deck at belaying pins.

This experience was great ammunitin whenever some tired overworked deckhand started complaining about having to keep recoiling the miles of line whenever we braced the yards around for a tack.

Having sailed on 18th century boats that are completely rigged with rope and before the age of the donkey engine I gained a new understanding of what it meant that labor was cheap in the past.

When I later did troubleshooting for our technology company it was driven home to me how much this has changed. The cost of labor in our country is so great that it is often the primary factor in service costs. It was somewhat disheartning to both me and my clients to have to show them that while the fix for their expensive equipment was a rather simple electronic repair, which we were quite capable of doing, the cost of labor to access it in the field was so high that it was better to junk the entire system and replace it with new.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2008-04-24 15:49:22)

Roger_That wrote:

And a bit of the cruel (well only cruel if you're a power boater or freight mate):

http://freshcrash.com/boatcrash.htm

Oh never fear me pretties, I have some great tales of harrowing snail boat cruelities.

But to start I will share this sight I got to watch over a few months.



2 winters ago I spent the winter and spring in Mexico moving US based racing sailnoats to and fro. This APL lines container ship made a careless turn entering into Enenada and wided up on the beach in front of the villas and tourists on Christmass day.

Of course the Mexicans are experts at making lemonade when life hands you lemons and an entire industry was born on the beach.



An unfortunate combination of higher high spring tide and an ensuing  storm pushed it right into the breakers. You could walk out and touch it at low tide. As you can see it is rather full. I suppose it might be some poetic justice for this American company  trying to offload its US bound cargo in Mexico rather than Long Beach. A taste of things to come once they complete the new giacantic cargo terminal 1000 miles south in Mazaltan bay and the superhighway they are building north to the new international port of entry in Kansas. All for the express purpose of serving the American market.

But I digress. This monstor had so many containers onboard that it was hopelessly stuck. They tried heaving.



It did not budge a foot. They unloaded about a quarter of the 1000 or so with a helocopter. This took a month and could only lift the topmost lighter containers. On the next high tide a month later they tried the tugs again. No dice.



I went down the coast while they started moving the largest helicopter in the world up from Brazil and came back tanned, wind burned and gorged on trolled tuna and fine tequila to find it still there. It was a weird site to see approching from the sea. There was so much cargo that it began to impact the American market. Apple had a major crisis when it could not get its shipwrecked parts to build products. Sony ran out of inventory. With only a few Higher high tides a year spaced a minimum of a 4 weeks apart they were in a pickle. They then got serious and built an entire pier out across thebeach to the ship and constructed huge skycranes. 2 more were built upon the ship itself just to move containers across the deck to where they could be plucked off.




But there are so many containers on these ships  It took a month to unload. The cranes could only move a container every on average 20 minutes or more rather then the 2 minutes x 4 cargo cranes at a modern terminal.

I went south agian and upon returning in late March the thing was still there, unloaded put awaiting the final Spring tide of the season. The next one wasn't till July.



They finally succeded in yanking it off the beach with the assistence of giant pumps which cut out a channel in the sand and then reversed to pump water in to liquify the sand below the keel.

Some shipmates were running the brig to the right on a trip up the Columbia river.



Way upriver through the many locks, they were carrying guests on a pleasent daysail when all of a sudden the elevator train bridge they were passing under descended without warning on top of them.

Normally kept in the up position these unattended automatic bridges are not supposed to have unscheduled decents of their spans without much clanging of alarms, sirens and flashing of lights. But as luck would have it, and to the momentary disbelief of the crew, there it was decending on top of them. And I mean right into them. It hit the after Main mast structure square in the middle and kept coming down. With the most awful cracking sound you never want to hear on a wooden boat, the bridge shattered the mainmast's two topmasts and the yards pealed off dangling by their chains and rigging. The span then split the main mast, which is the lowest section made from one sold douglas fir 2 1/2 feet wide, like kindling all the way down to the keel step. The boat gave such a tremendous shudder that they did not know if it had blown out the keel timbers. The crew were grabbing the passengers and rudely shoving them into fetal positions tucked against the bulwarks as debris rained down on them from above. When the boat twisted free in the current and popped out from under the bridge to everyones surprise there were no injuries and no damage to the hull.

It was such a freak accident of timing. The CG cleared the ship and crew of any fault. The rail line then settled for all damages without a fuss counting their blessings no one was killed.

That was a pretty good tale for the crew to tell. But nothing like the crazed look they got in their eyes when they recalled what it was like to bring such a heavy bluff-bowed,  round hulled underpowered squarerigger across the booming Columbia River bar. When the ship's cannons came loose in the rolling, to smash back and forth across the deck before jettisoning themselves over the side.

Oh and that brig is seen in quite a bit of the first Pirates of the Carribean as the Interceptor Jack Sparrow stole.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2008-04-24 21:20:50)

Awesome pics and stories JR.

The only interesting things of recent that I can add to that are these: 

We had one of the boat's benefactors offer to give us hand tongs for oystering.  He brought them up from Crisfield on his Lexus.  Need I say more?:



The other incident I witnessed was watching the Thomas Clyde snap her boom mid-race.  The captain had just put on new sails, but hadn't attached his reef lines yet.  Due to the windy weather (duh) and an unexpected puff of wind, the boom snapped like a tooth pick.  I was glaring through my 200mm lens from my boat at the time, as they were right behind us.  I brought Lawrence photos the next year of his boom-snap.  In true waterman fashion, he guffawed "Goddamn I'm still paying for that".





About 2 years ago, our captain and relief captain walked off the boat with no notice.  Long story, their own fault really.  We had a relief captain come up from Cambridge who while docking after a cruise, took out the end pylon and a huge chunk of the wood under our bowsprit.  The pylon finally got replaced this year, as well as the chunk missing.  He literally knocked the pylon in half.  Luckily it took more of the damage than our boat.

I find all of this boat porn kind of intimidating, because all I have is a little dinghy.

Johnny_Rotten wrote:

Don't let those myths deter you. Heck look at Whoogah. She likes them the older the better. Ones that require alot of handiwork just to coax them up to a modicum of speed, She is not afraid of a little dirt and the smell,

Winslow Homer painted this a 100+ years ago and I sailed a boat just like these from here to Nova Scotia and back alone when I was still too young to drive. I've sailed on about everything that floats but human density beyond  solo always makes me itch to hit the rat lines.

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

Wheeeeeeeee!

Oh, good god. I actually remember that show.

tojo2000 wrote:

Taint wrote:

Oh, good god. I actually remember that show.

I used to try to watch it when I was a kid, but I could never figure out what the fuck was going on.

It may come as a shock to...absolutely no one that Hollywood is making it into a movie.

Since Dirkman isn't around to say this I'd just like to point out on his behalf that this thread is one big tease.

A crushing defeat ends this sea saga.

It is amazing this one was recovered. How it was done makes for a pretty good read.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2008-05-03 01:43:25)

Boating for fun and profit.

choad wrote:

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2 … _skiff.jpg

Awesome. for years I carried in bags a vintage sailing Klepper along on coastal explorations.

But that reminds me of one of my favorite voyage accounts ever. I think it was in the 1970s National Geographic published the account of a voyage from The Irish sea to Newfoundland via Iceland  in a leather currach. All to prove possible the surviving written accounts from Irsih monks of the 6th century discovering the new world.



Certainly one of the most crazy voyages of the modern era ever undertaken. No radios, no epirb, no modern navigational aids, no engine. Had they not stopped in the Hebrides islands and picked up a hulking hairy scottish volunteer who showed them how to survive on seal blubber, other local delicacies and had the endurance to lean into the freezing heaving seas to sew up leaking seams from the outside with sinew, slathering them with seal fat they would have never been heard of again.

They actual made it though. So while I suppose the Irish may have discovered the new world, as my forfathers come from a part of the US where I grew up thinking it was normal to spell  with two ll s and two dd s, where every place was named bryn this or lea that, I prefer to believe that Welsh Prince Madoc discovered the new world in 1170 and sired many native children.

Oh yeah here it is Tim Severin and the recreation of the Brendon voyage.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2008-05-04 04:59:27)

pALEPHx wrote:

http://www.xmere.com/forums/uploads/ple/plane_porn.jpg

No No NO, this is boat porn you can only show aircraft porn if it is humping a boat.

The main squeeze approaches from the rear.



The little something something on the bow.

Excellent link, J-R.  I hadn't heard much about Prince Madoc since my senior year at Purdue, where I minored in Anthropology.  My favorite Anthro prof, Dr. Watson, had told us something of Prince Madoc, but since he was such an ardent Cambrophile, we mostly dismissed it as more of his beer-soaked ramblings.  I'd be interested to find out follow-up information on that research.

This is the one going through feasibility studies in my laboratory now:

Mr Toad wrote:

There is nothing quite as much fun as simply messing about in boats

That is nice boat porn indeed!