May 15, 1998 Issue |
May 1, 1998 Issue |
May 15, 1998 Issue
Chart Update
I have just returned from the Annual Spring Chart Update Patrol. It was COLD! An Arctic Express sent temperatures plummeting to 25 degrees below normal and added northeast winds at about 17 mph. Auxiliarists are required to wear "Mustang" exposure suits when the water temperature is below 60 degrees, and today we were glad of them.Each spring, all up and down both coasts, the Coast Guard Auxiliary conducts these patrols, checking to make sure that all aids to navigation are "on station and watching properly" after the winter storms. My boat was one of three from the Wilmington, North Carolina flotilla checking a 35-mile stretch of the Intra Coastal Waterway. Our findings were much as usual, two day boards damaged (we suspect from the booms of commercial fishing boats), one with numbers obscured by time and weather, one unreadable from a left-over bird's nest, and one buoy missing. The USCGC Blackberry will have them all re-paired or replaced before the start of the recreational boating season.
What lies ahead in aids-to-navigation work? When it is a little warmer, we will check the buoys and day marks in the north channel from the Intra Coastal to the Cape Fear River. One of our members says there are problems there. We will check (by GPS) the location of the North Carolina buoys marking the 11 artificial fishing reefs in our area of responsibility, and we will remind all coxswains of the regular safety patrols to check every navigation aid as they cruise the waterway.
It's not very glamorous work, but it is one more task that makes recreational boating (and especially cruising) just a little bit safer. I'm glad I was out there today. I just wish it had been a little bit warmer.
"The Old Ed Stories:" -- A Fishing Schooner
You hear an awful lot about "smart weapons," "artificial intelligence," and things of that sort nowadays, but years ago I knew of a smart schooner. Not only did I know of her, I was the man who had her papers.You can't really say I owned her. No one did and no one could. She had a mind of her own. When I got her, I got her cheap. She had been built for the coasting trade, but she was so ornery that even though she could carry a large cargo and was very fast, no one would sail her two voyages in a row. She would take it into her to refuse to tack when the captain wanted to come into a harbor. Sometimes she made her compass lie so that she brought her crew into danger on a dark night. One time she even sailed half way to Ireland before her crew caught on.
By the time I came upon her, she was down on her luck. She couldn't get a crew and because she was unreliable, no one would hire her to carry cargo. Even though no one had been hurt or killed, she had a very bad reputation and she looked as bad as her reputation. Well, I surveyed her from keel to truck and found her sound. Under that peeling paint, she was in excellent condition.
I sat down next to her wheel box and thought about what I would do with her if I bought her. It was clear she was not meant to be a cargo boat, even though that was what she was built for. This was before the days of the "head boats," which carry people who pretend that they are horny-handed old sailors for so much a head. That left fishing. As I thought this, she gave a little wriggle, even though it was flat calm. It was then I knew what she was really for.
I had her towed to the Story yard and refitted for dory fishing.
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May 1, 1998 Issue
Letters From Readers....
I Just Can't Breath...
Rob McAdams' experience with western red cedar sawdust is not unusual, one in twenty people are allergic to it. For this reason OSHA set the eight hour exposure limit to western red cedar dust at 2.5mg/cubic meter, while the limit for other wood dusts is twice as high. But even 5mg cubic meter is not much dust. In a 20'x 20'x 10' high shop it would take only a half teaspoon of dust uniformly distributed to produce that con-centration.Lauan dust affects some people also. Dynamite Payson wrote me, "I just can't breathe any of the dust without half choking." When Sandy Mitchell was sanding lauan ply for a fberglass duckboat in Nelson Silva's shop over a dozen years ago he de-veloped a severe rash all over his body with an accompanying fever.
Over 300 varieties of wood are known to cause dermatitis. Heartwoods are worse than sapwoods, perhaps because of the natural poisons they contain that make them more decay resistant. It isn't just synthetics natural products are full of poisons.
Paracelsus got it right back about the time of Columbus. He said, "Everything is a poison. It is just a matter of the dose."
David Carnell, Wilmington, NC
Cockleshell Plans Available
Yes, Cockleshell plans are still available. My moving from university to university to pursue my new degree has made it quite difficult for peope to fnd me to buy these plans. Now that I'll be hunkered down for a while doing my graduate studies I'll be less of a moving target.Last June I brought my two personal Cockleshells to the WoodenBoat Show and was thrilled to meet many who had bought plans in the past. Those now wishing to reach me can be assured they will be able to do so at this address.
Eric Risch, 38 Hayden Point Rd., S. Thomaston, ME 04858, (401 ) 782-6760
Handbook for a Cheap Boat Derby
I bet there have been many articles along the lines of "a boat from a sheet of plywood" over the years in Messing About in Boats. What would it take to throw them all together for a kind of handbook for the cheap boat derby? Or perhaps an invita-tion/competition for some new designs? I'm sure all you need is another project!David Beede, Gainsville, FL
Editor Comments: Putting together a compendium of bygone articles from 350 back issues is a project I indeed do not need, and no staff exists to carry out such a research/production effort.
Shapely Lugsail Rigging
After reading Reed Smith's article, "The Shapely Lugsail", I'd like to pass on a suggestion I found helpful to me. As my rig is a standing lug, not his balanced lug, it may not work for him.Run a small line from where the halyard ties onto the top spar around the star-board side of the mast, then back to the hal-yard from the port lide of the mast, through a small block at the halyard, and back to the starboard side of the mast to a cleat on that side.
What this does is pull the top spar - against the mast and hold it there whether reefed or not. I adopted this from the sail plan for a North Atlantic 29.
Tom Arnold, 2617 Roosevelt, San Antonio, TX 78214
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