New York 40s

[Jono]

Firstly, Happy New Year to all.

Steve, Thanks for passing on the info, though I haven't heard anything. Will let you know.

Could you and your members look out for a pair of Herreshoff bronze winches that came off  NY40 Chinook. I reckon they will appear for sale soon.

Much obliged.

Jono

[Adam]

Are these the two that were for sale last year? I believe we have his contact info - I think they are in storage in RI....

[Jono]

Thanks Adam, I think I have managed to secure them.
We have finally started work on Chinook and we now have a blog so you can all follow progress.

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/ny48chinook/

All comments welcome especially those constructive ones!

As we will be buying a lot of stuff in the US for the project, I am looking for someone in the New England area to help me acquire and store the various parts required for onward shipping. Does anyone know of an agent who could do this for us?

Much obliged,

Jono

[Robert (Alerion Sailor)]

This is cool

[Jono]

Thanks, Alerion Sailor. It's nice to have some feedback. Having seen recently the video of the demise of a Herreshoff in a local landfill, I feel good about saving one.

[Steve]

Jono:  How's CHINOOK coming along?

The demise of a Herreshoff in a local landfill?  Horrors!  Which boat?

[Jono]

Full steam ahead, Steve. Have a look at the blog here:

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/ny48chinook/

I was talking about John Hutchinson's video posted under Misc Herreshoff Topics in December. Brought a tear to my eye.

[Steve]

Very nice ... this is one blog I will be following closely.

[Cardinal Joe]

Good Luck with your Herreshoff Restoration  keep the Foto's coming.

I too will be following this post ..........

[Tom W]

I just stumbled upon this thread while looking for something else about NY 70's; I have to say I'm floored with the news of Chinook being restored, which I just heard about earlier today when a colleague dropped off a piece of Marilee's hardware.
I don't get out much.
If Jono needs an agent to store/source things for Chinook's restoration, I have plenty of space; I"m located in midcoast Maine.  He or anyone can contact me directly via the board or email.
My email address is tom@traditionalrigging.com

A few years ago I was handed the job of making a new standing rig for Marilee when she was dismasted on her delivery to her current owner.  The insurance policy only allowed "in-kind" replacement; that is, the rigging was to be placed on the mast as it had been when she was dismasted.  Which was fine, and if anything an improvement on the original design from a physics standpoint but--but, hideously ugly.  Somehow I managed to talk them into 7x7 standing rigging (there had been 1x19) and that worked out really well because Spartan required x amount, but the minimum order was about 2,000 feet.  I was able to arrange purchase of several hundred feet of this wire from Spartan's owner.  At the time I was rigging for The Sailmaker and we had arranged for the manufacture of all the wire for Spartan, which we were going to start the following year.
  This started me on sort of an affliction, a weakness for Herreshoff designs.  I worked for NSW, making the rigs for the BB 30's (including Nellie) and NY50 Spartan, among other things, before I finally got out and opened my own loft.
I also made all but six of the blocks for Spartan while working for French & Webb.
But Marilee has always been kind of special for me, and I get do do a little work on her every year, trying to bring her back to original configuration while still trying to keep her competitive.
She's had a lot of changes made to her over the years, and from my background as a very traditional sort of sailor and a professional rigger at the same time I have to say not all of them have been for the worst.  But I only hope Chinook's program holds true to the original design in the rig; so much of what it was capable of and able to do has been lost, I believe, in the haze of competition and the clamor of new doo-dads. 
I heard Marilee might be in the Med in a couple years.  It'd be nice to see her against her sisters, provided they're all set up the same.

[Steve]

Sisyphus: Welcome to the group!

[Jono]

Very interesting, Sisyphus. Will drop you a note on the email.
Also interesting that you say Marilee's configuration is not original-what is different?
Don't worry, Chinook will be the gaffer she was designed to be. Would dearly love to convert Rowdy too. That's a really big job. Any takers?
Looking forward to fleet racing the 40s. That will be a real spectacle1
Jono

[Tom W]

I'm a little unclear as to the level of detail the last restoration was taken to insofar as the rig.
But when she was raced in the Med the owners (I would assume) took some liberties with where things were placed on the mast, clearly not where HMCo. had intended.  It had an effect on the stiffness of the mast, how forces were distributed and so on, probably to good effect.  But I'm not sure if the 1x19 wire did the hull any favors.  She had a new stick put in her at Spencer's, I believe. 
I can't say yea or nay because so far as I know the mast wasn't built as drawn with the bolsters in the same places, etc.  So nobody really has anything to compare it to.  In my opinion that's the real loss.
When she was dismasted a few years ago, the insurance company was loathe to replace the mast with anything other than what had been standing previous to the accident, so that's what was replaced.  We could have learned much more if a mast had been built to the original design, but as they say, that's racing.  I had little to no influence on how the spar was going to be made.
She's still configured as she'd been raced in the Med, not that much has changed in that regard.  The current regime is doing a good job keeping her legal for racing.

[launchmaker]

I helped build the spars for Marilee's restoration back in 2001 at the Philadelphia Seaport Museum.  The plans we had were originals. The old growth Douglass Fir was delivered in January. The mast was laid up on a 100' table we built over a period of two weeks. After shaping and scarfing the 8 staves and gluing 4 staves at a time to make spar halves, we then glued the 2 halves together to make the spar conical. We then built the table into a 100' lathe and set up a router on a fence. As the mast spun, the router would catch the edge face of each stave and round it over as the router rode from one end of the table to the other. After the router had as much material as it could, we took sandpaper attached to curved plastic and drum sanded the mast smooth as the mast rotated on the lathe.

The mast was finished to a length of about 86' if I recall correctly and was hollow except for the bottom and top 6'. The halyards ran inside.

I have a ton of photos I took of the building of these spars and of the table we constructed to build the mast. If there is an interest, I'll post some pics after I get them from film to digital. One of my computer screen savers is a shot of the boom with the twin towers off New York when we took Marilee out for a shakedown sail with the owner

I kept the bottom foot of the mast as a trophy when we began to tenon the base for the hull. I look at it every day when I go to my boat shop. It sits on the shelf above my workbench and reminds me of what people can do with a little time and knowledge. As far as the standing rigging, Caroline Hess did most of that work and it was done according to the plans we had. I helped her with her a little near the end of the project after all the varnish work and bronze fittings were manufactured, polished and fitted to the spars. She did great work and always had a smile on her face when the pine tar came out.

One thing I thought was peculiar about the whole rig was the position of the mainsheet attachment. It seemed too far forward on the boom to me. At the Isle of Cowes, she broke her boom mid race and a Frenchman fashioned a new boom out of a solid spar and the boat was on the course the next day. She went on to win her class. In the last shot taken on the Solent, you can see the extreme bend at the end of the mast.I will post the shot when I come across it.

[Steve]

Launchmaker:  You were at the Seaport Museum in 2001?  Working with John Brady I presume?  It wasn't long after that when I started taking classes at the Phila. Wooden Boat Factory.  It was there that we completed the restoration of my Buzzards Bay 15, ELF (including a some work on the spars).  It's a small world.

I would love to see the images.