Every Tuesday I connect with the kind and fun bunch of Rebel Writers. They meet face to face in a secret location in Hong Kong and write. I used to take part in those meetings face-to-face while I was living there. Now I can only connect from afar but I still enjoy to participate. In the end when you become a Rebel Writer, you will be one for the rest of your life.
So every Tuesday I get up on my boat check in with them and start my writing as well. This weekly appointment is what gets me writing no matter what, despite the fact that I am running against the clock to get in the water and get going. Having this sacred, personal moment of messing about with words has a healthy effect on my mind.
During last meeting we decided to video call for a little catch up. Also the daughter of one of the Rebels was present so I thought it was a good idea to give them a tour of my boat. I realized how messy my boat really was as soon as this idea left my brain, it converted in vibrating air captured by my microphone and was sent all the way to Hong Kong. All I could do was to justify myself adding that I am tearing apart close to 30% of the total internal space of the boat and that I was living in a construction site. Which of course is true and normal these days.
Despite the clarification I felt a rush of shame pervading my body and I tried pathetically to limit the visual of messiness through camerawork, with little success. Not even a square foot of the boat was tidy. I consider myself lucky I don’t suffer from the paralyzing, debilitating type of shame that would shut you down and make you stutter and say stupid things. I still held face and walked them through my messy yet very interesting boat.
The sensation of shame continued after the video call as my eyes were contemplating the explosion of boat parts and tools around me. I have been in this condition for a couple of months now, but even if I am used to my mess sometimes it exceeds my own tolerance.
The previous day I worked on my water tank in the v-berth, then rushed onto the boat to prepare the dough and toppings for our Monday pizza night at the boatyard, then worked a little more while the dough was raising, to again rush and pick everything up and carry it to the breezeway on the other end of the boatyard. When I came back it was dark already and with a full belly and first signs of a carb crash I went quickly to bed. The next morning I woke up to the mess of cooking and working and everything else.
In this particular phase of working there is no place onboard that stays the same. Things keep moving and shuffle around from one surface to the other. This happens even if the majority of my belonging are stuffed under the boat in the squatter camp, a sprawling of boat parts and materials that allows for great boatwork and creations and that also has a post-apocalyptic aesthetic, so appropriate during current times.
I am fortunate I got to be in a very private corner of the boatyard so my mess is hidden. Tranquility is parked stern to the edge of the property, against a fence with climbing vines and tall trees. My port windows face the North River and I can observe the marsh and boats at anchor from where I sit at my table. My only neighbor in a radius of 80ft (25 meters ) is Bill, who is a long time friend, solo sailor, inventor and “connazionale” (he is American and he also holds an Italian passport). He tolerates my mess and contributes with his own, although I have to say I am undefeated to this day.
For a coincidence of life I am right under the tree where four years ago Beta was spotted the last time before he decided to take a two week vacation from the boat. This tree dumps leaves, branches and staining berries onto my deck and used to block the sun from reaching my solar panel, but I still love it. It harbors a quantity of animals and insects that are my companions during my work days.
The boatyard is encased in maritime forest and it opens on a winding river that leads all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, separating Georgia from Florida. Its magical powers are beyond comprehension and the enchanted forest attracts a community of boaters that end up taking residence in the boatyard.
This special corner in this special county of this special state which is part of this special country is where I prepare my farewell. The Americas, North and South, have been particularly welcoming to me.
The people I met during my travels invited me in their lives with generosity and a sane curiosity for a man with a weird accent. They were able to make me feel important, even when I came empty handed. Here I met new fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, teachers and peers.
From all the encounters I learned that we have one blood if we are willing to meet eye to eye and heart to heart. I received way more than I gave, and per the rule of life, whatever is left in the account I will pay it forward, wherever I may roam.
It is hard to detach from people that were so friendly and generous to me. I made this vow to follow the tides of life, those bigger than myself forces that right now are pushing me away from this land. I am also sure that the people who love me would be disappointed if I retreated from this call.
I thought it would be easier to leave, just pack the boat and go. But I am not just crossing an ocean for the sake of adventure. I am realigning and dealing with with this surge of mess around me, this puke of threads, stories, connections I need to transform, purge, celebrate and disentangle from. I went deep into this territory, now I am climbing up from the hole I digged, carrying my treasure.
The Ocean is calling, and the Ocean always punish messy people. Even if my mind tolerates mess it comes a moment when clutter becomes a real obstacle, and that moment is when you are underway and your entire world starts moving up and down and back and forth and left and right. A messy boat underway is a recipe for disaster. Curbing my mess is my main job now.
As the tendrils of the spiral of chaos agitate in this magic forest things start to fall into place, messages are exchanged, clarity is achieved. The unnapetizing concoction made out of who I was and who I will be is brewing. As the agents of change are doing their metabolic work I try to keep things under check, put away stuff and tidy up. It looks like a Sysyphean effort, but there is no way around it and the reward is immense.
As Robert Frost put it, “the only certain freedom is in departure”.
I don’t feel I am alone in life, but I am definitely alone on my boat, planning and working for long distance sailing.
For many people and culture facing challenges alone is regarded as a horror story experience, the Robinson Crusoe’s tale of isolation from his fellows. American individualist heroes like Emerson and Thoreau, whose experience with solitude and self-reliance inspired generations, were still fully engaged in public life and very hardly removed from society. Going alone in daring endeavors is exclusive business for heroes and fools. Heroes usually face solitude for necessity, while fools choose it as a free individual choice.
Following this narratives, it is not surprising that my parents are concerned about my wellbeing and my friends struggle to understand why on Earth I would want to spend days at sea by myself (even without Internet!). Despite the ever growing tendency toward individualism, almost every society regards the common good and community life as morally superior to people doing things on their own. Many of the problems in society are attributed to the collapse of family and community life, health problems, school failures, depression among those (check out Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam)
Ask Italian people that are forced not to interact during this lockdown, or the Chinese who experienced it in Wuhan how they like being isolated. All my friends and family in Italy are struggling to cope with this forced removal from others. However there is a big difference between choosing to be alone and be forced to do so. In this sense I am totally free in making this decision, it is something that I really look forward to.
After all at the present moment my solitude is relative. My friend Bill is my next boat neighbor and accomplished solo sailor. He also lives alone on his boat. We visited in Rome while he was spending the winter time with his girlfriend who lives there. We speak Italian and English while we talk boats, politics and other interesting topics as we tinker around our floating homes. So does Andy, another neighbor on a Wharram catamaran who sponsors the Monday Pizza Night where we share the love for pizza making and sharing meals with fellow boaters in the yard.
In Brunswick, not far from here, there are good friends and former neighbors I get to visit now and then. James and Mei who I had the privilege to work with, Susan who was my roommate while I was living on land with Kate and all the people of my former neighborhood, Chip who is a living institution as dockmaster at the Frederica Yacht Club (where Tranquility spent considerable time) Anne and Elliott friends and fellow boaters. The list is very long. The network of relationship that spread from the cabin of an old boat dry docked in rural coastal Georgia is very impressive. It is the web of Life I am grateful for everyday.
Going Places
After months in Hong Kong working mostly on motor yachts and sailing around coastal waters, the desire to sail in blue waters far from land finally creeped up. Tranquility sat for long time in the yard, growing mold and becoming a condominium for insects, slowing rotting away. It would be a shame to waste such a fine vessel.
The desire for sailing and pity for an aging vessel was not enough to break the momentum. After all in Hong Kong I was making money and having an interesting life in a very special place, and I was still messing around with boats. It was when suddenly a destination emerged that things started to roll very quickly. Isla de Tenerife is now where I am going to point Tranquility’s bow. Technically I cannot sail directly there, I will have to draw a wide arch, but you get the point.
There is a very special person waiting for me there I will be happy to reunite with and enjoy time together. The highest island of the Atlantic (mount Teide’s peak is 3718m/12,198ft high) itself has a series of attractions that make it a worthwhile landing spot for some time. A diverse set of environments and microclimates, relative vicinity with my family in Italy (4h30min flight), presence of sailing yachts and constant wind, also the scary and exciting perspective that the next downwind destination would be the American coast again (Brazil?), all concur to make Tenerife a very interesting place to be.
En route to Tenerife obligatory stops will be the Azores and Madeira. Those Portuguese islands are a fascinating mixture of nature and culture, that I really look forward to experience, and that has been on my chart since the first moment on Tranquility in Fairhaven, MA. In that region of New England many families immigrated from those Portuguese islands, bringing with them their traditions and food.
Getting there
For the first time in my sailing life I gave myself a precise deadline for departure. I chose it trying to accomodate a good weather window with the time necessary for preparation of the boat and her skipper. The best time to leave for an Eastbound Atlantic crossing is mid April to mid May. During this time of the year the cold fronts and the associated northerlies become less frequent, and S – SW winds are predominant. Also the likelihood of hurricanes is still very low, even though early tropical storm are still possible.
May 2nd is a reasonable date in my opinion. It is challenging because I have a lot to do to prepare, but it is not unreasonable. For sure if I have too much left undone approaching the date I should seriously reconsider my plan. However if just few important things will be still needed, it allows me a cushion of few days to stretch the departure.
What’s missing
Tranquility’s passage from Panama to Georgia proved that the vessel itself is ready for a long journey in open waters. However during that passage I found few problems that require modifications and tune ups, and also upgrades that would make the boat more fun to sail and easier on the crew.
One problem to address are minor leaks that damaged some equipment. Some of them came from the deck grab rails, others from deck hardware. I will take the opportunity of the much needed re-painting of the deck nonskid surface to re-bed all deck hardware. The teak grab rails are already a distant memory while I wait to install new stainless steel ones.
I am going to purchase and install a brand new roller furler, retiring the continuous -line furler that served me well but that is showing signs of age and malfunctioning. With that I am replacing head stay and backstay, that came under high stress during the mishaps I experienced with the furling system during a squall in the Atlantic Ocean.
I also now have the opportunity to keep shaping this boat, fulfilling the dream of making her a badass bluewater boat. I am planning to build a hard dodger out of fiberglass and foam composite as previously envisioned after building the nesting dinghy in Panama.
Showing the Work
The list is long and goes in great details. I will try to keep this blog as much up to date as possible on the constant projects happening on Tranquility. This is probably a way to overcome isolation and bridge communication gaps. If I want other people to understand what moves me and what does it mean to take a boat alone across the Atlantic the only chance is to show how this is made. I am trying to spread this effort through diverse media. For example, If you want to have a quicker view of what’s going on check out my Instagram @sailwithfabio where I post pictures of my work on a daily basis.
I overcame my writer’s block and got to write this blog post thanks to the support of fellow writer and friends in Hong Kong. There I used to attend the weekly meeting of this group where people gathers to write and then read their work. Despite 12hours and 13,913kms difference between us I decided to synchronize with their meeting and spend two hours writing. Thanks Bernard, Holly, Kathrina and Toni to be awesome writers and great people!
The title and some of the ideas on this post are from an interesting book I am reading:
GOING SOLO, The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, by Eric Klinenberg, The Penguin Press, 2012
Transforming a beaten up Columbia 29 into a seaworthy liveaboard sailboat
I could find many reasons behind our decision to purchase a Columbia 29 for bluewater cruising. Her presence on many of the most popular internet lists of small-go-anywhere-sailboats was a supporting evidence of her qualities.
She appeared on James Baldwins’ list on the website Atom Voyages, that we found particularly sage on the subject of cruising on small sailboats.
Another guideline was the mantra received by Dave, one of my favorite sailing instructor and talented racer, who once told me that designer Sparkman&Stephens never failed a boat.
Third, and very important for our budget, was Tranquility’s bargain price.
Questionable decisions
Spending part of my career as skipper of busy charter sailboats gave me knowledge and experience on equipment update and ordinary maintenance of a sailing vessel.
While shopping for a boat I was aware how an inexpensive, turn-key boat is nothing but a mirage. Even few years old boats can give the new owners a lot of headache as the marine environment is pretty harsh on equipment.
In the face of this knowledge, I should have known better what a tremendous task was to bring such an old boat back to life.
Tranquility is a Columbia 29 MKI built in 1965 in Portsmouth VA. From the scant information we could collect about her history, she had been based in the New England area for most of her life and she was sailed to the Caribbean (via Bermuda) and Nova Scotia by one of her owners before she started to pass in many hands in the most recent times.
What was left of her was a boat in need of a serious rehab. We knew that if we wanted to achieve our goal of living aboard and sailing offshore, we had to pour a lot of sweat and finances into that good old boat.
At least with Tranquility we had the opportunity to start from scratch. Laying on a private yard under a plastic tent, she set off our wildest fantasies on how we would transform her in a live aboard long distance cruising sailboat.
The bare naked condition of the boat made our survey easier, and we were pleased with her general sound structure.
The hull was sound and the deck didn’t show any particular weakness. The main spars were also good, and we had already in our mind to replace the standing rigging anyway.
The line and the proportions of the design conquered our hearths and we felt the interior had a rational layout.
During a holiday trip in Italy to visit my family, Kate and I decided to make our offer.
Getting ready to work
The deal was closed during the snowy New England winter and we became the new owners of a boat with primed hull and deck, standing and running rigging laying on stands and an electric inboard motor with a dubious battery bank.
The rest of the parts had been disassembled by the seller during his refit and included in the deal, but it was only after tackling the first projects that we realized that some of them were outdated or in need of a replacement.
He had advised us not to buy the boat in the first place, but Tranquility’s call was irresistible, so he followed up trying to give us another good advice: pick your battles.
The interior was kept original, with a slightly offset teak companionway giving access to a long side galley and an ample dinette / settee on the port side.
The floor had some visible rot, probably from water coming from the mast wires entering the cabin sole. Electrical system and plumbing needed a complete overhaul.
We had to wait few more months for winter to dissipate and to save enough money before we could lay our hands on her.
I sailed to the Caribbean on a yacht delivery and kept working the winter season on big yachts on the islands. Kate was still working in NYC, preparing to leave her apartment and implement all the necessary steps to move from a life on land onto a future afloat.
The boat was moved to a boatyard and as spring came we began our feverish work on her.
We budgeted 6 months for our refit project and during this hard work time we had to learn a lot about our new boat.
We soon realized that if we wanted to leave New England before the icing winter, we would have to cut some corners and make compromises, working fast in certain departments, and definitely following the advice of picking our battles.
First refit: May 2013 – November 2013
The very first project was to remove the wheel steering system and replacing it with a tiller.
Fortunately the rudder stock was still coming through the cockpit floor as an emergency backup. All I had to do was to remove the pedestal, wheel, pulleys and quadrant, cables and fiberglass a pipe to the cockpit sole in place of the old and worn out shaft seal.
With this modification we gained more leg room in the cockpit as well as more space underneath the floor.
A tiller was also preferred as an easier installation for a wind vane self steering gear, that we were intending to add in the future.
Before starting to re-installing deck hardware, deadlights and portholes, we proceeded to paint the deck and the hull.
We chose one part enamel for the topsides, so we could work a little faster. We had to put together electrical system, plumbing, and invent most of the solutions without having the chance to sail the boat first.
Some of the fixes were considered “temporary”, and they were done considering time of execution and prioritizing safety over aestethic.
The interior was kept original, mostly because we had no time to deal with it and Kate made her best to infuse some cuteness into those fifty year old surfaces.
In the galley we modified the existing layout to install a two burner propane range with oven. I had found a great deal on a second hand Force 10 stove and I took the executive decision to buy it.
Kate and I had a bit of an argument about this project as she put a lot of value in the storage area we were about to sacrifice. I was sure about the importance of a good stove for living aboard and insisted. She and I never regretted the decision.
Used and new items started to arrive from the internet, chandlery stores, marine consignments, friends and acquaintances, without much time to think.
The feeling that we were randomly slapping things on the boat started to creep on us, however we made sure before setting sail that three departments would receive most of our attention and funds: rigging, sails and auxiliary propulsion.
Inboard electric motor
One major gamble was the electric inboard propulsion Tranquility was equipped with.
I never had experience with such set up before and I felt completely illiterate.
After hours spent researching about electric propulsion, mainly on the internet, we decided to go ahead and give it a try, knowing that it would be easy to place an outboard engine on the transom if we were not happy with it.
The motor installed is a brushed system assembled and sold by Electric Yacht, with the maximum output power rated at 5kW.
The conversion happened in 2008, and we found an interesting video on You Tube about it.
The very first step was to assess the battery bank. The eight 6v golf cart batteries that came in the deal were spent and one froze during the winter.
We searched the best solution we could afford considering all the available options on the US market.
I spent the nights after working on the boat to read as much as I could on the Internet and made several calls to the major battery manufacturers and distributors.
Kate made cardboard mock ups of each each different brand and model, trying to fit the necessary power and voltage in the available space down below.
The best solution appeared to be a 48v LiFePO4 battery bank, but unfortunately it was totally out of our budget.
For practical reasons we picked 6v lead acid batteries. In case of failure of one of the batteries, a typical 6v “golf cart” battery would be less hard to find in different place of the world than a more sophisticated and expensive alternative.
Finally we purchased, transported, lifted and installed a total of more than 500 lb. of Trojan T-125 6v batteries, connecting them in series to obtain 48volts and a total capacity of 240ah.
New battery compartment were created in the engine room and under one of the settee in the main salon.
Although not ideal, the new set up had a more balanced distribution of the weight onboard, as well as a better access to key parts of the interior like the propeller shaft, that was completely inaccessible with the previous installation.
In theory and considering ideal conditions, we were expecting a range of 15 miles and a cruising speed of 3,5knots from this set up.
Cutter rig
The Columbia 29 was originally designed as a sloop but the rig of the boat was later modified by designer Eric Sponberg to satisfy the desire of a previous owner who wanted a cutter rig.
According to the drawings that the designer kindly mailed us, the rig was beefed up with external chain plates thru-bolted to the hull and backed with thick stainless steel plates.
The diameter of the shrouds was increased to 1/4 inch, and an inner forestay and two lower aft shrouds were added for the staysail.
The headsail had a roller furling system, an old continuous line Hood model, but in good working order.
The mast itself had been replaced with one from a different sailboat and had fixed steps on it.
We thought that this rig configuration was sturdy and redundant, ideal for us, and I always thought that the practicality of mast steps overtake the disadvantages (rig noise and windage).
On our side we sought the experience and the eye of a professional rigger to measure and order new cables and fittings that we later installed by ourselves.
Sails
With the limited range of our motor it became important to give Tranquility a very good set of new sails. We chose to order from Lee Sails in Hong Kong after a recommendation from a friend. We ordered a 100% furling yankee, a staysail and a full battened mainsail.
It was kind of awkward to take measurements with the stick down but with the careful advice of the sailmakers we came up with a successful set of brand new sails, that were promptly manufactured and delivered.
Once we dressed our boat with the new sails we were so pleased that later we chose again Leesails for a cruising gennaker and a storm staysail to completed our sail inventory.
In search of better weather
With the boat put together as quickly as we could, but with the most important departments covered, we had to sail away fast as our 6 months project had stretched to mid November and the South Coast of Massachusetts started to turn very unwelcoming to boaters.
With an experienced third crew member, my friend Roberto, we left Fairhaven MA on November first sailed to Block Island and waited there for a good weather window that came luckily a couple of days later when we set sail to Norfolk, VA.
From there Roberto left and Kate and I continued to play “cat and mouse” with the polar vortex fronts that were making incursions south during that winter, alternating between offshore passages and ICW runs.
With our limited range under power we had to cover most of the distance sailing offshore. After a cold but beautiful offseason cruising along most of the East Coast, we eventually found safe harbor in Brunswick, GA.
There we resumed the customization of our little boat, while also replenishing our pockets with temporary jobs.
Second refit: January 2014-May 2016
After living and sailing on Tranquility for six months we gain a better knowledge of the boat and we started to tackle all the problems we didn’t have time or money to address before.
In particular, we knew where the leaks were and what we didin’t find safe or comfortable.
The South Coast of Georgia offered year round fair weather for boat work and the local presence of James Baldwin was a good benchmark for our ideas and their realization.
Before we knew, we were landlocked in our new location, but we were motivated to keep working hard on our little vessel. The company of fellow boaters and new friends made the task less arduous.
It took us more than 2 years of part time boat work (with the last four months working full time on the refit) to reach a satisfactory point.
Since the day we bought the boat, almost everything onboard has been replaced, patched or restored.
Interior
As we stepped back to live on land it was easier for me to deal with the more dusty and destructive jobs.
We started working inside the boat, fixing an issue with the compression post and rotted floors.
Kate had noticed a little flex in the cabin sole right under the mast during our progress south. After tearing apart the old plywood floor, it turned out that the rot was attacking a hardwood beam propped across the bilge, that was the sole support of the compression post.
Digging a little more into the floor I discovered a gap between the structural beam and the bilge floor. I decided to fill the void with a solid teak wedge, that I glued with epoxy and fiberglassed on top of the bilge to prevent any further compression from the deck.
The rotted floor and other parts of the cabinetry were then rebuilt using new plywood saturated with epoxy.
This open heart surgery around the bilge was also a good opportunity to clear up some fiberglass peelings, reinforce tabbing around the bulkheads and give the bilge a final fresh painting, using two part primer and two coats of Bilgekoat.
On port side right after the companionway, the chart table area, engine room and battery storage needed a new more rational design that maximized space and weight distribution.
The goal was accomplished modifying the companionway ladder, building a new wider floor, new battery boxes to house the eight batteries for the electric propulsion and new cabinets.
Most of the job was done utilizing plywood for the panels and teak hardwood for the trims. The new chart table is bigger, with two level of storage below it and in the surrounding paneling that accomodate instruments and hide the electrical wiring.
The Jabsco Marine head with holding tank and all hose was removed and we installed a composting toilet wedged in the V-berth cutout.
We planned to build our own composting toilet, but time constraints and the need to finish other projects made us choose a commercial one.
C-head offered different sizes, and we picked a model that would fit in our V berth since we are not using it as a sleeping area.
The space freed was transformed into storage. Later during the yard period, the two thru-hulls of the old head were permanently glassed.
We have been very happy with the modification and the choice of a composting head.
Deck
On deck I proceeded designing a new layout and removing the hardware.
I wanted to restore the beautiful teak that was on the fore hatch, companionway, sea-hood, and the lazarette hatch.
Even if they served us during our maiden trip it was clear they would not last much longer.
The fore hatch and the lazarette hatch were rebuilt from scratch with new teak and plywood, while later I salvaged some of the still solid teak of the companionway and the sliding hatch and using new wood for some too worn out parts.
Luckily most of the solid teak had weathered but maintained its strength and beauty.
The old toe-rail also was made with teak that needed a lot of work. The protruding fiberglass bulwark was covered with three strips of teak forming a horseshoe cap. Age and stress had splintered and ruined the wood that needed to be replaced.
After purchasing cheap teak (beware, there is no such a thing!) I decided it wasn’t good enough to keep it bare, so I opted for a mixed approach: I glued a sandwich of teak strips to the fiberglass bulwarks with thickened epoxy; the wood was kept in place by more than a 100 fasteners while curing and later was covered by two layers of fiberglass tape. Fairing a painting with two part marine paint completed the job.
The bulwarks are a nice feature on the Columbia 29, as they give a secure footstep when the boat heels. There were few places where the bulwarks became an obstacle though, and that was mainly the bow, where anchor roller, bow stem and bowsprit where, and the corners on the top of the transom.
To improve those areas I cut off 1 1/2 inch of bulwark with an angle grinder and created a surface glassing solid teak scrap pieces on the deck.
At the bow it created an easier surface to install the anchor roller and the new retractable bowsprit to fly light air sails; on the stern I had a better place to attach the two bow cleats.
All the parts are dry-fit before being fiberglassed in place
The Lousy cockpit locker drainage system
The fiberglassing
Cockpit
I built an integral fiberglass tank under the cockpit floor, accessible through a sealed aluminum hatch and made with plywood bulkheads, fiberglass and epoxy.
The new tank has a capacity of 32 gallons bringing the total fresh water supply to 57.
The outside lockers (lazarette and cockpit locker) were also improved: made watertight and isolated from the rest of the boat.
New cockpit locker drainage channels, fabricated using fiberglass on an improvised mold, were added with a built in inclination to allow water to drain even when the boat is heeled.
Painting
After the projects on deck were completed it was time to paint the deck with two-part marine paint. We chose Perfection by Interlux, Oyster White color.
The choice of the two-part paint is due to its superior adhesion and strength compared to the one part paints we used before that was already peeling off.
The heavy traffic and stress that the deck supports require a more tough coating. A left over from a friend’s boat project provided the fire red paint that we used for the toe rail.
After the paint job was completed we proceeded reinstalling all the deck hardware, including the new staysail blocks moved inboard, the new retractable bowsprit designed by me, a new 60W solar panel mounted on a tracker (to be oriented perpendicular to the sun at any given moment).
Boatyard time
The final part of the refit happened in a boat yard in St.Mary’s GA, not far from Brunswick.
The liveaboard-friendly yard allowed customers to use the shop and many of their tools, expanding the amount of work we could do on site.
We took care of the projects we could not do while in the water, plus all the unexpected collateral work that arise every time you touch something on the boat.
In particular, we fixed few stress cracks in the rudder area with a fiberglass layup, better sealed the stern tube that passes through the deadwood, replaced the tiller head for a new one with a square key in it, installed the Norvane Self Steering wind pilot, permanently glassed the thru-hulls for the marine head, replaced the propeller for a new one, and much, much more.
After two maintenance coats of one part paint on the topsides and new ablative bottom paint we re-launched Tranquility and started again our life afloat.
The list of projects we realized is extensive, I hope this recap and the pictures give a brief summary of what happened.
Of course there are few more projects that we set aside for future completion or that will linger into the “Never list”.
It is now time to sail rather than do boat work and we hope we set the clock back enough to enjoy some quality cruising time aboard for a while.
Our little boat has now all the qualities to keep us safe and happy at sea and we feel incredibly fortunate to have realized our dream of transforming her in our unique small bluewater sailboat.
For a detailed list of the projects mentioned in the article visit the Columbia 29 refit page
It is refit time aboard Tranquility and things can get messy.
The already meager living space is occupied by lumber, sheets of bendy foam, painting products, stowed mainsail, furling jib and staysail, parts waiting for repair, extra supplies for the long term stay in the boatyard and many assorted items that has not yet received an approval for discarding nor a destination of use. Normality, if such a condition existed, is gone.
We congratulated ourselves when we originally moved aboard after downsizing of most of our belongings, but we feel like the process is never ending. Over time we acquired more stuff, hardly disposing of any decrepit or unimportant object, we collected trinkets and memorabilia, hoarded parts and materials that floated our way, in few cases not figuratively. All this lays above the regular household items, clothing to survive the four seasons and the always useful boat gear, composed of an arcane list of safety gear, aids to navigation and fun toys.
This collection moves around on the surfaces of the boat when we are pursuing a specific object, like sandbars in an estuary. There, where the tide meets the stream, stuff gets shuffled continuously to the point of requiring periodical management, raking and repacking. There has been several attempts in compiling maps and indexes of this less than a 150sq ft of interior space, all kept at bay by the revolutionary forces of Change, that always challenge the established order.
Beta participates in the boat search.
Tentative sketch of a future comprehensive map. Mañana, as we learned, means “not today” in these lands.
To date, despite the best intentions, no ultimate map exists, although we never lost faith that one day we would have a more or less accurate blueprint of the storage onboard.
I have always desired to possess some of the useful skills that obsessive compulsive people are champions at, but instead I grew up with NGDD, also called Not Giving a Damn Disorder which makes my cleaning efforts look rather pathetical and confused. This is also probably why it’s going to take a weekend to deeply clean and reorganize a 29 ft boat, another punch in the stomach to my productivity and self worth.
Kate’s traveling to Panama City and I am taking advantage of one less body on the boat to explode the interior and hopefully repack it in a way that makes sense. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. It is indeed due, so my bruised ego has to shut up and roll with it.
Many parts and specific tools which use has been postponed for long become now essential to complete the task at hand. Excavation begins, tote bags aggregating protective ziplock bags filled with objects sorted by some thematic criteria spread around like a slow and unstoppable honey spill.
Putting them back in the same way they came out seems totally out of my grasp. The more difficult to reach the object the more anxiety and adrenaline fog my reasoning, bringing confusion and shock to my procedural memory already impaired by NGDD and making less likely for the pieces to go back in the same rational order.
I do it one step at the time, inefficiently, but without stopping.
How many knives do we really need? Out of the 6, 1 knife got discarded, 2 donated.
I guess this is the curse of modern life: acquiring things that we may or may not use that then become a permanent claustrophobic presence, because, you know, you’ll never know…
There is great hype about topics such decluttering, simple living, minimalism, downsizing. It may be an alert, that speaks to the worst side of the consumerist mentality, or viral talk targeted to who has the time and money to deal with the problem.
The need to acquire stuff is a familiar yet still deceiving part of us, which has been engraved in our brains through indiscriminate, pervasive and undisclosed psychological manipulation techniques for more than a 100 years, since Edward L. Bernays adopted his uncle’s (Sigmud Freud) discoveries to serve the wealthy and powerful.
Appealing in a veiled way to human irrational drives like sexuality, fear, vanity, insecurities, selfishness, Bernays invented Propaganda and its good face in society, the industry of Public Relations.
We’ve been studied and manipulated for so many years that it’s not surprising how resisting the call of consumerism seem an hopeless battle. This conditioning survives even when you remove many of the advertisement sources sailing away on a small boat.
Grown up measuring our worth by the objects we purchase, we still fall for the idea that if we do not buy things we are worthless. Not only that, if we don’t buy things then the economy suffers and consequently jobs, and the large scale system we are embedded in.
So apparently we are between a rock and a hard place.
Tranquility is helpful in the quest to escape the one-dimensional man trap. With the finite and scarce space available we have to make choices, pick the important. Every subtraction is difficult, every addition must be purposeful. It’s a lot to ask to a brain used to pick from brimming shelves, using irrational hunches that expose us to the work of the engineers of attention.
Mankind have long believed that material objects contain spirits, possess some kind of supernatural quality that speaks to us, to the point that we can have a relationship with them, a conversation, intense staring and appreciation. Some objects truly give us joy.
In Japan there is a ceremony known as the Festival of Broken Needles (Hari-Kuyō) where women commemorate their worn-out needles and pins and bury them. Irrational but powerful forces bond us to objects and despite people profiting from this intimate relationship we can still choose the meaningful and useful over the superfluous. Which is easier said than done.
But let’s focus for one second here. I know this in front of me is a collection of bad decisions. My bad.
I can still donate it, recycle it, or toss it. Will you?
Turtle Cay Marina and the beginning of rainy season
<<We are not made of sugar.>> Kate assures me as we are walking on the beach under a heavy downpur. It makes me smile. I should revisit my own attitude towards the rain. Sometimes I just can get soaked, enjoying it for one time, instead of retreating into a dry spot or wearing rain gear.
We are heading back from a walk on the deserted beach between Turtle Cay Marina and the little town of Viento Frio. While rain is coming down I focus on the edge of the dark shelf cloud moving above and past us carrying the shower West. Beautiful black tentacles of vapor hang from it, the new smells coming from the jungle signal that the vegetation reacts to the atmospherical change. Howler monkeys from afar sound their call. Everybody knows it’s raining, even the silver surface of the waves that continue its motion shows a new skin pierced by the raindrops.
I am just getting wet. Water drips from my hair onto my face, my t-shirt gets wet and heavy on my shoulder. I’ll be dry when I get back. It’s no big deal.
Rainy season is on us, and even if it is not yet at its peak we are frequently visited by moisturizing drops falling from the sky. We arrived in Turtle Cay Marina at the beginning of May for a yard period in which we focus on painting jobs. Not the best time of the year to do it, but not the worst either.
Kate overlooks the beach in Turtle Cay Marina, just by the Restaurant
Turtle Cay Marina is a waterfront development few miles off the pueblo of Nombre De Dios. As far as places to haul out our boat it is as remote as it gets on the Atlantic Coast of Panama, ideal for a small boat and her expert crew.
The downside is that if we forgot to get a part in our job list supply we need a taxi and two buses to get to a shopping area probably having to stay overnight in Panama City. The advantage is that we easily put our attention on the work, as there are not many forms of distraction around here, other than wonderful wildlife and landscape.
It is also affordable, which is another good reason to be here.
Tranquility took a ride on the travel lift before being dropped on stands. Gravity pushing her on a hard ground is not the best situation for a boat, but hopefully it won’t last long. We quickly adapted to the tall ladder we have to climb to go in and out of the boat, to the retrofit of the grey water system draining into a bucket and to the fact that as dusk is approaching we have to close down the boat and hide inside, or bugs will eat us.
We also got used very quickly to nice, clean and functioning bathrooms with shower, laundromat, wi-fi, and the view of the beach from the cockpit, and the nice restaurant on the beach. It may sounds weird, but it is exceptional in this area.
It is complicated to rate a boatyard, but so far this has the best views.
Painting the topsides of Tranquility had been a long discussed project. The one part paint we applied prior to the first launch in New Bedford dated 2013 and it was constantly peeling off. Something bogus happened during that first application that messed up the adhesion of the paint. Busy as we were assembling Tranquility like a model boat from a box kit, we slapped that one part grey paint on her and moved to the very next project, anxious to get out of New England before the worst of winter.
Scraping the old paint off Traqnuility. It was a long messy job.
For five years we have seen layers of paint coming off at the slightest friction with a solid object, like the dinghy, anchor chain, the occasional leaning to a hard surface like a dock. That drove Kate crazy as she kept touching up the scratches with the same one part Kingston Grey paint we used originally and Tranquility soon looked like some advanced stealth vessel, with grey camo. It was perfect for Georgia, maybe, but when we decided it was time to pull Tranquility out of the drink, Kate soon lobbied for a brand new paint job.
I resisted at first. Aestethics sits quite down in my list of priority, and I also knew that it was a lot of work, physical, dirty, finicky work. It took days to remove the previous coating, and to prepare the surface for primer, then dry days for application, more sanding, taping. And so on. But eventually I recognized the urgency that Kate was feeling. Most of the times she is right anyway, I am learning as time passes.
Only two coats of Jotun HardTop paint on (and 2to go) for Tranquility
Maria from the vessel Joana recommended Jotun, a brand of paints from Norway which she described as “high quality industrial paint” that was available in Panama. I liked the focus on industrial because back in the States I spent too much time dealing with “spiffy yacht coatings” that eventually did not stand the harsh environment of the ocean and are targeted to people who constantly redo their paint jobs, as if boat owners were damned in one ring of Inferno, forced to constantly repaint their boats, with the diabolic marketers laughing at them. This time we are hoping for a less shiny but definitely more tenacious paint job, hopefully tug boat grade.
Industrial also means cheaper. Jotun serves the Shipping Industry so they sell by the bulk. For tiny Tranquility that translated in the purchase of a 20 liter (more than 5 gallons) drum of self polishing antifouling paint for 650$. It is a lot of money but it is also a lot of paint, and we had no way to purchase less from the warehouse in Zona Libre just outside Colon. 130$ per gallon is not a bad price at all for antifouling, even though now we have at least two gallons more than necessary.
Most cruisers we spoke to suggested that we apply it all, the more the better they say. Following the calculation from our last haul out in St.Marys, GA that quantity should translate in five or more coats of bottom paint. If putting more paint on will grant us more time between haul outs it could save us a lot of cash, so we are going to try the heavy application.
Of course painting outdoor in the rainy season is not the easiest task. It is down right frustrating. But as we cannot control weather we move past frustration and make the best possible with it. I would not have written this post if it wasn’t raining outside, I would be dealing with the next stage of this apparently interminable task.
Writing is a good activity for rainy days. I am working on two publication deadlines for June. One, already delivered, is for Small Boat Monthly, and it’s about a traditional sailing race in Guna Yala, that should appear on June’s edition. Then I also have a long piece about the last two years of sailing for Wand’rly Magazine that I am completing, really hoping to deliver it in time for the June issue too.
If it rains a lot, I have a prompt reason to console me for the delay in painting.
Five years of Tranquility (in photos, not literally)
I am working on a photo project, in the quiet of my hometown and the pleasure of broadband internet, that involves looking at photos from the last six years of my life, for the most part related to sailing.
Five years ago Kate and I purchased Tranquility, our Columbia 29 mki that was lying disassembled in a yard in Fairhaven, MA, the same place where in 1892 Joshua Slocum was given his famous fixer upper, the Spray.
People often ask me where they can find pictures of our boat online, and I realized that they are scattered throughout this blog, hard to find.
I thought I would post some here, in chronological order, for who is interested in the Columbia 29 mki model, and in the modifications we made so far (click on the pictures to enlarge).
The first time we met Tranquility – Fairhaven, MA December 2012
At work in the yard – New Bedford MA, May 2013
Lunch break in the cockpit – New Bedford MA, Summer 2013
Our original galley – New Bedford MA Summer 2013
The greenhouse over the deck – New Bedford MA Summer 2013
Kate, with the first paint job of many – New Bedford MA Summer 2013
The surprise before launching (bottom of keel) – New Bedford MA Winter 2013
Ready to launch – New Bedford MA Winter 2013
Reorganizing the boat – Norfolk, VA Winter 2013
Tucked in for cold front – Southport NC 2013 Winter 2013
Starting to get warmer- Charleston SC Winter 2013
Tranquility in the Marsh Winter 2014
With James Baldwin – Jekyll Island, GA January 2014
Total refit #2 – SSI, GA
Total refit #2 – SSI, GA
Total refit #2 – SSI, GA
Total refit #2 – SSI, GA
composting head! Total refit #2 – SSI, GA
repowering the boat- Total refit #2 – SSI, GA
Haul out after 2 years in the famed marshes of Glynn – St.Marys GA April 2016
More work -St.Marys GA April 2016
Bottom paint – St.Marys GA April 2016
Interior! St.Marys GA April 2016
Ready to relaunch – St.Marys GA April 2016
Going North, stop in Charleston SC – Summer 2016
Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean – Summer 2016
Light air configuration Cuttyhunk MA to Newport RI – Summer 2016
Final touches, Fairhaven MA – Fall 2016
Back to Jekyll Island, GA Winter 2016/17 (photo credit Sue Zidar)
Finally towards the Islands! Abacos, Bahamas May 2017
Among the many projects we are hurrying to complete there is one that concerns our security while at anchor or when we leave the boat to go ashore.
In our world without air-conditioning, the possibility to lock ourselves in when we go to sleep and still be able to have some airflow from what is the biggest opening we have is a big advantage.
Beta likes to roam on deck when possible and we want him to be able to go in and out of the boat even when we are not onboard. On the other hand, in warm climates it’s good to be able to leave the boat locked while letting air in and out. It makes a more comfortable boat at our return and also it avoids that Beta gets baked in the process.
I followed the concept that James Baldwin’s developed for his boat Atom to design our anti-intrusion bars. Here is a picture of the bars he built from his website.
We made some changes to the design to make it more simple to build and less expensive overall. The bars go in place of two of the three drop boards that locks the companionway. The top drop board sit atop and locks the companionway, and they all slide into solid stainless steel tracks that I installed back when I rebuilt the companionway.
Design of the security bars
The bars are made of 1/2 inch 316 stainless solid rod bought on Buymetal.com and sent from Pennsylvania, which makes Kate even prouder as she is originally from Steel Country.
James Baldwin at the welding station
The construction took 3 hours and James helped with the welding and the use of his equipment and power tools. I have to say that metal construction is fun, exciting and very useful. I look forward to polish my skills in this subject.
We hit the two months mark since we have moved back aboard Tranquility. So far it has been 24/7 work and I suspect it won’t end very soon. The difference with the previous condition is that now we are finally untethered: we sold the car, we have a provisioned and fully mobile boat and we took care of few bureaucratic conundrums strictly related with life on land. So now we can move where it pleases us!
Not too fast, though. The brake at this point is the condition of the boat that keep changing over time. We are making constant improvements in the degree of comfort and sailing performances since the beginning of April. Like the life cycle of a star, the interior and the deck keep going through a alternate state of expansion and contractions. Tools and parts come out of storage, the content of every locker and box has to be moved around, and everything shifts and gets hauled somewhere else. Every time things are put back together we can see the improvements, but then the next job brings more chaos aboard. It is definitely not easy to live and work on a boat, and this is so far limiting our mobility. Luckily we can work at anchor so we don’t have to necessarily be tied to the land, and every trip ashore we unload garbage and unnecessary items gaining more and more living space.
Despite this apparently erratic behavior our preparation happened with a specific spreadsheet-assisted path. Every step put us closer to certain milestones and eventually to the end of the preparation and the beginning of the trip.
The first milestone was to leave the docks. After two years spent running a landlocked life, Tranquility was able to get unchained and make a very slow progress toward the next step, the boatyard. It took us a few days to get there. Our destination was rather close but we experienced issues with some freeloading marine animals and vegetables that were squatting peacefully on the bottom of our boat seriously limiting our speed on the water and ultimately on the ground. Once we were lifted outside of the water they were brutally eliminated, with little or none compassion. This slow pace made for nice time outdoor, timing the tides we moved from anchorage to anchorage, savoring wonderful sceneries between St.Simons and Cumberland Island, all the way into St.Marys and the boatyard.
St. Marys Boat Services became our new home for 1 month. Personally I have been in many boat yards before but this particular one deserves a special mention. It’s very uncommon to find a place where you can both live aboard while working and have free access to their tools. I am not talking about a drill or an angle grinder. Here you have access to a woodwork and a metal shop equipped with table saw, drill press, lathe, welders, belt sanders and other exciting shop tools. The managers are friendly and ready to find a way to help you in every possible way. The community of liveaboards has set some common spaces and rules of cohabitation so it’s easy to meet interesting people, ready to share stories and knowledge.
On the hard we had the opportunity to lose and find again Beta, our cat, who jumped ship for two weeks. We also had a good look at our bottom, dropped the rudder, had a machine shop put a square key in it for a new tiller cap, we replaced the propeller, removed and fiberglassed two thru-hulls, repaired a water intrusion in the deadwood, repainted the topsides, sanded the old bottom paint and put 5 coats of new antifouling, installed a Norvane self steering, new lifelines, interior wood work and painting. I probably forget a lot of other jobs that happened while we were looking for our cat or trying to stay cool in the hot Georgia climate. I have never been a fan of 44oz Jiffy mart fountain drinks, but working in the Georgia heat made me change my mind and I learned how to add more water to the ice after the drink was gone to extend the cooling effect. This is life without refrigeration.
I’d like to go through the details of our work as I did in the past but lately the pace is too high to both work and write about it. I even feel a little guilty in writing this post as the job list is waiting for my attention. You would wonder what possibly is left to do on Tranquility after a two year refit. If you owned a boat before you probably know the answer. If you didn’t, think twice about buying a boat. The reality is that a boat is never fully finished and wrapping up projects may take more time that you can possibly expect.
Eventually splashing time arrived, after one month exactly. I feel proud of what we did in this amount of time, I am usually pretty unsatisfied with my speed, but not this time! We immediately enjoyed being at anchor in the marshes of Camden and Glynn. The first day at anchor, right in front of the boatyard, we simply laid down and did nothing for the whole day. Then little by little we resumed our course, together with high doses of Battlestar Galactica. Now we are back where we started, saying goodbye to friends and provisioning the boat for a long trip, and of course checking off few more jobs on the list.
If you like to see us on a map, check our Delorme track: https://share.delorme.com/sytranquility
There is a lot going on and around Tranquility, even more in our own lives. The final rush to be ready to leave the dock is undergoing, with printed sections of spreadsheets that follow me everywhere I go. Thankfully Kate is on the organizational side now that she ended her jobs and she is doing an incredible job with boat work and trying to contain my chaos.
Somehow I am failing to report all of this on the blog. It was difficult to sit and focus on the plan and make time to narrate what was happening. For me writing requires finding an empty space in my mind. There was definitely time and energy to do so, but as the boat required more immediate and interconnected actions, my mind was never really at ease. In fact, once the big jobs like structural repairs and painting ended we were left with a huge list of smaller tasks and installation that required full attention. Basically we need to put Tranquility back together.
Every single one of these tasks come with decisions, every decision needs a justification. What we liked when we first set step on Tranquility was that the conditions of the boat gave us a very wide freedom of choice. Paul, the previous owner, had suddenly interrupted the refit of the boat and put her up for sale, leaving her bones exposed and unfinished. We liked her structure and her lines and we dreamed about how we could build the rest by ourselves to make her the best possible fit for us. This is the most alluring side of a boat refit, the idea to customize the boat according to your needs and desires. Three years later I just started to realize how this is a big trap we voluntarily threw ourselves in.
For example, at a certain moment you need to install fans to increase the ventilation ability of the cabin, displace moisture and have some cool air pampering your skin when you try to fall asleep, read a book or when you deal with hot pots on the stove. You also need a product that does the job while using 12v DC power frugally and that won’t cost a fortune. Then you check your wallet and try to decide how much money you are comfortable to put in this department.
The quest then starts, researching as many options as you can, scrolling through products lists and supplier catalogs, reading their description, keeping an eye on the price to easily ditch the ones that exceeds your pockets. The market is flooded with products that claim to be the best, or good enough, or just sit there available for purchase and the temptation is always to maximize the outcome, because “you always deserve the best deal”.
I spent a ton of time reading and researching about 12v fans, the ones that swivel and the ones that don’t, multi or single speed, and so on. When this was not enough I sought the opinion of experts and when finally I was very close to hit the Pay Now button the constant fear of settling for something not optimal made me delay the purchase. I was paralyzed by the fact that there could be something better or the same product for a better price, just few clicks away.
On a list of items necessary for a safe passage at sea fans surely sit at its bottom. So try to imagine how this would go for all the more important items an empty boat needs to be fitted for ocean passages. Luckily that process spread through 3 years of pondering, tests and life changes, but it is now, when everything converge to the final preparation that the sunken costs of decision making emerges from the mist of the past. It’s the bottleneck of opportunities, the crossroad of possibilities. All the indecisions and doubts have to disappear because it’s time to go. Why did I ordered two inches wide nylon webbing instead of one? Why propane leak detectors are so expensive? Where am I going to order those mast winches? When am I finally installing that water maker?
Few years ago I experienced doing boat work and repairs in places of the world where the options were scarce. If I was lucky I could choose between product A and product B, but most of the time I had to go for a single choice, with no alternative on the price. Nonetheless the work was done, and my satisfaction towards the result was boosted by overcoming the challenges of the environment. Feeling like there were no alternatives did a lot for on my perception of the result, feeling heroic to have dealt with such situation.
Doing the same in the US, the bountiful land of opportunity, leave me often with the feeling that the job could have been done better, I look at other boats to seek comparisons, and the spiral of self-doubting keeps spinning. It seems that the number of options alone is not necessarily a good recipe for satisfaction, and instead it generates fatigue and uncertainty. After all, when you have so many options you are the sole responsible of your decisions, and most of the time you end up thinking it could have been better.
Finally the number of options decrease as we are getting close to completion. Most of the equipment is installed or on its way, few items are still missing as we make more space for decisions. Also when things finally fall into place satisfaction for starts to sink in and our good enough boat is looking awesome. I am sure the empty time of writing will be more frequent, and so this blogging adventure will be fueled by the real one. It’s happening!
Two coats of epoxy primer wrap Tranquility’s deck as I walk the dock in the cold morning, the first sunbeams reflects on the pure white forming little drops of dew on the surface. The hard work is slowing paying off and the grey tormented deck is already a memory. One more coat will hide any further mark of underlayer with an immaculate cloak, then the sexy two-part polyhurethane paint will have the perfect stage to play its glossy role.
Painting and sanding punctuate our days. The weather rules our schedule, as we are doing everything in open air, vulnerable to atmospheric change. We look for dry days, the warmer the better, but this time of the year in Coastal Georgia warm means humid and we have to adapt to good enough conditions. It’s always a little too windy or too humid or too cold. We don’t have the luxury to wait for the perfect day and we do the best with what we get. Other events, from family visits to work obligations, decide when we are able to continue working. We keep pushing but we can’t always walk at the pace we would like and our March deadline is getting closer every day.
As we work to change our mindset and we go through our belongings I am feeling a profound appreciation for the place we have been living for the last two years. The itch of going back to the ocean has often disturbed my ability to see all the gifts the Golden Isles provided us with, from wonderful friends to work opportunities, all surrounded by beautiful wilderness and by the warmth of a great sailing community. We and Tranquility went through a lot during this time, more than we could have possibly hoped for when we first launch from New Bedford, MA.
My parents recently visited us from Italy. It was their first trip to the US and we showed them around and took them to our favorite spots in this part of Georgia. We weren’t able to see them all, as they are too many. Through their amused eyes I could see once again how wonderful this coast is from many different points of view. There will a be time for goodbye and as we approach it the feelings of gratitude and nostalgia begin to pay us a visit. But it’s not time yet, we are still here and we have to keep the paint flow.
During the last month of boat works I focused on preparing the deck for painting, a job that shouldn’t require a month of full time work. In reality, this task is much more than sand the old paint off and clean the surface.
The job can be summarized by this sequence:
sanding
fiberglass jobs where needed
more sanding
more fiberglass repairs
fairing
more sanding
more fairing
Do, repeat and loop the sequence to one’s own standard of “ready to go”.
A “detail oriented personality” could go ahead in an obsessive and repetitive challenge until the fingertips will be scratched to the bone before considering the deck ready for painting. Luckily I am not that kind of person. On the other hand I am a victim of creative ideas randomly rising during the progression of the project. This modifications sometimes put a heavy hand in the plan, disrupting it totally.
Deck modifications
Before a thorough deck preparation could start I had to complete few design ideas that would help solve some issues we experienced with the original deck layout.
Columbia 29s were built with an interesting deck to hull joint that rises few inches above the deck to form bulwarks from aft to end. This was also the designer’s signature to give a very nice sheer line to the deck. We love the bulwark on Tranquility, they help keeping your feet on deck when the boat heels as well as providing a barrier for objects that wants to fall overboard.
The drawback is that mooring lines and other overhanging hardware have to climb this protective wall incurring in the risk of chafing or making their installation difficult. This is particularly true on the bow, where the anchor roller and other deck hardware had to rest on a precarious base made of untreated construction grade lumber that obviously had rotted away and became a condo for photophobic insects by the time we owned the boat. Shame on whoever cobbled up that ridicolous solution!
The problem had to be addressed with some creativity and a lot of courage. When it was clear that Tranquility required a “nose job” I went through the anxieties and insecurities common to pre and post plastic surgery. With a heavy hand and a heavy heart I pressed on the angle grinder cutting away inches of fiberglass, trying to draw a symmetric line. I then composed a base layer using several odd shaped teak hardwood pieces, put together with thickened epoxy and fiberglass.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Olin Stephens may be turning in his grave for the new line of his design but the occasional Yacht Club guests walking by were actually pleased with Tranquility’s new look. Our friend Brian even ventured in calling the new look “race boat like”.
Similarly I did a little modification on the transom corners to create a better surface for hardware and mooring lines.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Stanchion bases
Raised stanchion bases were another upgrade we thought would improve Tranquility’s deck. A thicker and wider base would help preventing stress cracking from wobbling stanchions and keep their base raised from water puddles.
After laminating few layers of biaxial fiberglass tape I cut the stanchion base a little wider and then glassed it permanently to the deck.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
New toe rail
The original toe rail was made of three pieces of teak forming an overturned U on top of the bulwark and it was fastened with bronze screws. Age and damages had reduced the coverage and efficacy of the teak toe rail. A recent experience during a delivery raised curiosity towards the hull to deck joint on our boat and so I had to get the wood off and expose the joint. The removal job was one way and I knew that after that I needed to give Tranquility brand new toe rail. I fancied a project featuring fancy solid teak bar bent in shape over the bulwark but after realizing that I purchased a not so great stock of teak hardwood from E-bay I had to reconsider the idea. You get what you pay for they say, so I opted for using that wood to create permanent epoxy and fiberglass toe rail that will be painted with the deck.
The project include around 100 stainless steel #8 sheet metal screws (one every 8 inches) to join the inboard and outboard teak strips as well as a huge amount of epoxy and colloidal silica and fairing compound as additives. A 6 inches fiberglass cloth was wrapped around the edge and the overhanging extremity sanded off after the resin cured.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Sanding
Every project had its own portion of sanding so soon Tranquility’s deck became a patchwork. But for our particular paintjob we had to remove any trace of the one part enamel paint we used in our first refit in New Bedford MA. After giving one part paint a try we decided to go with two part that is supposedly harder and more resistant to UV action and wear. To do so we have to remove any trace of one part paint first, as it would not stand the aggressive solvent of two part epoxy primer and polyurethane topcoat and flake off ruining the paintjob.
That required a lot of scraping that we diligently executed using wood chisels. With Kate’s help we went around and scrape it all off, revealing a calico pattern formed by several layers of paint, from the original gelcoat to more recent epoxy primers.
The multicolor deck during sanding operations
While operating the chisel closely to the deck I also exhumed several fiberglass delaminations deeply buried under fairing compound and primer. A delamination happen when two layers of fiberglass start to peel apart from each other leaving a “soft spot”. Everytime the first reaction was to turn my head away and say we would live with it. But I always succumbed to the temptation of fixing them and make the deck stronger. After all how bad could it be another fiberglass job?
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Going through al these pictures I see what I spent the last month doing, and I feel a little less bad about my progress. The deck is not painted yet though and right now we are dealing with our own level of perfectionism and waiting for good weather. Meanwhile: do, repeat and loop.
During the last month of boat works I focused on preparing the deck for painting, a job that shouldn’t require a month of full time work. In reality, this task is much more than sand the old paint off and clean the surface.
The job can be summarized by this sequence:
sanding
fiberglass jobs where needed
more sanding
more fiberglass repairs
fairing
more sanding
more fairing
Do, repeat and loop the sequence to one’s own standard of “ready to go”.
A “detail oriented personality” could go ahead in an obsessive and repetitive challenge until the fingertips will be scratched to the bone before considering the deck ready for painting. Luckily I am not that kind of person. On the other hand I am a victim of creative ideas randomly rising during the progression of the project. This modifications sometimes put a heavy hand in the plan, disrupting it totally.
Deck modifications
Before a thorough deck preparation could start I had to complete few design ideas that would help solve some issues we experienced with the original deck layout.
Columbia 29s were built with an interesting deck to hull joint that rises few inches above the deck to form bulwarks from aft to end. This was also the designer’s signature to give a very nice sheer line to the deck. We love the bulwark on Tranquility, they help keeping your feet on deck when the boat heels as well as providing a barrier for objects that wants to fall overboard.
The drawback is that mooring lines and other overhanging hardware have to climb this protective wall incurring in the risk of chafing or making their installation difficult. This is particularly true on the bow, where the anchor roller and other deck hardware had to rest on a precarious base made of untreated construction grade lumber that obviously had rotted away and became a condo for photophobic insects by the time we owned the boat. Shame on whoever cobbled up that ridicolous solution!
The problem had to be addressed with some creativity and a lot of courage. When it was clear that Tranquility required a “nose job” I went through the anxieties and insecurities common to pre and post plastic surgery. With a heavy hand and a heavy heart I pressed on the angle grinder cutting away inches of fiberglass, trying to draw a symmetric line. I then composed a base layer using several odd shaped teak hardwood pieces, put together with thickened epoxy and fiberglass.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Olin Stephens may be turning in his grave for the new line of his design but the occasional Yacht Club guests walking by were actually pleased with Tranquility’s new look. Our friend Brian even ventured in calling the new look “race boat like”.
Similarly I did a little modification on the transom corners to create a better surface for hardware and mooring lines.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Stanchion bases
Raised stanchion bases were another upgrade we thought would improve Tranquility’s deck. A thicker and wider base would help preventing stress cracking from wobbling stanchions and keep their base raised from water puddles.
After laminating few layers of biaxial fiberglass tape I cut the stanchion base a little wider and then glassed it permanently to the deck.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
New toe rail
The original toe rail was made of three pieces of teak forming an overturned U on top of the bulwark and it was fastened with bronze screws. Age and damages had reduced the coverage and efficacy of the teak toe rail. A recent experience during a delivery raised curiosity towards the hull to deck joint on our boat and so I had to get the wood off and expose the joint. The removal job was one way and I knew that after that I needed to give Tranquility brand new toe rail. I fancied a project featuring fancy solid teak bar bent in shape over the bulwark but after realizing that I purchased a not so great stock of teak hardwood from E-bay I had to reconsider the idea. You get what you pay for they say, so I opted for using that wood to create permanent epoxy and fiberglass toe rail that will be painted with the deck.
The project include around 100 stainless steel #8 sheet metal screws (one every 8 inches) to join the inboard and outboard teak strips as well as a huge amount of epoxy and colloidal silica and fairing compound as additives. A 6 inches fiberglass cloth was wrapped around the edge and the overhanging extremity sanded off after the resin cured.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Sanding
Every project had its own portion of sanding so soon Tranquility’s deck became a patchwork. But for our particular paintjob we had to remove any trace of the one part enamel paint we used in our first refit in New Bedford MA. After giving one part paint a try we decided to go with two part that is supposedly harder and more resistant to UV action and wear. To do so we have to remove any trace of one part paint first, as it would not stand the aggressive solvent of two part epoxy primer and polyurethane topcoat and flake off ruining the paintjob.
That required a lot of scraping that we diligently executed using wood chisels. With Kate’s help we went around and scrape it all off, revealing a calico pattern formed by several layers of paint, from the original gelcoat to more recent epoxy primers.
The multicolor deck during sanding operations
While operating the chisel closely to the deck I also exhumed several fiberglass delaminations deeply buried under fairing compound and primer. A delamination happen when two layers of fiberglass start to peel apart from each other leaving a “soft spot”. Everytime the first reaction was to turn my head away and say we would live with it. But I always succumbed to the temptation of fixing them and make the deck stronger. After all how bad could it be another fiberglass job?
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Going through al these pictures I see what I spent the last month doing, and I feel a little less bad about my progress. The deck is not painted yet though and right now we are dealing with our own level of perfectionism and waiting for good weather. Meanwhile: do, repeat and loop.
The “Idea of Self” has given me trouble since I had memory. When sailing became an unexpected reality in my life these identity troubles got complicated.
The very first time I sailed it was on a 51ft sloop with a dead engine that we took 136 miles away from departure to give her a brand new propulsion apparatus. I still remember that as no biggity, even though I should ask Fernando (the skipper) about it. All the work needed to push the boat with the dinghy through a swinging bridge in a choppy channel in front of a crowd of waterfront breakfast eaters was just new fun activity for an incompetent sailor like me.
Ignorance can be a bliss
Then there was the first dream about taking off on my own boat: it was a sailing Cayuco (dugout canoe type) from the Kuna people, my belonging stuffed in watertight barrels, coasting South American shores and pulling on the beach every night to enjoy a bonefire and a sound sleep on a hammock. No mosquitos were bothering me in those fantasies. I even dared picturing some offshore sailing in such a craft. It remained a dream when other events dragged me away from Kuna Yala before I could accomplish it.
My Dream Boat
What is left of that naive man today? Training and experience, in one word knowledge, added layers of complication to the art of sailing. The present is filled with words like safety equipment, ideal ground tackle, auxiliary mean of propulsion and proper sized elecrical wiring, as well as a lot of gadgets and products that “you can’t sail without” pushed by marketers and opinion leaders. It is extremely hard to make order in all this crap.
Since Tranquility owned our lives, I experienced shifts in what was to be expected from a boat, oscillating from “really just a hull that don’t take water in” to “safe, unsinkable, performance-oriented sailing machine”, sometimes being happy to fall in the first category, sometimes working hard to achieve the latter.
It’s hard to tell why Tranquility chose us, she won’t tell. Being far from the “perfect boat” she challenged our own Idea of Self, our needs and our goals. She proof tested our skills and endurance, she took the majority of our money, forcing us to visit places we had not planned to, before leaving us stranded in an unknown point on the chart. She made ask ourselves if we were ready and when that will be. In synthesis, she changed us.
I am happy I am a different myself, even only for the fact that there was a path in these years, any path really. I can still look behind, look at me now and think about what will come ahead. When past and present look alike, there’s a chance that the future won’t be different. So in the end I am happy about this incongruity.
I usually welcome change. Helping others going through change was part of my career back in pre-financial crisis Italy, so I can’t exclude I suffer from the prejudice that sees change as inherently good, necessary and unavoidable. Sometimes I look back with nostalgia to the man that wouldn’t hesitate to embark in an unsafe, uncertain journey on an ill-equipped vessel, and I wish I hadn’t changed.
Knowledge and experience can be a heavy and safe anchor, but when it grows too big it could block any movement at all. The restoration chapter of Tranquility has gone through the same pattern. We started performing the quickest cheapest and unfinished jury rig repairs to be able to leave before the winter gales, and now we would spend a considerable amount of time and money to make things “the best we can”.
Tranquility undergoing surgeries
There are definetely good learning coming from this endeavor, but the more we remain attached to a dock and in the range of hardware stores, marine suppliers and Amazon Prime, the poorer we become and the less likely we are to unmoor as the perfect boat is nothing but an illusion.
“Je connais des bateaux tellement enchaînés Qu’ils ont désappris comment se libérer!”
(transl. “I know so chained boats
They have forgotten how to break free!”)
Maybe Tranquility needed somebody who would give her an anti-age treatment, new life out of tiredness. Maybe she had something to teach two illiterate sailors like us, or she was looking for warmer climate to retire. Maybe it’s all or none of that, it’s very hard to get her to cough the story up. Or maybe she is not immune to different Ideas of Self battling for supremacy. She used to sail across the ocean, she has it in her bones and chances are that she misses it very badly.
I know boats that are never really finished but this doesn’t stop them from setting sail. And I have the suspect Tranquility is one of those boats.
Cockpit locker drainage channels and existential concerns
Lately the tone of my blog posts have assumed an unprecedent technical twist. I have always found hard to describe the refit of Tranquility in great detail, and most of the countless jobs proceeded unaccounted. What’s exciting about writing posts like “laminating fiberglass backing plate for deck hardware (and achieving physical flexibility during installation)“, “sealing umpteenth hole in the deck with thickened epoxy” or “screws and bolts inventory: am I missing any“?
Moreover I am a former psychologist and my education and training concernes things like “emotional defense mechanisms“, “coping strategies” and “cognitive fallacies“, and I used to handle tools like “active listening” “participant observation” and “network analysis“. The language of the master shipwright is still an uncharted territory and the rules of technical writing a mystery.
I also assume that the reader (you) is not very concerned about a bunch of technical digressions on boat construction and repair. It may be a wrong assumption in the end, as the whole point of taking an old boat and sail it through the horizon on a budget requires being able to perform a thorough analysis of the weak points of “the old lady”, and perform satisfactory upgrades with little or none adult supervision. Funny enough “How-to-Do-It-Yourself” articles are the ones I seek with a certain continuity online, to find inspirations about designs and building techniques, so I may fall out of the group of representative readers of this blog according to my idealistic audience.
These are some of the reasons why I find very difficult to write about boat projects and improvements but despite of that not much else is happening in my life and so I would either shut up (possible) or keep telling the story of the countless jobs that are going on inside and on Tranquility.
Selecting few specific jobs and turning them into a narration is becoming an usual activiy, so hopefull it will be less and less hard. It turns out it’s also a good way to keep track of how long these project are taking, which is very long. As soon as one is finished it has a slingshot effect to the next one and helps bringing enthusiasm to my work and to the overall goal, so I would be happy to see more and more of these posts appearing on the blog.
Lately the speed of work increased and people at the dock are noticing Tranquility changing face and stops for few words about what’s next and where are we going to take the boat (well where she is going to take us…). Kate also had some time to dedicate to Tranquility and this was another huge help to the overall project. She has a great ability for planning and in just one hour spent in the garden with a calendar in her hand we enlighted the next three weeks projects and tasks down to plankton size. With this new clarity it seems we have a possible deck painting date on mid November, and few days when we will be actually both working on Tranquility.
Drainage channels for watertight cockpit locker
During our Atlantic Ocean offshore passage and in other legs of Tranquility’s voyage from New Bedford to Brunswick rain and occasional crashing waves found their way into the cockpit locker and sloshed into the bilge. After coming to a rest on the Georgia Coast and contemplating the idea of more offshore sailing in the near future we wanted to make sure that we are not taking in water from this or other openings on the boat.
Tranquility has a cockpit locker on port side accessible through the cockpit seat via a very heavy door. The starboard side has no opening as a sleeping quarter bunk lies underneath it. None of these setups were original from the builder: the whole port quarter side was modified by one of the previous owners to fit the locker, which is divided from the interior by a bulkhead that would host the chart table on the cabin side. On starboard side, somebody did the opposite, fitting a bunk where it used to be a cockpit locker. These and other amenities are some of the surprises you could find when you buy a fifty years old sailboat.
Unfortunately for us the cockpit locker/chart table modification was very poorly done and gave us a lot of headache when it was time to improve and eventually redesign the area. The separating bulkhead wasn’t even tabbed (permanently fiberglassed) to the hull and allowed the locker to drain straight into the bilge soaking everything was lying in its path. The chart table would make claustrophobic a 5 years old kid with the resuslt of being perfectly unuseful on board. Finally the cockpit locker door was resting on a very sketchy support that was conceived with the idea of draining extra water sipping through the door sides, but that in fact was a simply terrible half-finished solution that failed completely in its purpose.
Earlier on the projects timeline I adressed the bulkhead problem tabbing it to the hull and making the entire locker a watertight section of our ship. Not communicating anymore with other parts of the boat, the locker will contribute to the buoyancy of the vessel in case water finds its way into the boat. Last spring I also rebuilt the chart table / nav station with the idea of increasing storage and housing the battery bank for our electric motor.
The lousy cockpit locker drainage system and a pathetic attempt to fix it
A detail of the draining channel as found on Tranquility.
The drainage channel we found on Tranquility was one of our least favorite part of the boat but it was also something we couldn’t handle during our first refit in New England, so we just tried timidly to improve it along the way when the real only possible way to fix it was to tear it apart and redo it from scratch. Finally after spending a lot of time designing ideas and procrastinating any concrete action in favor of other projects, I finally started to stare at the problem directly. At the beginning I was in favor of epoxy coated plywood construction, but then my friend Fernando talked me more and more into trying with fiberglass construction. Ultimately fiberglass is for life! After a lot of time spent in woodworking projects for the companionway I figured it was healthy to switch paradigm and tackle a messy fiberglass project. I think I am a messy enough person for such a task.
Mold construction for Fiberglass channels
After looking at examples of drainage channel systems on other boats I finally came out with a design and I decided for angled lateral channel that will allow drainage even when the boat is heeled. Building the molds for the fiberglass construction wasn’t hard at all as I had some rounded corner molding in my woodpile that happened to be just perfect for the job. Two pieces side by side would form a round shaped channel about one inch and a half wide. I successfully mounted them on two pieces of 3/4 of a inch thick PVC or Plywood screwed together and taped with adhesive packaging tape (cheap and easy to use). Epoxy won’t stick to plastic so if you cover anything with packaging tape or any other plastic wrap it will released the impregnated fiberglass once cured.
Fiberglass molds ready for laminate
Out of the mold fiberglass channel
I then laminated fiberglass cloth and mat onto the molds forming a slightly bigger shape than the desired part. Once the epoxy cured I popped them out of the mold and shaped them to the final measurements using an angle grinder with a cutting disk, before final sanding and cleaning. Some of the channels reminded me of delicious tacos but I restrained myself from eating them.
Components of the drainage channel sanded and cleaned
Together with the three channels I laminated some 90 degrees shaped pieces that helped to fit the parts to the deck for final assembly. Screws held the structure in place while thickened epoxy cured overnight. The following day I removed the screws and engaged a grinding match in the confined space of the locker, making sure to wear all the possible protective clothing and gear for this miserable job. After clean up of both my persona and the locker I proceeded challenging the law of gravity with the messy job of fiberglassing the structure to the deck alternating several layers of fiberglass mat (for waterproofing) and cloth (for structure), and trying my best to avoid the epoxy resin dripping from the overhead.
Screws hold the channels in place while epoxy cures
All the parts are dry-fit before being fiberglassed
With this last upside down job accomplished it was time to fit a lip that will give enough surface for a gasket to make a watertight seal. I had some long and thin pieces of teak lying around on Tranquility (what’s not on Tranquility?) and so I decided to epoxy and fiberglass them around the internal perimeter of the locker. To have a perfect seal with the overlying door I used again thickened epoxy placed on top of the lip. This time I let the law of gravity work for me placing the original lid on top and protecting it with with packaging tape (my new best friend). In this way the still soft thicked epoxy adheres to the door contour forming an even surface of contact after the extra material squeezes out.
The lip for the channel is made with teak strips glassed in
Lip is epoxy fitted and then laminated with fiberglass
Two half inch sized holes at the lower end of the inboard channels drain the water into the cockpit and then in the ocean through the cockpit scuppers. Next, in this multi-stage multi-level project a whole operation of fairing and sanding will culminate with the paintjob soon to happen on the entire deck. For now I am glad enough I can leave the boat under the rain without having to empty a swamped locker and in perspective I feel confident that less water will find its way in the boat during blue water sailing and foul weather.
The sea hood is a curious feature on the deck of a sailboat. You can picture it as the shell of a turtle and the sliding hatch as its head, coming in and out. When open the hatch slides underneath the sea hood, when closed it comes all the way out.
The sea hood covers and protects the opening between the cabin top and the hatch deflecting waves that otherwise will put the hatch under siege making it a very good feature for a blue water boat. Water is so good in finding its way into things that trying to stop it requires the help of multiple agents, and here the sea hood comes into the game.
On Tranquility, our 50 years old Columbia 29 mki, the sea hood is built in solid teak, like the rest of the companionway. Functioning as partial beams the longitudinal elements of the structure strengthen the deck, which on Tranquility is fiberglass laminate with no core, and so it’s a bit springy. Beside being bulky heavy and complex, a fully restored watertight seahood contributes to the sturdiness of a boat.
The project steps are very similar to the ones I described in the sliding hatch post, with the difference that I had to work on the deck instead this time.
The old teak of the companionway
At first I worked caulking all the gaps around the sea hood, using Teak Decking Systems product. The effort has the objective to avoid that water running on deck would sip underneath the wood.
The frame of the sea hood re caulked
After that I proceeded rebuilding the plywood support. Again, I used 1/4 inch plywood because the sea hood has a curve and thicker plywood won’t allow to bend as easily. To reach the desired thickness and strenght I laminated two pieces one on top of the other.
First plywood board installed and ready for laminating. This time I had to use small screws to set the plywood to the frame as there was no way to use clamps. The second plywood board goes on top of it and it’s coated with at least two coats of clear epoxy resin.
Teak strips routed
To save some expensive caulking and to make the job easier I routed 1/8 inch slot into the teak strips with a table router I borrowed from Fernando. Fernando is a good friend of mine and a talented guitar maker, check out his work on his website.
Teak strips dry-fit
I had to shuffle around the teak strips to find the best match. For how hard I tried to get the most precise fit, the curved surface put some challenges to this job.
New Teak installed and set in place with epoxy resin and thickener
Such an asymmetrical shape required custom ideas to cajole the pieces into shape. In this case some hevy weight and flexible plywood strips did the job.
Caulking operations underway
I proceeded filling the slots using the same caulk product. After taping the wood to make an easier clean-up, I used a cheap caulking gun (still on a budget…) to fill the slots. Following with a spatula I pressed the caulk hard down into the slots working two strips at the time and removing the tape along with the progress.
The finished Sea Hood
A final sanding to remove excess caulk left a smooth surface. I then washed the teak thoroughly with a solution of water (75%) and bleach (25%) plus a couple of tablespoon of Sodium Triphosphate and finally applied three coats of Semco Teck Sealer.
I am glad another piece of the companionway is completed. It’s amazing how complicated it is. With components sliding into each others and pieces that have to be reinstalled in the correct sequence it resembles a puzzle game and I am very glad there are less and less pieces to get to the final picture.
This is my first attempt to write a blog post directly from my phone. I am moving around tranquility speaking to my phone and I feel very weird. If somebody was looking at me now would think I’m a total dumbass. Which may be true. Anyway I am here gathering the necessary tools to complete my next task which is to epoxy the top of the sliding hatch.
The two pieces of 1/4 inch plywood have been laminated together with wood glue and clamped down to the hatch frame for one day to get the curvature. I need a drill and I have to find the right size screws so I open my screw container where I keep all the screws I find on board subdivided by length and type. This time I need 10 screws 3/4 inch long to secure the plywood to the frame. The screws are meant to press the laminate down to the frame while the thickened epoxy sets. I can then remove them and the epoxy will hold the plywood in place. This way I will have a permanent perfectly sealed joint.
The borders of the plywood wetted with epoxy
A good practice is to wet the surfaces with resin and let it set for 15 minute before mixing epoxy with filler to the consistency of a thick cream and laying it over the ledger. An easy way to do so is to take a ziplock bag and cut one of the lower corner then fill the bag with the epoxy and use it as if it was a pastry bag. Apply epoxy exactly where you need to squeezing the bag and moving along the edge of the frame.
Once the plywood is firmly in place held by the screws it’s time to clear coat both sides of the hatch with epoxy resin, to prevent future intrusion of water into the wood.
After the epoxy cured (12 to 24 hours) the old teak strips can go back in place, having care to number each one to find the better combination. Once the sequence is chosen, we have to work very quickly and mix epoxy and filler to attach the strip to the plywood. I ended up using quite a bit of resin and filler to fit all the pieces.
The epoxy is cured and the whole hatch can be sanded down with a belt sender and the orbital sander to level any high spot. As you see in the picture old weathered teak can come back to the original color once the superficial layer is sanded off.
Teak is a fascinating hardwood. It has a charming golden brown color and the abundance of natural oils in its grain makes it weather-resistant and unaffected by dry rot. For these and other reasons teak has always been the number one lumber for the marine industry. One big problem with teak is its atrociously high cost, as you probably know if you deal with boats or with outdoor furniture. So the answer to the question what to do with old teak could be to avoid it entirely!
When we bought Tranquility she came with the original teak features on deck: forward and lazarette hatches, companionway and seahood, toe rails. Not a full teak decking, but a classic nautical touch. If not protected against UV action with constant application of a finish, teak ages and loses part of its oils, turning grey and forming deep grooves and cracks, and after 50 years in the elements all we could see on deck were grey wrinkles on the surface of the hardwood. We were ok with some ugliness and cosmetic imperfection, we had definetely bigger problems to deal with at that time.
Teak Seahood rotted away
But the teak onboard didn’t have only cosmetic problem. Unfortunately hatch doors are built with teak in combination with plywood. The plywood used as a supportive panel for the teak strips has rotted away, and with this supportive action compromised the hardwood also started to rot and break. Trying to waterproof such a damaged door was impossible without taking everything apart and rebuilding it. When we did the first part of our refit in New Bedford we didn’t have time to repair and restore the teak doors and many other nuisances all over the boat. We had other priorities to make the boat sail before winter. This way we spent the trip learning about every single leak and taking mental notes of a future job list. All the doors leaked badly and that didn’t make for a very comfortable winter cruise. Both the forward and lazarette hatch leaked and their plywood was basically gone, and the water coming from the seahood and companionway was an enigma we couldn’t solve while we were still living on board.
Once we got in sunny Georgia we resumed our list of repairs and improvements and so came the time for woodwork. While we could protect the companionway with a tarp, we couldn’t do the same for the hatch doors so I started dealing with the lazarette and forward hatch. At first I tried to save as much as possible of the original teak, but after discovering all the damage it was clear that if I wanted a new hatch I would have to build it from scratch.
A tarp protects the companionway on Tranquility
Being always on the cheap side of a budget I first considered other options to build a less classic door. But then a little voice started to suggest how I may wanted to keep a little accent of nice teak on deck. I followed this voice and looked around for teak. I was lucky enough to find the access to a scrapwood pile of teak. All the pieces came from different projects and those were the ones left behind and discarded. I put much labor in cutting, planing and sanding the scraps down to useful size but eventually I cobbled up enough wood to build a whole hatch. Taking the old rotten hatch as model, I first assembled four pieces of teak lumber to form a rectangular frame and joined them with screws and thickened epoxy (West System resin and 406 filler) at the extremity.
Building the frame with teak lumber
Joint detail
Once the frame was finished I cut a piece from a 3/4 inch plywood sheet, fit it and screwed it in place. Every gap was filled with thickened epoxy and the lower side of the hatch coated with clear epoxy resin. Even if the plywood won’t last forever and it will eventually rot the epoxy will protect the wood from moisture and prolong its life.
The hatch ready for teak strips
The following step was to put in place the teak strips. In order to do that I decided to use #8 screws to set the distance between the strips.
How to set teak strips in place at the same distance
When the dryfit was satisfactory and after correcting the math a couple of times due to my metric system bias (I have to be honest, imperial sucks!), I used several batches of thickened epoxy spreaded evenly on the plywood to set the teak strips in place. The scrap pieces formed a rough uneven surface, so when the epoxy was set I used a belt sander to shape the wood uniformly and a router to round the corners. The result was well above my expectations.
All ready before wooden bungs and caulking
The finishing part took a good deal of work too, especially filling all the gaps with black caulk. Once everything was completed I applied three coats of Semco teak sealer, to protect the wood. The result pleased me so much that I understood I was going to do the same with the second hatch door, and problably with the rest of the teak on the boat.
The hatch after caulking and three coats of teak sealer
These two project made me fall in love with teak and woodworking in general and even after assessing many alternative ways to fix my equipment onboard I decided I would do the same for the companionway and the toe rails. The companionway (seahood+ sliding hatch) is made out of a solid thick lumber, massive enough that I can still reuse the frames without fear. The toe rail didn’t survived that well as it is more exposed to impacts, chafe and other mechanical stresses. I would have to replace them completely as many part are broken or missing. For this specific project I found a deal on Ebay 0f 4×4 inches teak posts that will do the job. Again the cheaper price means that I will have to transform rough lumber myself into the desired shape and I started to think I am being a little masochist lately.
Right now I am rebuilding the sliding hatch. I started removing the rotted plywood from underneath and with great surprise the teak strips came out without breaking. Considered that they are still 3/8″ thick and in overall good shape I sanded them down to reuse it. With a bit of work and time spent in cleaning up the old teak I now have perfectly fitting strips and I can avoid cutting and planing them. Not the same luck with the seahood hatch. It was in worse shape and broke as I started taking the thing apart. To replace the old teak I will be cutting the strips out of a big plank that a friend of mine bought on a big sale so I am having it for a very competitive price. If I account for the money I spent in buying wood since we got Tranquility I may be reaching the 1000$ very soon.
Restoring teak with a grinder
Using teak on your sailboat deck may not be the cheapest or most practical way to fix your boat but for me it is very enjoyable and motivating, more than using fiberglass and epoxy again. I did enough fiberglass work this past summer and too much of something becomes quickly boring. Now it’s woodwork time again as I try to comfort myself imagining how good a little bit of teak will look on deck when I will be finished.
It’s been a while since the last time I posted about Tranquility. We have been sucked into different activities and duties on land, and even though projects were constantly happening on our boat, the engagement was not at the top levels. Now that we are facing a renovate wave of passion for our little craft, the levels of commitment and project management are springing back up. We may be able to resume cruising soon and this is what brings fresh to strong breeze to our endeavour, but we don’t want to say it too loud because like every sailor we are a bit superstitious.
The big event is that Tranquility turned 50 years old. Built in 1965 in Portsmouth, VA she is not immune to the inexorable effect of time passing and all our effort goes in the direction of making her a safe and pretty little boat. All across the world thousands of old boats sit abandoned in various stages of neglect, sometimes they are not even as old as Tranquility is. When we found her in a random yard of the South Coast of Massachussets two years ago, she was asking for help. Paul, the guy who sold us the boat, had a great vision for her and started a complete refit after she had been neglected for a few years. He eventually had to give up due to other projects happening in his life and put her for sale. We caught the ball.
Tranquility is the boat we fell in love with, she makes our heart sing and tickle our fancy when we imagine her at anchor in a quiet cove, floating over turquoise water. She is also the boat we could afford to buy, but it’s fair to say that she has a lot of competitors for that price range. Both Kate and I were hooked the first time we saw her. Now that she is undoubtely the boat we own, we are trying to bring the best out of her, with our limitation of budget and knowledge.
In the past 50 years boat design and technology made great stride, as innovation never stops. Boat shows brings every year new shiny models with the latest improvements onboard. Even ten years old boats become quickly obsolete as bulding materials, safety gear and electronic components change every month, and the great circus of progress will make that boat turn in a less desiderable dream. Eventually will come the time when an expert will state that a boat has done her time and she’s not worthy to upkeep, as the price to bring her to current standards would exceed the convenience of purchase a new model. It happens with all our technology and goods: today nobody thinks it’s worthy to fix a pair of shoes, it’s easier to buy a new pair.
Why would somebody invest so much energy and money in an old boat? There is no pragmatism when it comes to sailing, at any level, and so boat restoration evades the usual categories of economical profit. Some people may think that you could recoup what you put in monetarily once you sell an old classic design in shipshape Bristol fashion. But this is just a mirage as boats have a tendency in not holding their value and they require expensive components and supplies to be kept in good shape. It doens’t matter how good is the boat. Millionaires know it too. Futuristic newly built Luxury Yachts depreciate very quickly too and chartering sometimes don’t even cover the running costs. For the haves, it is often a way to avoid taxation rather than a profitable business.
Luckily human discovered sailing thousands of years ago, and for how refined this art had become its basics are founded on simple principles. Older boat can still bring the emotions of a brand new model, for a fraction of the cost, plus an old boat can still benefit from newest improvement and accessories. With sufficient thought and effort, you will end up with a boat that satisfy your eyes and can be fitted to your requirements better than any new production could. This is the way we decided to take: starting with a bare-strip hull to reconfigure the boat as we prefer.
After coming down the East Coast with a partially complete boat we have learned two things. The first is that is surprising how little you need to enjoy cruising. The trip was in fact enjoyable and safe, even if some parts were installed along the way and others had never really been. The second is there are very important issues you want to address in order to fully enjoy your time. Trying on Tranquility we discovered what worked and what didn’t, what we liked and disliked, and that helped us establish priorities in our project list. In the next weeks we are going to share some of these improvements, hoping that posting them publicly will help our legs keep pace with our desires.
Recently I started to feel the itch to go sailing. Since we docked Tranquility in Frederica River we haven’t been out sailing. We were too busy organizing the new life on land and too lazy to start few little jobs. We said it a couple of times, let’s take her out, but for one reason or the other it didn’t happen.
When we were still living on board but working on shore the cabin became unsuitable for sailing. We dismissed the cruisers clothes and wore the landlubber ones, using the boat as we were using an apartment, and apartments are not made for moving around. It’s enough to have a regular job and a life on land to mess up with your routine.
With this new land identity we acquired also a new social life made of friends, colleagues, events, fast internet, movie theatres and gym memberships. We move around with a car. Instead of walking for miles carrying provisions we run on treadmill and lift weights.
Now Tranquility is once again undergoing a major refit project. We had the opportunity to step out our home to house-sit for somebody else’s house and so we decided to empty the boat and destroy everything again.
This time we faced the compression post problem. The compression post is a solid post of hardwood that sustains the compression force of the mast over the deck. Columbia 29 were built with deck stepped mast and with a structural beam glassed on deck to sustain the forces generated by the weight of the boat moving in heavy seas. The compression post was then installed between the overhead (aka ceiling) and a structural beam resting over the bilge, which supported the cabin sole (aka floor) as well.
A proper designed and installed compression post would rest the top of the keel/bilge, which is the strongest part of the Hull. For reasons that exceed my understanding it is not the case of Tranquility. When the boat was built they lowered 3120 lbs (1414 kg) of lead inside the keel before sealing everything with fiberglass. That happened 49 years ago. Meanwhile, age and human lack of care made the rest.
Talking with one of the previous owners of Tranquility I discovered that there was a persistent rainwater leak from the mast that had rotten. Luckily I was able to prevent any when I stepped the mast in the boatyard. The water leak was fixed but the damaged was inherited. After the first longer sailing passages we realized that the compression post was not properly sustained by the rotten cabin sole. Kate’s alert eyes were the first to spot little signs of the compressin forces, where the paint was cracking and the rotten floor getting bending a little more every time. We couldn’t address the problem while underway and so we kept sailing south in search of warm weather.
The rotten floor and beam under the compression post
This type of repair was not possible while living onboard. The dust and mess of ripping off the floor (plus no place to step but the bilge) discouraged us to proceed. But as soon as we had the opportunity to leave the boat this and several other interior projects begun.
As first thing I ripped out the old rotten floor and all the damaged wood in the area. The more I dug the more I realized that the compression post was resting on a rotten transversal beam suspended few inches from the bilge. The beam was still holding the compression post but it doesn’t take a structural engineer to understand that this was not for long. Better late than never.
Picture underneath the compression post
At first we imagined we should try to jack the compression post back up but we soon realized that this could not happen without removing the mast itself. The best and only possible thing we could do was to avoid any further downward movement and give the post a solid foot to rest on.
Searching in the teak scrapyard (a collection of odd shaped salvaged pieces of teak from different boat projects I found a solid 3″ thick block of teak that I had to reshape to dry fit it under the compression post and sealed in 2 coats of Epoxy resin. Altough teak is very rot resistant to salt water it will rot in fresh water and you never know what is going to go in your bilge.
After all the rotten wood was gone I started to seal the exposed wood of the beam and the bulkheads with West System Epoxy and fiberglass cloth. I built some support for the beam and made sure to create a solid bedding with the hull of the boat through some fiberglass tabbing.
When everything was sealed I fitted the block under the compression post with the help of some serious hammering. I then added some Epoxy mixed with 404 High-Density filler, a thickening additive developed for maximum physical properties in hardware bonding. In this way the block is “glued” to the compression post and to the bilge with a bonding stronger than the wood itself. Another layer of fiberglass is soon to be added to the block as further shield against water penetration.
Compression post repair
Compression post repair 2
Getting rid of portion of rotten floor was like an invitation to go further and so we decided to proceed and rip off the rest of the 49yrs old floor that had been covered with a nasty sticky non-skid surface. I had to grind it off with a angle grinder and a sanding disk, a terrible job that covered all the surfaces of the boat with a black dust. I kept the good parts of the floor with the idea of fairing and painting them. With all this modification we may want to change the boat’s name at a certain point…
Next step is to rebuild the floor over the bilge a major project that will take at least one week. So after the floor will be replaced we hope to go for a sail test, because even if it’s exciting to do boat repairs, the itch is still there and I’ve been scratching for too long.
Yesterday I was giving Tranquility a nice soapy bath when a man came by on the dock. “I am glad to see a beautiful Columbia 29” he said. He is the owner of a gorgeous Swan 40 tied up a few slips from Tranquility and remarked how both boats were designed by Sparkman & Stephens.
We nattered quite a while and he was very curious about her, and profoundly admired Tranquility’s design. I was flattered by his ammiration while at the same time I was embarassed by the general cosmetic situation like the still incomplete toe rail, the scratches and the worn out teak (at least I had just removed the mud from the anchoring operation). Kate and I often joke about it saying we own “a classic”, instead of an old piece of plastic that has been shaking in seas for almost 50 years.
I have to say that the first moment we met Tranquility on the grass of a random yard something magical happened and we decided to buy her even if the seller was also offering a Pearson Triton in sailaway condition.
The irrational magic prevailed over the rational thinking and we purchased the Columbia. Forty percent of this magic comes from the awe and fascination of an almost bare hull that make you dream about how beautiful and custom made the final result will be. Another forty percent is for sure that no matter what boat you end up buying you made a great choice because it’s yours. Twenty percent is something unexplicable, like a siren song of boat fetishism. Or maybe it’s true that boats have spirits and she was talking to us. “L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux”
This magic embodied in her lines may or may not be visible but other people notice it. She has charming lines. Everyone who asks “What boat is this?” then pretends to know about Columbia 29 and the most common words associated are “seaworthy”, “sturdy” or “well built”.
I haven’t found another Columbia 29 on the water yet and after a brief online research it looks there are very few for sale. It’s not a popular boat that you run into at every anchorage, but it looks like it’s a famous one. Quite a few people still admires boats from that era. They recognize in them the golden era of classic and seaworthy designs, even if this concept is open to endless debate as it’s very hard to define what makes a boat seaworthy.
Columbia 29 is one of the first fiberglass boats that made sailing affordable for the middle class. The first boat was built independently around 1960 on S&S design #1508 and then bought by Glass Laminates of Costa Mesa, CA that launched her on the market. This boat became a big seller and the name Columbia was incorporated into the company. Columbia then expanded on the East Coast in Portsmouth, VA where Tranquility was built in 1965 as hull #85. Tranquility is the MK1 version, from the original design. Later, Columbia introduced a MK2 version with raised deck and 1000 lbs more ballast. And not happy, following a market that was going in the direction of more and more interior space they raised the deck again and launched the model called Defender.
I am happy about the choice we made with Tranquility. This doesn’t mean the Columbia 29 is a better sailboat than the Pearson Triton, but that we are happier with the features we have (masthead cutter rig, electric engine,). On the other hand there is no rationality in deciding to buy a boat and so it’s pointless to try to understand why. It just gives a lot of satisfaction to encounter many people that admire our tiny little boat.
