Day Six: Some Thoughts; Pulling Out Old Electrical I went to part of a pier that's about 10 feet from the bow of the ship. I look at her from a few points off port, from her perspective. Her figurehead is a large piece of lightly carved wood. The carving is painted bright yellow. Uncarved areas are a mint green, maybe darker. The sun was approaching the horizon, and the figurehead was bathed in early autumn light. Next door, at the Center for Wooden Boats, someone was playing a squeezebox, accompanied by a violin. I couldn't see the musicians, so it seemed like a soundtrack. I felt a bit melancholic, perhaps wistful. Most of Wawona's paint was peeling away, but the figurehead was recently painted, and it had a simple beauty.

Why do people like to save things? Maybe it's a picture of a relative from the distant past. Or possibly it's an old car, or an heirloom piece of furniture. Some of these things have no practical value. But we save them, perhaps to pass on to others. Do they connect us to something? Is it just sentimentalism? This is worth exploring.

It's interesting to note that while the Center for Wooden Boats is dedicated to the presevation of the art of wooden boatbuilding, it has never, to my knowledge, shown any significant interest in Wawona. I'm not sure why, though I suspect that the Wawona is simply too big of a project for the Center. It would overwhelm its resources.

I meant to start the day doing some research and making more copies of old newspaper clippings. But the fellow with the key to the office wasn't at Northwest Seaport today, so I had to fall back on some manual labor on board the Big Ship. I started pulling out some old electrical conduit and fixtures in one of the crew cabins and the captain's head. I don't think those screws have been touched in 50 years, except by a paint brush. There were two major layers of paint, a deep ocean blue underneath a coat of plain white. The paint was slapped on very thickly; Some of it had formed into drops before drying. I may have caught a glimpse of the original cabin color, or perhaps just an undercoat, which was a dull gray, thought not a military gray. The walls are tongue and groove fir, each slat about three inches wide.

I also pulled out a chunk of old conduit in the foc's'le. I had to leave one piece in, because it passed through a two-foot-wide compartment with four (?) large, rusted out tanks lined up abeam. They may have been fresh water tanks, or possibly trim tanks. There's another tank of similar construction underneath the main cabin, which Dave told me was probably a water tank. I see drainage pipes out of the bottom of the aft tank, but didn't notice them in the forward tanks. Anyway, I couldn't pull out the old conduit because some debris was lying on top of the conduit in this compartment, which I could see via a flashlight, but couldn't reach with my hand. I wouldn't want to climb on those tanks. They were rusted badly and the "roof" of one had rusted through.

Next week, I'm hoping to do that copying. I'll make sure the key is there before I head down to the boat. I may also tear out some more conduit in the steerage compartment, where I also saw an old generator today.

Contact the author: Joe Follansbee

Powered by Blogger™  ¶ 5:25 PM 0 comments

  Day Five: Odds and Ends; Research Starts I finished nailing some of the old interior trim in the main cabin back in place. To do so, I had to visit every room and knock on the wood with the rubber handle of my hammer, to see if anything was loose. It forced me to look at practically every corner, something you wouldn't ordinarily do. I noticed many little details, such as the text carved into one place: "Certified For Storage of Sails." (This was over a hatch to the steerage room.) There was another carving: "Certified for Occupation by the Master" over the door to the captain's cabin reached from the poop (correct?) deck. There are two heads in the main cabin. The captain has a private bathroom, and the sink faucets still turn. They're spring loaded, meaning when you turn them, they turn off automatically. The "hot" and "cold" labels are still distinguishable. They are covered in a light coating of corrosion.

It has rained off and on for several days and puddles of water were all over the floor and other flat areas in the cabin. There were drips of water in many places on the ceiling. The deck above had two large pools of rainwater. I knocked on one piece of trim, and it squirted water on my face. I also went down in the hold and saw rotted wood washed into the bilge. Wawona is rotting away before our eyes.

I had little other work to do on her today, beyond replacing part of a latch on the donkey engine house. The engine is still there, and I forgot to ask if it's in working condition. I watched the Bill the shipwright, Dave, his helper and my informal supervisor, and Jake, a big fellow with missing teeth, saw a very large piece of lumber into the correct shape for part of the Arthur Foss tugboat. They used the shipsaw, which is a large bandsaw. They had to replace the enormous blade when the old blade went dull. I half expected Dave to saw his head off as he attempted to fold the old saw blade into a managable size.

I spent the last 90 minutes or so photocopying a number of newspaper clippings going back to 1911. Many were from Anacortes, which was the home of Wawona when she was owned by Robinson Fisheries. There were also numerous clippings from the early days of the effort to restore Wawona. News photos show her in what appears to be better shape than today, though I don't think it's wise to judge from these pictures. But it reminds me of how much of a missed opportunity Wawona is.

One possible ray of hope. There is a strong hint that the city of Anacortes and some private interests want Wawona back for a maritime history center. NWS has met with the Anacortes mayor and others. This would be very appropriate given her history. But I wonder if she would have the financial backing she needs to survive.

It's not clear what I'll be working on next week, although I need to finish up some of the copying. I may clear out some of the old electrical work.

Contact the author: Joe Follansbee

Powered by Blogger™  ¶ 6:36 PM 0 comments

  Day Four: Steerage and More Cabin Work Dave took me into Wawona's steerage compartment to show how the stern is slowly falling off the big ship. We went down into the hold and walked back to the stern. We had climb along the steep slope of the hull and scramble over the structural supports for the old fresh water tank. Most of the tank was gone; cut away or rusted away.

Then we climbed up one of the lumber chutes. When Wawona was a lumber carrier, lumber would slide down these chutes through a hatch in the stern. The hatches are closed by screw clamps. Near the end of the chute, we emerged into a small compartment about four-feet high, enough for an adult to sit in, but not stand. Above us was the wheelhouse, which contained the mechanism, called a "patent gear", that turned the rudder when the wheel was turned. Dave showed it to me later. A worm gear attached to the shaft with the wheel turned another set of gears that moved the rudder.

Anyway, under the deck in the steerage compartment, we sat looking at the rudder trunk, which covers the rudder post, which itself transfers the wheel's turnings to the rudder below the water line. The rudder trunk keeps sea water from splashing into the ship. The rudder trunk was about three feet by three feet and made of several heavy planks. It is attached to a heavy structural member that runs abeam of the ship. You can see how it is slowly coming off this structural member. Heavy bolts meant to keep the rudder trunk attached are plainly visible. The distance from the trunk to the rudder trunk is greater on the upper section than the lower section, creating a kind of shallow "V" shape. This is only one symptom of a larger structural failure.

It was a little unnerving seeing the failure as it was happening in ultra slow-motion, not knowing when it could suddenly give way. It was something like watching an earthquake fault, knowing that it was moving ever so slowly, and knowing that it could suddenly jerk in a earthquake, causing damage even death. If the stern decided to give way at that moment, I thought to myself as I looked at the failure, I'd be dead, along with Dave.

I spent most of the afternoon working in the parlor, the part of the main cabin where the officers met for planning and meals. Aft of the parlor is the captains cabin. Aft of the captains cabin is the rudder trunk and the dying stern. In the parlor, I took apart a panel that was falling from the ceiling. A flourescent light had been attached to the panel, and it was in danger of falling. I had to remove most of the molding around this panel, which was about four feet long and a foot wide. AFter breaking a couple of the wooden pieces, almost all of which were damp and partly rotted, I managed to secure the panel tightly and put it all back together. It didn't look half as nice as when I started, at least in terms of clean lines and tight tolerances, but I'm no carpenter.

I met several people who came to visit the ship. Almost everyone who visits Wawona expresses amazement at the vessel. One older woman from East Wenatchee, WA asked me about the ship. "What a huge responsibility," she said. "Do you think she'll be saved?" My answer was non-comittal, since I have to be "objective." Other asked where they could make a donation. They have trouble finding the donation box, which is in the old donkey engine shed amidship aft of the main mast. Another visitor came from Hawaii and asked why all the woodwork in the cabin was "raked," that is, tilted towards the aft part of the vessel. I didn't know, but Dave later explained that the rake was for looks, because a perfectly square construction, as in a house, would look odd on a object where nearly everything has some sort of curve.

Dan Roberts gave a "Song of the Sea" tour today, where he teaches a group of people sea songs and shanties. For the shanties, the participants drag Wawona's iron anchor chain along the ground near the gift shop. Dave later took over the group, which was mostly middle schoolers and a couple of adults, all told about 10 people. A couple of volunteers, Lois and Alice, waited for Dave to end the tour so they could go to lunch. They're organizing tonight's shanty sing in the wood shop.

Next week, I'll work on the main cabin some more.

Contact the author: Joe Follansbee

Powered by Blogger™  ¶ 6:57 PM 0 comments

  Day Three: The End of the Stern The stern is falling off Wawona. That's what Dave, who is a master shipwright, said to me today. He told me the news in the wood shop, where most of the action happens on the shore. I barely understood what he told me, until we walked together to Wawona. We climbed the metal gangplank and went through the little gate that allows public access to the ship. He showed me where deck planks were starting to lift as the timbers holding the stern to the rudder post were starting to give way.

Dave said the stern has moved about two inches in the past six months. "That's a lot," he says. "And it's accelerating." He showed where large gaps have formed between key structural components of the ship, indicating that the stern was moving away and down from the rest of the ship. He gave his prognosis. "It may happen this winter, especially if we get a big storm, because that'll move it around. If we're lucky, it'll happen next winter." When it does happen, he says, five to ten tons of water soaked wood, infested with fungus, will come crashing down on the dock ten feet below. The dock will be destroyed.

There is a way to prevent the destruction. Dave says we could wind a metal strap around the stern and tie it to the mizzen mast, about a third of the way up. That would keep the stern from falling. But it would be only a bandaid.

The stern problem explained my job today. I spent the afternoon hammering loose trim in the main cabin. In the old days, it was inhabited by the captain, the cook, and the first mate. Interesting how the cook got such good treatment. (Most of the rest of the crew bunked in the fo'c'sle.) Carved trim, not much different than you'd find in a late 19th century house, needed to be nailed back on the cabin walls. I blew my first attempt, when I forgot that nothing on a boat is truly square, and I nailed a panel in backwards. I had to pull it, accidentally breaking it in half, but repairing it. This was in the cook's cabin. I also screwed on a couple of doors to what might have been part of the cook's pantry.

I said hi to a couple of visitors. One was a white-haired man about sixty who had come up from Vancouver, WA. He wore a red and white shirt in a candy stripe pattern. "This is amazing!" he says. "It's as great as Mystic Seaport!" He said he never knew Wawona was here. He tried to find the place a couple of times before. But driving in Seattle scares him. But third time was the charm.

I also watched Bill, the other shipwright, trim a four foot by two foot by eight inches block of wood into a piece of the stern for another vessel in Northwest Seaport's inventory, the tug Arthur Foss. He cut a precise 12 degree angle on one end to match the rest of the stern. "That's really shipwright work," he said.

Next week, I'm going to work some more on the cabin trim.

Contact the author: Joe Follansbee

Powered by Blogger™  ¶ 5:22 PM 0 comments