 When last we left my particular hero, Mr. Linton was setting off on a sailing adventure among the alligators and what-not. Happily, he and his buddy Jahn were safe and successful on this latest Everglades Challenge, and have since returned to shore. This never being a foregone conclusion, insert respectful pause here while I explore my gratitude. Because himself, after catching up on sleep, did not pause for longer than a moment. After returning home and washing and packing up the gear and the boat, TwoBeers waded right into the river of work that is boat-building. Having made the hull, he went right at the rest of the boat. In any mold-built operation, having a mold handy just in time is key to getting things done. This has meant Jeff stops by Home Depot for another load of plywood on his way to OH's place every few days. Space is always a challenge. It takes room and ventilation to build a boat; I think the equivalent of boat-building is making and decorating a big batch of fancy sugar-cookies, where every inch of counter space is covered with some potentially messy yet vital part of the process.  Many cooks will not spoil the sloop. To make this boat, you'd need molds for the 20-foot long hull, a cockpit sole (the sort of flooring inside the boat, at around 18 feet long), the deck (which keeps the splashes out of the front of the boat, and is around 10 feet long), and water-ballast tanks. For those keeping track, know that the centerboard and rudders are a project for another season.  The cockpit sole vacuum-bagged and curing. In the interest of conserving real-estate and effort, Jeff and OH built a single mold for both cockpit sole and deck.  These bulkheads, later combined with beams and stringers, will help keep the hull in shape. They slipped that mold right into the project as it lays—a hull mold with fiberglass and carbon already done a few weeks back—and went to work on the cockpit sole. The sole will sit maybe 8 or 10 inches up from the hull, allowing for floatation, strength, and running space on the barky. When finished it will rest on bulkheads and stringers. The team settled bulkheads temporarily in place so everything fits as it ought, and then used the same program of sandwiching a piece of foam between layers of resin-soaked carbon fiber to lay up the cockpit sole.  Here's the deck, which will fit over the bow of the boat. After it cured, they pulled the sole away from the mold (muscles!), stacked it, and commenced making the deck. Oddly, the next day, they discovered a square foot or so of deck where the sticky resin did not "kick." So instead of baking itself into tough, crispy goodness, one random section remained sticky and limp. The cure was to cut the spot out and patch it.  Patched. Why did it happen? Perhaps a bit of the resin didn't get thoroughly mixed with the accelerator—the tiny channel of liquid at the bottom edge of the can, perhaps. Repairs were the work of mere minutes. Imagine a layer-cake made of dreams, black carbon, and plywood: the hull mold is on the bottom, with a hull on it, with the decanted sole on top of that, with the sole-mold now holding the deck icing on the top. The whole cake o dreams has been, as I type, hoisted into the rafters to make room for the next thing.  Look! In the sky! Is it a bird? A plane? Water-ballast tanks were next on the punch-list. For this, Jeff used 1/4 inch masonry board, a slightly more flexible option than plywood, to make the mold. It's fought a noble fight, has the masonry board, but is beginning—after making forms for the stringers and a box-shaped water tank—to return to the dust from which it was made.  A water-ballast tank. One of a pair. When construction is complete, the water tanks will be integral to the hull. On Spawn, the water tanks are part of the praying-mantis aspect of the boat: when on the trailer, the water tanks fold up.  What is the point of water-ballast tanks? Keeping in mind that sailing is a dynamic balance between two fluids: air and water. Air flows over the sails, creating lift. Water flows over the centerboard or keel, also creating lift. To maximize the amount of flow, sailors work to keep the mast pointing up and the keel pointed down. We use our body weight for this, but as a solo sailor, my beloved skipper will not be able to have me scootch out a bit farther. Instead, he'll flip a switch and pump saltwater into a tank and multiply the power through the magic of leverage. Without the companionship, but still.  Vacuum ahoy! A third water tank will appear in the middle of boat, and is designed, I am sure you're glad to know, to permit the skipper to tell the boat to simmer down when things get a little too—let's say—lively. I picture Fred Flintstone putting one big foot down to slow his roll. Important construction note: wherever the boat "sees" sunlight, my favorite boat builder has applied a coat of traditional e-glass fiberglass. Carbon fiber, for all of its charms and beauties, does not like UV. Carbon also hates a sudden impact, such as might occur in conjunction with an oyster bed or—heaven forfend!—should someone drop a bottled beverage onto it. Fiberglass, however, is fine with careless bottle treatment, scoffs at scuffs, and tries to resit the sun a bit better.  Thanks for the helping hands, gang! Next steps: reinforcing the bulkheads and glassing them in, as well as inserting stringers so that the structural grid of the hull is complete.
0 Comments
Without a lot of folderol or fancy-dance, allow me to present an update from the magnificent boatbuilding center of our universe: west central Florida.
When last we left our team of my favorite skipper and his boat-designing buddy OH Rodgers, they had finished much of the hull of the mold and were departing for diverse sailing venues. Sailing done, they returned to the forge and got right to it. Using the same plywood + strakes technique, they created sides for the boat's mold. OH, with a bit of extra morning at his disposal, whipped up the mold for the centerboard trunk.
The construction project looks like a sled, or a boat, but this is in fact a mold, so it becomes vital to make what looks like the interior of the hull (but which is in fact the outside of the boat-yet-to-be) SUPER smooth.
Nobody wants that cupcake to get stuck in the baking tin.
So a day or two of putty, sanding, and waxing ensued.
As well as yet another shopping spree. (yay local economy!)
This time, it was Fiberglass Coatings in St. Petersburg, Florida. Where 8-ounce e-glass, some sheets of plastic foam divinylcell, and epoxy resin —the tropical, slow-cure kind—followed Mr. Linton home.
There was also a mail order to Miami for...tah dah! 50 yards of carbon fiber.
Not that we need the refresher, but when fabricating something like a boat, a pool, or the body of a Nascar vehicle, fiberglass has been the material of choice since the 1950s. And by "fiberglass" I mean actual glass fibers plus a polymer resin. The glass fibers are woven into a cloth (which was briefly in vogue as a home-decorating option. No wonder we have so many allergies.) The fabric is solidified by the resin, while the polymer is strengthened by the fiber. Fast forward to the early 1980's when carbon "whiskers" or fibers started to substitute for glass fibers. Carbon is lighter and more rigid, making it ideal for things like racing car parts and boat hulls, plus (bonus!), carbon fibers are not natively irritating like glass, which is why it's also great for human prosthetics and sporting goods. And of course it's dead sexy. 
At this point the build really begins.
Jeff first cut out and pieced together the foam core that would be sandwiched between layers of fabric. And numbered those pieces so that they could be reset within the mold. Then he pulled them out and stacked them to the side. 
At long last: the outermost layer! Jeff smoothed 8-ounce fiberglass cloth over the mold, making sure it was quite flat to the waxed wood. The fiberglass (white) is sturdier than the carbon (black) when it comes to abrasion and sharp impacts. You know, as one might encounter on an oyster bed in Florida Bay.
So on top of the fiberglass goes a layer of carbon fiber fabric. Both fabrics went on dry. 
That white stuff under foot is traditional fiberglass, while the black fabric is carbon.
The fabrics are woven loosely enough so that they can turn a bit of a corner without distorting.
Like a good Little Black Dress, the tailoring should be exquisitely simple and fiendishly expensive.
With the two layers of fabric in place (and held there precariously with blue painters' tape), Jeff called in his brother.
Brother John is a skilled carpenter who has been busy rebuilding his house after the hurricanes, but he cheerfully gave up a day of progress to help get the foam core "buttered" and placed. A generous dollop of resin was first squeegeed onto the fabrics, soaking, say, the floppy bottom slice of bread in a syrupy layer of condiment. Then the crunchy structural middle of the sandwich: the foam. To make this part work, OH showed John how to mix the resin into a thicker putty, and John commenced applying it to the foam. The process is a bit like setting tile: you grab the tile, apply tile cement to the underside, and then flip it into place. Only this "tile" is the size of a big unfolded pizza box, the surface is drippy wet cloth, and the adhesive is resin that cures at an alarmingly rapid pace. 
Our heroes constructed a giant open-face sandwich quickly, setting core from bow to stern. Another layer of carbon fiber cloth finished the sandwich, with resin generously squeegeed on top.
This was no panini, however lovingly grilled by fine Italian craftspeople. Instead, our tasty treat finished its day with the 7-Eleven treatment: getting hermetically sealed in plastic. Air pockets are the enemy in most resin situations. And an efficient way to make sure the goopy stuff is driven deep into the layers is to vacuum bag it. Imagine someone sitting on a Wonderbread-and-peanut-butter sandwich inside an unlocked Ziplock bag. 
Only with a vacuum rather than somebody's butt. OH recruited a pair of shop vacs to get the job done, along with a big roll of Visqueen (think industrial cling film). Note that bit of line curled in the stern of the boat: it's deliberately placed as a route for air to escape.
The gang allowed a day or two for the resin to kick in vacuum conditions.
Supervision and quality control around the boat works provided by Pearl the wonder cat.
OH laid up (layed up?) the centerboard trunk, which looks like a bit more fiddly a job in terms of tailoring. But he's got the practice and probably didn't want to watch the guest-builders struggle. 
Fast forward a few days and the very good news is that the hull was successfully decanted from the mold after nerve-wrackingly careful application of wedges. Oh the sound of that egg-cracking...
We hope the mold also survived the surgery—rumor has it that this boat will not be an only child. Next time: molds for the deck, the sole, and the three ballast tanks.
It was bound to happen.
The 2014 Sailing magazine profile of the first of these experiments: the highly modified Frankenscot.
That sweet skipper of mine left the house early on a wintery Thursday morning, announcing, "I'm going on a shopping spree!" "Ooh, where?" says I. "The lumber store!" Lumber for a new creation. 
After more than a decade of thrills and spills racing the Everglades Challenge, my favorite skipper has decided to up the ante.
What shape, you might ask, would that TAKE? I mean, 300+ miles along Florida's west coast on an unsupported human-powered adventure craft of his own making—what could be yet more exciting than that? Here are a few of the highlights of that trip: sharks, sinking, salt-water crocs, jumping fish, sunburn, various exotic snakes, lightning strikes and squalls, sleep deprivation, boat butt— How about doing the race solo? NO, not this year. On the first Saturday of this March, the same TwoBeers and Jahn Tihansky (WaterTribe name: Moresailesaid) will onboard Spawn headed to Key Largo from St. Pete Beach. But YES, TwoBeers is currently working in concert with OH Rodgers (aka Ninjee) to build a barky suited to single-handed adventure racing, to launch for the 2026 Everglades Challenge. 
Ooooh! architect at work!
TwoBeers and Ninjee have been scheming and dreaming about this for a while.
Among the design criteria: it needs to be quick, but not hazardously overpowered. It needs to be kindly, but not a tub. A shallow draft that's both rowable and sailable, and light enough for one person to launch from the high tide line of Fort DeSoto Beach... And sure enough, a design is drawn, thanks to Ninjee. TwoBeers goes on a lumber shopping spree, and it begins. They make a mold for the hull, ingeniously reproducing the drawn lines from the plans in 3-D with 1x2s. Clever pre-high-tech technique. 
They create a sturdy base from 3/4 inch plywood and 2x6s. It's heavy like gravity is heavy.
Using the 1x2s to replicate the curves of the drawing, they can then make "stations" or ribs.
Now, THAT looks like a mold.
Once the ribs are set, the next step is to layer strakes of 1x2s into the nascent hull mold, and screw them into place.
Now, to make a smooth and finished mold ready for fiberglass or (ooh!) carbon fiber, Jeff applied long narrow strips of very thin plywood (Luan, for those who like details) onto the strakes on the diagonal.
Then a second layer goes in at the opposite diagonal.
This all gets—in the colorful parlance of the boatbuilder—screwed and glued.
The process repeats to translate the drawing of the boat's sides into three dimensions.
How much wood would a woodchuck—wait, never mind.
Again with the plywood strips, this time longitudinally rather than on an angle for the sides, which are referred to here as patterns.
And then...we all wait, as the glue sets.
Just kidding.
The glue set that same day, more or less. But OH and Mr. Linton have been swept away from the boat yard on various sailing adventures, not the least of which is Jeff's upcoming 2025 Everglades Challenge. When next they meet to build, there will be finishing touches to the hull mold, then they'll build additional molds: centerboard trunk mold, ballast tank molds, and a deck mold.  To be fair, it's mostly my favorite skipper who is finding things... because he is looking. I am meanwhile mostly playing with my electronic screen of paper dolls. Or staring moodily into the near distance while thinking about what misery my little paper people are going to endure next. But Jeff? Less moody and more duty. While using a manual post-hole digger last week, himself was contemplatively lifting and thunking the tool when he heard a non-dirt noise. It sounded a bit too musical to be a rock, though we are amply supplied with rocks at the Would-Be Farm. He gingerly applied fingers and Little Jack Hornered a beefy chunk of glass from the clay. When I saw it at first, I thought it might be antique automotive glass, but thank you Google, it turns out to be a honking piece of an orange drink jug from 1927-1937. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1927-35-nesbitts-orange-soda-jug-3880547348 I wonder how long it's been rusticating in this former cow pasture? Nearly 100 years? Did it slide down from the midden pile behind the old farmhouse?  the old farmhouse, slowly bowing to gravity The midden pile. Or, if you like, call it a trash heap, but I like the archeological flavor of "midden." And archeologically/anthropologically speaking, nearly every farm from before the middle of the 20th C usually had its very own spot for trash. Just like the Mesopotamians, chucking used plates and broken furniture over the edge of a rise. Out of sight, out of mind. A few years ago, I uncovered a treasure-trove of unbroken glass bottles that had somehow survived first the pitch out of the old farmhouse back door, second the minefield of granite chunks and previously pitched items, and third the 20, 30, 40 winters between then and now.  But Jeff has found a hand plough, wonderful old oil can/watering cans, stout tin chicken feeders—lovely rusty bits of history that we have festooned about the cabin.  A dabba-do car... My sister even found a grindstone. Which looks an awful lot like one of Fred Flintstone's car's wheels.
Here's a older blog about other archeological finds on the Farm http://www.amysmithlinton.com/blog/would-be-farm-rural-archeology I'm keeping my head down this summer on the Would-Be Farm, trying to get that novel of mine out and about. Mr. Linton, on the other hand, has been getting stuff done around here. We just acquired one of the cooler bits of kit in the barn: a flame-thrower. No joke. It's a chemical-free means to a weed-free end.  Need I mention the anti-zombie potential? My favorite skipper built a woodshed (a structure that is both made of wood and designed to contain wood, okay, Lisa?) next to the sauna. We'd had a covered woodpile, but the amount of firewood that got burned since the implementation of the wood-powered sauna led to a step up in the firewood game at the Farm.  Constructing a shed sounds a blithe enough pastime, but with neither plan nor drawing?  Himself claims to be a rough carpenter, but he is adding skills with each project. I say so despite the sage advice of Sippie and Bonnie both... Between construction/destruction activities, plus the occasional sailboat race (go Team New Wave!), there's always lawn work. Meadow and woodlands surround us, but Mr. Linton keeps the trails and the lawn properly neat by the use of no less than two trimmers, two mowers, and a tractor. Not simultaneously. Yet.  Whenever the weather cooperates (growing grass, self-imposed deadlines, and encroaching thorn apples be danged!), we fish.  There's a theory about value called the "IKEA Effect," whereby people over-estimate the value of something they have themselves made.  We got to test it out this spring at the Would-Be Farm. From Estonia by way of New Jersey, thank you BZB Cabins for a pallet's worth of parts, 24 pages of instructions, and a very helpful expert only a phone-call away.  I grant you, we poured quite a bit of effort into this longer-than-any-danged-weekend project. If the value increases as a result of how long it took, and how many new neural pathways it encouraged, and what fresh language it encouraged (is that hangy-downy part of the roofing shingles called a "fang" or a "bump"?), well, all to the good. And the refresher on metric measurement? Nigh on priceless.  But regardless the IKEA effect. Fer reals –– this thing is hella neat-o.  And so toasty!  Why have I made more than one petticoat this autumn? Is it texture? Volume? Swishy-swirly goodness? A latent Miss Kitty* crush? An elaborate plan to avoid writing?  Nothing. To. Wear. *Oh Lawsie, do NOT –– as you value and respect the variety of human experience and preference –– DO NOT google "Miss Kitty" + "crush" or "fetish" or "kink." True story: I was once a 21-year-old editorial assistant in Manhattan. I worked 70 hours a week for a pittance (the word derives from people given money from pity -- which is not actually a stretch for independent book publishers at the time). I was in the office with William Dang Golding, Susan Freakin Sontag, Roald BFG Dahl, Holy Moly Madeleine L'Engle, Czeslaw Eyechart Milsovic, Polly Amazing Horvath, Maurice Himself Sendak, and Rapmaster Seamus Heaney, to drop but a few of the lifetime's worth of literary rockstars I met. I loved that time of my life. My coworkers included people who were famous in literary circles in their own right, as well as actual Guggenheims, a genuine English Lady Somebody–– the kind of folks who habitually went not just to the Hamptons for the weekend, but to Morocco. A country church-mouse, I was just that tiny bit too poor to afford the subway for trips less than 40 blocks (my rule so I'd hoof it between Penn Station and Union Square daily).  Here's me in a Sears purchase. Shoulderpads or throw-cushions –– I can't even. Fancy-schmancy college had exposed me to the other, very wealthy side of the tracks, but still––! Bonus side-benefit of scholarshipping my way through school: the crippling flush of envy had pretty well burned all the way through me. And as for blending in to the trés chic Manhattan publishing scene? Errrm, even a minty-fresh Sears chargecard wasn't gonna godmother me to that ball.  I embraced vintage. There was a gorgeous Pendleton plaid suit, an old Chanel number from a garage sale, a handful of thrifted cashmere sweaters. I wore my riding boots with skirts, sported stacks of fake pearls from my grandmother, and sometimes I put together outfits that swooped past the line of "costume or not?" with joyous abandon. Today, fashion historian Morgan Donner might call my choices "history bounding." Or as the cool kiddies put it: #Historybounding  Okay, too much history, not enough bounding. Still and all, fallible me at 21 or 22 saw a tourist descending the escalator to the tracks in Grand Central Station on sultry August day and was struck DOWN with want. She was wearing exactly the item of clothing I coveted. Of all of the many MANY desirable commodities available in the big city, I wanted what she had. A full, pale, ankle-length skirt with an antique, Edwardian vibe.  Pass-a-Grille Beach around 1915. My gr-grrandparents are the couple on the right. My grandmother is the kid in the white dress. Those are Edwardian walking skirts. That skirt! Lacking that kooky booty seen with late Victorian bustles, this item of mere clothing managed to be curvy but straight, with a sensible, workable air. I thought it made the wearer look interesting and self-confident. It was perfection. I looked high and low for that skirt. For actual decades. Chasing an ideal. And even after I had been sewing stuff for ages ——I'm on my third sewing machine, for the love of Captain Pete Obvious! —— it only came me to this year: "Yo! Self! Why not make that skirt yer own dang self?" And so, dear Reader, I am. After a rush of creative energy, snipping of threads and hacking my way through historical methods of pattern-drafting, I have what I have longed for: a long skirt with pockets deep enough to double for a handbag. A few of my YouTube mentors: Bernadette Banner, Morgan Donner, Rebecca at Pocket Full of Poseys, Ora Lin, and Marika at Enchanted Rose Costumes. I made one walking skirt from denim. I'm making another from a single thrifted yard of pretty plaid wool and the remains of –– as God is my witness –– velvet curtain panels from Ikea. And under the skirts, a wealth of swirly, swishy petticoats in flannel and cotton lawn.  Still pairing outfits with riding boots.
If the internet has taught us nothing, it's that there are more random activities to generate human joy than anybody can shake a keyboard at.
It's just a hop, skip, and a jump from hand sewing a pirate shirt to creating cordage from plants, right? A mere matter of, oh, 400 or so centuries into the past. In prehistory, plain cordage (aka twine, yarn, two-ply thread) was used for snares, nets, for lashing x to y, and, step by step, into fabric. Many plants –– nettles, willow, basswood, berry brambles, burdock, rhubarb, etc., etc. –– grow stringy fibers known as "bast." It's a thing I missed learning as a kid, though I was fascinated by wildcrafting in general.
The Would-Be Farm has enough bast-on-the-hoof to keep a schoolbus full of crafty cordsfolk busy until the next Ice Age. And so during this summer's regatta roadtrips, I have been spinning straw into gold. Rapunzel and that patient sister with the enchanted swan siblings? They got nothin' on me. Wither went I, along came the bundle of dried plant, a glass of water, and piles of chaff. My technique improved with each ell.  A sample tangle: thistle, blackberry brambles, basswood bast, green willow, and soft brome.
 All those black plastic paint buckets...I knew they'd come in handy. Regardless the state of the world, and the awful things that are going bump in the daytime, the Would-Be Farm is full of urgent and pleasant chores. It's the first thing on my spring chore list: Clear trail. Which means cutting up fallen logs (both emerald ash borer and something that might be pine beetles are burning through the woods). Much farther down the list, but equally important for navigating is to locate the two critical culverts in the big field. Because nobody likes to slip into the ditch. The grass is more than 4 feet tall in places, so there's an element of fun and danger in scouting the way in the 4WD mule.  There's other tidying to do, like sweeping up pollen and other detritus at the –– still critter-proof! –– gazebo in the woods.  And installations! Last December, my favorite skipper constructed two bat houses and a barred owl nesting box for me. It wasn't chinchy to get this first one mounted on a 20-foot pole and then –– like the mother of all mast-stepping moments –– raising the pole upright and settled into its post-hole, but the result is magnificent. We hope the bats find it and make it home. The local populations are –– we hear –– rebounding from white-nose-fungal colony collapse.  Sadly, since we are only part-time farmers, and because poultry are not notable for excellent traveling habits, we don't plan on adding chickens to the mix. Good thing we have good neighbors who could not walk past that stock tank full of tiny chicks this spring at the feed store. And you do have to buy six at a time.  In addition to being unable to resist the charms of chooks, the neighbors have a 6-year-old granddaughter who has nothing more pressing on her to-do list than to hand-tame the chickens. I'm thinking about sewing them (and her) matching tutus. This summer's largest project hones Jeff's carpentry and patience both. Without the camper trailer to protect, the shed suffered a bit of a breakdown, or possibly a depressive episode of some kind, drooping visibly and listing downhill. The strategy that seems to work for us (QED, baby!) when this kind of thing occurs in our lives, is to get help, get to work, and find new meaning.  Transforming the shed into a barn has meant shoring up the structure and adding a concrete floor. Followed by enclosing the space and helping it to a new identity by color.
And when not holding metal panels in place while Mr. Linton does his drill thing, I have about a thousand daffodil bulbs to re-arrange. I started in 2015 by transplanting "Scrambled Eggs" a fluffy double-flowered daffodil, from where the previous owner of the farm had bedded them by the old farmhouse. I wanted them where I could see them, so I stuck them hither and yon. They are prolific and have doubled, tripled, quadrupled in number. As some may remember, my sweet mother-in-law and I put in 200 or so jonquil bulbs a few years ago. They too have multiplied and started to crowd one another. Plus she gave me dozens of bulbs to start in Florida this winter. It's not a kind climate for jonquils, so those bulbs also came to the farm.
I transplanted or replanted maybe 200 bulbs last week. Digging up the plants, feeling for the bulbs amidst the other roots and rocks, removing them feet first through a chunk of turf, then putting each chubby knob back into its own neat divot...I don't know what else will come next spring, but I thoroughly expect to have a glorious crop of flowers. 
 A levitating propane tank. Huh. Don't see that every day. After some thought, we decided against doing our own concrete work. The guys managed to dig, gravel, and move the concrete by wheelbarrow from where the 'rete truck backed into Jeff's velvet field of green in a single day. (PS, it took us only a week or so to fill those ruts and overseed the area with clover. The scars on the field are nearly invisible.
 So steps. I meant to just put a couple of flagstones into the ground, but then the stones started piping up and the hill was asking for more...  |
About the Blog
A lot of ground gets covered on this blog -- from sailboat racing to book suggestions to plain old piffle. FollowTrying to keep track? Follow me on Facebook or Twitter or if you use an aggregator, click the RSS option below.
Old school? Sign up for the newsletter and I'll shoot you a short e-mail when there's something new.
Archives
March 2025
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
