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Monday, April 30, 2012

It was a good day for boat work in the boatyard. Very little wind and, in the morning, bright sunshine, made it the perfect day to apply two types of scary chemicals to the mast, one to "etch" the aluminum and the other to bond its surface so that it won't (supposedly) chalk. Now instead of a white mast we have a shiny aluminum one on Robin.
Then I almost finished sanding her bottom smooth. That's tedious work, but when the paint is on and the bottom is smooth, it should improve Robin's sailing performance and her fuel economy when (as is usually the case) the motor is running.
But I didn't mean to talk about boat work. Instead, high above the boatyard, I saw today something I've never before noticed. Two large birds were gliding in circles up there, paying no heed to one another, as far as appearances.
They were certainly aware of each other, and they must have been thinking of avoiding a collision. But that's not what was significant.
One was a turkey vulture, they of the grotesque, featherless heads and the magnificent ability to soar when there is virtually no wind.
The other was an osprey, a killer of fish who is almost the vulture's equal in soaring.
When I first noticed them, the osprey was to the west of the vulture. They circled in approximately the same rythm, lazily, at about the same altitude, circled but also slipped sideways, so that their exact tracks must have been loops along a course.
Then the vulture was to the west, the osprey east. And then  they drifted apart.
And what struck me was not their flight but their purpose. The vulture looks for carion. The osprey, usually, hunts for live fish, although I wouldn't be surprised to see a small housecat in its talons if the bird thought it would make a good meal.
One is designed to kill. The other's job is to keep the place tidy of road-kill.
Pieces of the puzzle that is nature, flying side-by-side on this beautiful day, each fulfilling its role. The universe is in balance, even when we, filthy humans with our smokestacks and urban sprawl and scary chemicals, do our best to wreck it. Even should a crow raid an osprey's nest of its eggs. Even should a semi run down a flock of vultures feeding on the carcas of a deer on the pavement.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Didn't get lost, after all. Greetings from my side of this electronic thing.
Robin's port bottom is ready for paint. Her starboard side needs a final sanding. Then the topsides all have to be sanded before I get the paint buckets out.
But I haven't done any work there in about a week. A virus caused some down time. And the wind has been terrific if you're running with it but not too good for outdoors boat work like sanding (dust blows on everyone else's boat) or painting (others' dust blows on yours.)
Today I bought a 1-inch diameter, nine-inch-long bolt to replace the one that was cut away in the fall to get the mast down. The bolt was there to hold the mast in its place in the aluminum mast step. Corrosion, which now I've learned is called galling, between the aluminum mast and the stainless steel bolt had welded the two together.
I went to a steel yard today after phoning to be sure they had a bolt I could use. They gave me the wrong information, so now I have a regular steel bolt rather than a stainless one.That poses a question for which I'm seeking answers.
Is there a way to prevent a standard steel bolt from rusting when it's used in this capacity? I had planned to put a product called Never-Seez all over the bolt to reduce the chance of galling. Does anyone know if Never-Seez has any rust-inhibiting qualities?
I've already quizzed Dick Mills aboard Tarwathie on the subject, and he is doing some research. Thanks, Dick.
I just stumbled onto a changed blog format. Google has done something that may have ended my blogging career. I'll try to post this observation before I commit any more time to this unanticipated adjustment in the course of the blog. Hope to see you soon.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Gary called and updated me on what he was doing. He'd been to California to visit his boat, a Cape George 31. A friend of his was doing some work on it, including replacing the manual windlass with an electric one.
Now I can understand why Gary might want an electric windlass. He's getting older. But I've found our electric windlass quite a bother and, at times, no great savoir from heavy lifting. There are two foot-switches by which you raise or lower your anchor. When those switches are attacked by corrosion, they stop working.
Then you start working, lifting whatever chain you've sent overboard, along with the 45-pounds of steel that is your anchor -- all by means of your leg and back muscles.
So I said to Gary: "Gee, I'm looking for a way to replace my electric windlass with a manual one."
Just the other day, this arrived by UPS delivery. The UPS man used a hand truck to get it down the driveway and up onto our front step. He left it to me to find a way to get it inside the house. If I shackled it to an anchor chain, it might work that way. It weighs 20 more pounds than our best anchor.


But I won't do that. I'll take off our electric windlass and mount this on Robin's foredeck in its place. This is a beastly machine. You place a lever in that shiny wheel on the left and move it back and forth and the bronze wheel to the right turns, pulling your anchor chain. The longer your lever, the less effort weighing anchor takes.
Thanks, Gary, from the bottom of my previously aching back! I can't wait for the next time we drop the hook.

The first expression we've seen of rain in a long time just arrived in April sprinkles, not wet enough to turn the dust to mud, just enough to keep me from sanding Robin's hull. When the sanding's done, it will be time to give her a whole new coat of paint.
I've all but concluded that she needs a new roller furling system. That's the device that, like a window shade, rolls the jib or genoa up around the forestay when you're not using it.
Our roller furling was installed in May, 1990, according the the owner's manual for it that came with the boat. That is a long life for anything that spends much of its time on salty water.
A small part of the system was bent when the mast was taken down in October. To replace that part, I'd have to disassemble the entire system. That's proven difficult due to the system's quirky design and to the fact that stainless steel screws have been seated in aluminum parts for 22 years, more than enough time for corrosion to form.
So I'm pricing new systems. It's a disheartening endeavor. But we're left to answer this question: Are we going to continue to sail Robin?
If we are, we have to find a way to afford her needs.
If not, we have to face a big loss in a market where buyers are boss.
The good news is we can put Bluebird out on her mooring some time in the next couple of weeks with very little cost, and then we can sail whenever the wind blows.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Robin's bottom now is completely scraped of all the thick, old bottom paint. Next step is filling the voids where there were blisters, then sanding it smooth.

Below is Robin's bottom before it was scraped. The small white pebbles are actually barnacles. If you look closely at the lighter patches of red, you may be able to see the thick edges of the darker red bottom paint. I have said there was a quarter inch of paint on the bottom. It only looked that thick.



Here lie Alice and Paul. Now I know that Alice was born in 1840, fourteen years after Paul, and that makes her 28 when they were married and he 42. So he didn't exactly rob the cradle. This may explain why her father, a lawyer and politician from Kentucky, had a house built for her in Edgewater Park, NJ. Perhaps he worried she'd never move out on her own? Or maybe he thought she needed a dowery in order to find a husband. Her age, and the fact that she'd moved to New Jersey before she was married, suggest that the house may have been built in the mid-1860s rather than later in the decade, as I'd been thinking.


Tomorrow, I'm visiting the archives in the Philadelphia Inquirer library to see if I can find anything there about the Shipmans -- perhaps a couple of obituraries, if nothing else.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

I found Alice and Paul today, which proves the universe has a soft spot for bumblers like I. Stumble around long enough and y0u'll find what you want.
I wanted to find Alice and Paul Shipman to help complete their story. Around the time of their marriage in the late 1860s, Alice's father, Col. Davidson, had a house built for her not two blocks away from our home near the Delaware River. Their house was a country manor. The architecture was Second Empire, influenced by French designs a couple of decades earlier.
The manor is now the home of the Red Dragon Canoe Club, to which Monica and I belong. Club members have believed for at least the 18 years we've been around that the house was built for a wealthy couple who never actually lived in it. Indeed, when a researcher completed an application to have the property listed on the state and federal registers of historic places, she wrote that the Shipmans had been on a world tour when the house was built but lost their wealth before they were ever able to live in their home.
The club members are trying to make the mansion a museum, and so I've been digging around to learn more. What I've found is that the Shipmans probably lived in the manor until their deaths two weeks apart in 1917. A reporter for the New York Times visited them in 1879 and wrote about their "beautiful villa overlooking the Delaware River."
I'd contacted Eastern Kentucky University because I'd been told they had some documents in their archives about Paul Shipman. Those documents arrived yesterday, and among them was a reference to the Shipmans' burial in Laurel Hill Cemetery.
I'd guess Laurel Hill covers two to three acres. I went there at noon on my way to work on Robin. I parked the car and began wandering aimlessly between the rows of headstones, trying to see if there was some pattern; if, for example, the graves that were filled between say 1890 and 1920 were in one quadrant. There was no pattern that I could discern, and I was about to return to the car but decided to make one more loop.
The names were Italian and Irish and Polish and other eastern European origins. There were very few names that I would categorize as being from the same ancestry as Shipman. Nor was there any noticeable segregation of the graves of one ethnic group from those of another.
I moved beyond the car and chose one lane of graves for my final pass.
Half way along the lane, I looked down. There were Alice and Paul.
Their stone is flush to the ground. Unlike some other such stones, theirs has been tended by someone to keep the grass from growing over its smooth granite face.
Now I'm wondering if there is some descendant who lives nearby, someone who could fill in the missing details of their lives.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

I went today to visit two people -- Paul and Alice Shipman -- at their last known address. In truth, I went to the wrong address. I should have gone to the Laurel Hill Cemetery but I went instead to the older St. Paul's. I learned something by my effort.
If yor intent is perpetual remembrance, better not get a marble head stone.
On about half of the marble stones, all the engraving was illegible, so thoroughly had the stone wasted away, even if it had been only fifty or sixty year.
The Shipmans, who were married in about 1868, died within two weeks of each other in 1917. What a love story, hey?
The information I've found suggests they were buried in Laurel Hill, but when talking with the cemetery superintendent, I learned that I would probably have more luck at St. Paul's. I think he was mistaken, so I have another visit planned to prowl for the Shipmans' final resting places.
I'll try to get back later to explain why the Shipmans are significant to me at this time.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Canada goose lay on the pavement, its carcass flattened by some vehicle, feathers splayed crazily, its head facing east at the end of its long, twisted neck, and as I drove by, I wondered:
Don't these birds mate for life?
They do, and after I'd passed, I looked in the rear view mirror to search for the mate.
There it was, on the far side of the highway, it's head down, low to the pavement, at the end of its own, awkwardly-bent neck, as it walked away from the body of its other.
And then I heard it: The awful, sad honking, the pleading voice of that being, him or her, (and I do not personify frivolously, for certainly within the flesh of such a being dwells as much a spirit as my own,) that mournful cry, that: Why?
And now in my eyes there are tears for him or her, for us.