On the Downhill Slide

The road to repair has been a long road, unfortunately longer than necessary for a variety of reasons, most of which have been beyond anyone’s control. Now, the proverbial light is visible at the end of the tunnel. Best of all, the light is getting brighter and does not appear to be a runaway freight train. If nothing else, we are closer to being finished than we were yesterday. Or the day before. One day at a time, repairs are nearing completion. 

Fiberglass repairs to the big gouge on the starboard hull sides

We’ve passed three important milestones on the repair timeline: the first is the completion of the fiberglass repairs to the hull structures above the waterline. The second is the repainting of the hull, and the third is the installation of the replacement caprail. Also, the new bow and stern railings have been fitted and the chainplates replaced. (Chainplates are metal straps to which the rigging that supports the mast connect to the hull.) Several pieces of hardware which weren’t damaged in the hurricane but required removal so that repairs could be done, such as sail tracks, chocks, etc., have been reinstalled. One of those delays we've experienced is the completion and delivery of the new boarding gates and stanchion posts from Pacific Seacraft. Once those are in place, it really is a matter of bolting all the various fittings and hardware back onto the boat.

Following that, JO BETH will leave the relative security (and shade!) of the rigging shed at the Savannah Hinckley Yacht Services yard. She’s mostly been inside the shed since November of last year. I say ‘mostly,’ as the hull structural and cosmetic fiberglass repair work was done outside. Once she’s outside again, the fiberglass repairs to her keel will be made, the mast and rigging stepped, (‘stepped,’ or ‘stepping,’ is the nautical term for the installation of a mast and rigging), electrical work completed, and her bottom painted with antifouling paint. When that’s done, she will be launched. Once she’s floating again, we’ll begin testing and bringing all of her systems – mechanical, plumbing, air-conditioning/heating, electronic and navigational - back online. Her sails will be bent (another nautical term – sails are ‘bent’ on or off a boat) back on and then, best of all, we can move back aboard our home. Once all those things are done, sea trials will begin.

JO BETH being primed and prepped for her new paint

These past few months have been somewhat stressful, and not without their hiccups. Lisa and I have moved into a small and quiet but funky bungalow in Savannah for the remainder of the repair process. We left our leased apartment on Wilmington Island in mid-July and spent two weeks living in a friend’s attic space, (finished of course!), and served as house and pet sitters for four nutty cats and one needy and high maintenance dog.

Perhaps the biggest hiccup we’ve had with JO BETH’s repairs was at the start of the replacement caprail installation. In late April, Lisa and I drove to Washington, NC, where Pacific Seacraft is located, to pick up the freshly milled teak caprail pieces. Fourteen lovely, golden, beautifully curved and shaped teak planks were loaded into the back of my car. (FYI, that’s $11,000.00 in teak lumber – including the labor to mill, cut, and rough shape it – that fit into the back of my car!) We enjoyed a fantastic dinner in Washington’s quaint downtown with Steve Brodie, the owner of Pacific Seacraft, and Thumper Brooks – his real name – who is the operations manager at Pacific Seacraft. We made a long weekend out of the trip, spending a night in Oriental, NC. Oriental is another pretty coastal North Carolina town nestled on the banks of the Neuse River. While there, we ran into sailing friends we knew from our days in Brunswick, GA. A true sailor’s town.

The caprail is a vital part of JO BETH's hull structure, reinforcing the hull and deck joint, perhaps the most critical structural component of any boat. It is, of course, beautiful to look at and provides a solid mounting surface for sailing hardware, cleats, railings, etc. More importantly though, it  provides significant stiffness and strength to the hull and deck joint. Suffice to say, JO BETH cannot be without it.

A few weeks later, on a damp and overcast Monday afternoon in the latter days of May, just as the coastal Georgia heat and humidity begin to think of a shift into high gear, the caprail installation began. Later that day, I received a call from Greg Johnson, our lead guy at the Hinckley yard. I happened to be on a sea trial of a motor yacht which had been repaired at another Savannah boat yard, Thunderbolt Marine, Inc. With the rush of 24 knots of wind on the motor yacht’s flybridge in my ears and cool drizzle stinging my skin, he told me, “something’s not right. The caprail boards? They’re not fitting.” As soon as we returned to Thunderbolt Marine and the motor yacht was docked and secured, I sped off to the Hinckley yard. 

The new caprail sections, laid out on the rigging shed floor

(Note: for whatever reason the type in the next two paragraphs insists on being this size and font. I am unable to change it. On behalf of the Blogger platform, I extend my apologies.)

The caprail sections for JO BETH are in 14 pieces. The sections are numbered from left to right, starting at the bow. Sections one and two, which are large, flat, plates of teak fit fine at their location at the extreme forward end of the bow, also called the ‘stem.’ The next two sections, numbers three and four, fit fine at the forward end, where they joined sections one and two, but not at the aft, or back, end of the planks. Seeing this, it was clear that sections five and six were not going to fit. In fact, the after ends of planks five and six would be at least 10” – nearly a foot – away from the hull. Planks seven and eight would barely touch the boat at all.

I called Thumper and explained to him what we were seeing. “Bill,” he said, “the pieces aren’t going to fit exactly. Each boat is a little different. The boards, they need shaping, you know, they gotta be finessed a bit, to get the fit.” I explained to him we all understood that, and that we weren’t expecting a perfect fit from the start. “I know,” I told him, “we expected the boards to be off by a few inches, and that some shaping and fine tuning would be needed. We know that.” There was a pause. “But Thumper," I continued, "we’re off by ten inches at least. Maybe more. No amount of shaping and finessing will fix that.” Thumper said he would get with his carpenters and go over things.

The next two days were spent sending pictures to Pacific Seacraft, measuring and remeasuring the boat and the boards, flipping the boards and swapping sides, and on numerous conference calls. However, no solution offered was working. My initial feeling was that somehow, the carpenters at Pacific Seacraft had used the wrong jigs to form the boards. Jo Beth is a 34’ Pacific Seacraft, and her beam – the widest part of her hull – is exactly 10 feet. The measurements of the caprail sections, when laid out on the rigging shed floor, were the correct length, but had a width of 10’ 10”. The beam of the Pacific Seacraft 37 is exactly 10’10”. Regardless, these boards, as they were, were not going to work.

Late on Wednesday afternoon, Steve called and told me he had ordered his carpenters to “figure out the problem, and not to do anything else until they had.” He promised a call to me by 8:30 the next morning with a solution.

Steve and his crew delivered, and did so 15 minutes early. At 8:15, I received a cryptic text with a sequence of numbers, followed by a call from Steve. Fortunately, a profoundly simple mistake had been made. Turns out, the measurement of a 10’ 10” beam with our caprail sections was a wild coincidence. What had actually happened was the Pacific Seacraft carpenters had numbered the board placement sequence incorrectly. Once the right sequence was laid out – the numbers in Steve’s cryptic text message -  the rails fit. And Thumper was correct, of course. In the end, some ‘finessing’ was indeed needed – an average of 3/4” over the entire length of the boat.

Once the issues were resolved, the caprail fits beautifully

For a variety of reasons, the incorrectly numbered boards among them, the caprail installation took longer than first estimated. The fiberglass repairs to the hull and deck joint which is beneath the caprail were more extensive than originally thought, and the drilling and routing of joints in the new wooden rail took more time. The caprail is now fully installed and has 11 coats of Epifanes high-gloss varnish over it; enough to protect the wood and give Lisa and I solid footing to keep it maintained. It is beautiful.

First coats of varnish being applied on the new caprail

Those projects Lisa and I are doing independent of the storm repairs are also progressing well. This includes the installation of a Monitor Self-Steering Windvane system, (click here to learn more about the Monitor) and new stern navigation lamp; and the modification of the stern propane locker to accommodate the stern anchor cable. We’re also installing a backstay flag halyard. This will allow us to fly our United States ensign from the backstay, which is the rear wire that supports the mast. We’ve had new cockpit cushions made, and are implementing changes to where and how critical safety gear is stowed on board. The fire extinguishers, emergency distress beacons, and crew-overboard systems have been inspected, tested, and re-certified; all of the visual distress signaling devices have been replaced with new units.

We’re hopeful to have JO BETH out of the rigging shed and being made ready for her mast stepping and launching during the next two weeks or so. We are very hopeful to move back aboard in about three or three and a half weeks. Things are looking-up!

In slightly different news, I will be changing the hosting platform for this blog to a platform better suited to photography and video, and of course, storytelling. The Blogspot platform has served us well for a decade or more. Lately, it has become a pain - the two paragraphs above which insist they will be a different font and type as an example. It’s time for change.

As always, thanks for sticking with us. Thanks too, for checking on us and asking how we’re doing. We appreciate it much and will soon be home.

Please stay in touch.