Shipshape and Bristol Fashion

So rather than being a good student and work on my two big graduate school papers this weekend, I of course went to Camp Parsons. It was, however, entirely worthwhile, because we were able to put the finishing touches on a lot of projects that we've been working on throughout the whole off season.  It's looking like everything's going to be shipshape and Bristol fashion in time for the start of the summer season.

I'm not going to dwell too long on this, because I seriously do need to work on those papers, so I'll just share a short list and some pictures:

(1) The sailboats finally have names, thanks to the financial support of Mr Al Hutchison.

(2) The big float from Port Gamble finally has a deck.  Ken bought about ten sheets of 3/4" marine-grade plywood, and Andy spent the whole morning and afternoon cutting them and nailing them all down, with only three inches of plywood to spare. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but it's pretty solid.

(3) The Ranger 20 finally got patched up. I've been waiting months for the weather to be dry and warm enough to apply the epoxy putty—it hit about 80 degrees this weekend and it was clear skies the whole time, so conditions were perfect. It's still going to take some sanding and painting, however, before we can put the Ranger 20 back in the water.

(4) We have brand new ten-foot reach poles.

So everything's going according to plan. I recall a certain Assistant Camp Director telling me that many people have promised him that all of his sailboats would be working, but none have ever actually done it. I should've put a wager on it. 

Still haven't finished the pier sign though...

Here's one last picture of a bald eagle on Telescope Point. By my estimate, the area around Camp Parsons is home to about ten bald eagles.  I've actually seen so many bald eagles this weekend and last weekend that I'm starting to feel somewhat blasé about them.

Okay, now off for some serious studying/paper-writing. No distractions for the next five days!

Cruising Right Along

We’ve made a good deal of progress with aquatics over the past week:

• The Ranger 20 is now tipped on its side and ready to have its keel worked on.  It has a number of abrasions, meaning it must have run aground repeatedly in its past life.  Those nicks and dings have to be patched before it goes back in the water, or the water might soak into the fiberglass and ruin the whole keel. Brian is coming up next weekend to do that. 
• All of our torn sails have been mended.
• We finished towing the 12’ by 32’ float to camp. We had taken it directly back to the marina at Pleasant Harbor when we towed it from Port Gamble two weekends ago, because it was already approaching nightfall by the time we were in view of camp.  Chris and Antone had the privilege of meeting Jim’s boater-friend Ralph, in all his salty splendor.  Ralph is the skipper of the trawler that we used to tow the float.
• Chris rigged up the Holder 12, which, thanks to a new drainscrew, is seaworthy once again, for the first time in several years. I got a chance to sail it in pretty good winds on Saturday evening. It's really a fantastic little boat.
• Jim managed to get two very nice-looking floats donated to us from the Point Whitney Shellfish Lab.
• I finished painting the Thunderbird design on the pier sign—now I just need to touch up the white areas around it. 
• Tom Rogers completed the two-week-long rigmarole to get on Alaska Air’s approved cargo-shipper list.  Once he's squared away, he'll be able to fly our new Hobie 21 CompTip from Florida.
• Lastly, I just got a message from Jim saying that Brian came up today to raise the 750-lb. ship’s anchor that he found on the east side of Jackson Cove and move it somewhere near the pier. That’s what’s going to be holding down our massive new float.

Things are just cruising right along.

Ken picking up the Ranger 20 and shifting it on its side to give us access to its damaged keel.

The Thunderbird design on the newly repainted pier sign.  Just some touch-up work is needed before it'll be good as new.

CP Sailboat Repairs - Progress Report

It's certainly been a long time since I've updated this blog. Not that I regret it, necessarily - not having time to update a blog means that I've been busy doing other fun things. Classes have been eating up a lot more of my time this quarter, especially my diplomacy course.

The premise of this course, which is instructed by two Foreign Service Officers, is to simulate the Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear weapons program.  We are divided into six "delegations" that represent North Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea, and we're trying to hash out an agreement to denuclearize North Korea. Needless to say, it's been great fun for me so far, but also massively time-consuming and energy-depleting. Plus I'm on the American delegation, so we have to work about three times as hard as everyone else.

But now on to camp matters. It was a great work party this weekend, stormy weather notwithstanding. Brian Horch, the camp's volunteer boat-fixer extraordinaire, had come in last weekend and finished the Coronado 15 glass job, so we moved it back to the boat house, and I put all the hardware back on it. The cockpit floor was soft and we worried that it might crack, so Brian and I had reinforced it by laying down another layer of fiberglass.  Except for some minor touch-up glass work that I could do myself, it's pretty much ready to go. Camp Parsons now has one more operational sailboat.

Meanwhile, Meredith began building a sailing equipment storage unit in the boat house. This has been on the aquatics to-do list for about a half dozen years, but now it's finally getting done. In just two hours, it went from being a twinkle in our eye to being an almost complete frame, and when Meredith finishes it off, it's going to have crown molding, a cool New England paint scheme (blue-grey with white trim) - the whole works. Most importantly, it's going to have padlocks, so that everything stays where it's supposed to be.

I feel like a lot of things that people have been wanting to do for years are finally getting done now. There's the sailing cabinet and the C-15 project. There's the Hobie 16, which has sat in pieces for years - it's being reassembled, and its frayed shroud is being replaced. One of the two boats that broke last year is patched and ready to go again, while the other one is just one step away from being ready to go. The sails are sorted and labeled, and the torn ones are being re-sewn. Ralph, the camp's volunteer metalworker, reconstructed the brass and aluminum fittings for the C-15. He also welded the gooseneck back onto the boom of the Ranger 20, the old boat that's been sitting on that rusty trailer for three years, and we've diagnosed the Ranger's keel problem as being a relatively simple fiberglass repair.  Even I could probably do it - the hard part is tilting the Ranger so that the keel is accessible. And Greg Hammond is sprucing up the four new FJ tillers that he made last summer.

Back in September, I was afraid it might be totally unrealistic to try to repair the entire sailboat fleet before next summer. Well, it's only been five months now, and I'm actually running out of things to do. I've started fixing broken canoes.