15.) Shop Dog

Before I go any farther I need to introduce you to an important partner in this project.  Her name is Cosette and she 's a Yorkshire terrier.  My wife and I took her in two years ago after the untimely death of a friend of ours. Robert named Cosette after the orphan in Les Miserables, and that's exactly what she was when we adopted her.  The photo below shows Cosette in her new role as official shop dog, inspecting the work of the day.

Coko (Cosette Koten) is ten years old and doesn't want your sympathy. She does, however, want any food you might happen to have with you. Years ago in England, terriers were trained to accompany their masters to the furniture shops and coal mines where they were entrusted guard the day's lunch from vermin. My gene-diluted descendant of these ancient beasts would eat the food herself rather than guard it. But never mind. She's someone who feins interest in what I have to say. So I like having her around.

14.) Out of Shape

It's a little hard to see, but this photo shows how much separation there is between the hull and the frame with the boat lowered into place.  The trick now will be to get this stubborn 60-year-old to bend to my will.  Does it look like it will be easy?

13.) How I Made the Cradle

To make the cradle for the boat (and make it almost perfect), I enlarged my copies of the original S&S plans* to full scale and printed them out.  There are many measurements written directly on the plans, so it's easy to double check that the enlargement is precisely to scale. They were drawn so that two inches = one foot. Thus, to blow them up to full scale, you increase their size by 600%. (Thank you Staples.)

I attached the copies of the plans securely to pieces of plywood using a light coat of adhesive spray and then used an awl (photo above) to poke tiny holes through the center of each curve about every 1/4 of an inch. Next, I connected those pricks with a pencil and then cut the plywood just outside that line with a bandsaw. From there, I used a rasp and sandpaper (which no longer contains sand these days) to pare down each piece plywood station (there were 10 in all) until it exactly matched the S&S drawings as well as the one does in the photo below.

I did this with the starboard stations only.  To make the port side stations, I traced the lines from the finished starboard pieces onto plywood and cut those out. Then I used a router with a pattern cutting bit to trim each piece to perfectly match it's opposite.  (A pattern cutting bit [bottom photo] has a bushing that guides a router along a finished piece to carve out a twin with the blade part of the bit. Doing this meant each completed station would be symmetrical because each half would match its opposing half in the frame.

Once all of the 20 halves were complete, I carefully joined them all together on a level base to get the finished frame I showed in the last entry.  From there, I double checked measurements to ensure that each frame was in the right spot in relation to all the other frames.  I could adjust each very precisely thanks to the threaded rods I used to join them together. The Baltic Birch plywood also helps because it has 13 plies. That makes it easy to find the center of each station. It took me about two weeks to make the frame, but I am a slow craftsman and there was no margin for error. Unless every part of the structure was the right shape and in the right position relative to the other pieces, the entire thing would be useless for what I had in mind.

*The plans weren't cheap to acquire.  When I ordered copies of the originals from the Mystic Seaport Museum (to whom I was happy to contribute for their efforts in preserving maritime history) I also had to sign an agreement that required I not reproduce them or employ them for commercial use.  I also had to explain exactly what they would be used for. I plan to stick to that agreement. Consequently, while you will see traces of them on this blog, I can't show the plans in full. I do acknowledge that the drawing on the very first post comes from the S&S plans.  I noticed, however, that this particular sketch has been reproduced in advertisements and elsewhere online. So I went ahead and showed it under the principle of fair use. If you are a lawyer for Sparkman & Stephens and see this, I ask that you take both that into account and that I am not creating this blog for any financial benefit. There will be no banners or Google ads that produce even a penny of revenue. Nor will anyone be able to use anything I publish here to build the boat without buying your precious 69-year old intellectual property and signing an agreement like the one I did. I personally think your plans are little more than historical documents at this point, but it is not my agenda here to press this matter.  One last thing: I did the first enlargements of the plans at home and removed the copyright protection when I took them to Staples.  So they didn't know the documents were anything other than something I had created.  Didn't want to get them in trouble.  Isn't this all stupid?

12.) Reverse Engineering

I procrastinated long and hard before I let myself see the truth: the only way I could get the boat back into its original shape was to do the exact opposite of what the original builder had done. Rather than constructing an internal frame and bending the wood over it and into shape, I had to build an external frame and shape the boat to that.  Here it is, with the vessel hanging precariously over it.

The advantage of this approach is that it will allow me to work on the inside of the boat, installing frames, a bulkhead, and a new centerboard trunk with the boat locked firmly into its proper shape.  Once those things and a few others are completed, the boat should hold its form when removed from the cradle.

The frame itself is made of shop grade 3/4 inch Baltic Birch plywood and connected together with a combination of wood and threaded rods. Bolts and washers on the rods ensure that the spacing between each station is exact to within less than 1/16th of an inch.  Each station matches the one specified in the S&S plans. The whole contraption rests on two large timbers that have been leveled front to back and side to side.

I chose Baltic Birch because it has more layers than regular plywood.  This makes it much harder to sand into shape, but I viewed that as an advantage because I didn't want to sand across my lines at any point.  If that happened, I would have to throw the piece out and make another (which I ended up doing more than once anyway).

11.) The Problem With Old Age

This IC and I are both ancient fossils.  (The boat is about 8 years older than I am.)  I consider this a mutual restoration project.

And just as I am not the same as when I was first created, neither is this boat.
The more time I spent with it, the more I moved it around, looked at it, sanded it, and compared it to other boats of the same design, the more I began to think that time (not to mention my own efforts and those of its other owners) had changed its fundamental shape, not by a lot, but by enough to matter.

Back when I first started the project, I ordered a copy of the original S&S plans from the Mystic Seaport Museum, figuring they might come in handy at some point.  They are very complex and detailed, and far from easy for a novice to understand. So I looked at them, shook my head, and set them aside.

Now, I decided it was time to look at them carefully, figure out what they had to say, and then compared their specified dimensions to those of the boat I was working on.

Guess what?

I was right.  The boat had gradually lost some of its original, symmetrical, racing shape.

In some areas, the measurements were off by two, even three inches from what the plan called for.  That might not sound like much.  But it is actually quite a bit.  The Interclub class rules state that any boat raced must measure in within 1/4 of an inch of the scantlings (a fancy nautical term for measurements) specified by Sparkman and Stephens.  What's more, even back in 1945, the naval architects at S&S knew what they were doing. (I don't know for sure if the great Olin Stephens himself had a hand in the project, but I assume he did*.) The shape they designed is fluid and hydrodynamic (though far from up to current standards). My boat, in short, had become both illegal and alien to the very environment it was designed for.

Would anyone notice?  Well, I had. And that's enough of a reason right there. Secondly, given that my plan is to make this a fast (and controversial) boat, it is sure to draw at least some attention if I succeed. If the boat ever wins races with either me or someone else at the helm, it will get measured. More likely, though, the boat would be slow unless I addressed the defects.

* Peter Beardsley, who administrates and helps lead the Interclub class these days, passed along this story: When Olin Stephens was at Larchmont Yacht Club in 2007 for the Shields Nationals, someone sat him down and asked him what the goal was with the design of the IC Dinghy.  He stopped, paused, smiled to himself, and said "ah yes, the IC Dinghy.  The mast step was too far forward on that design, I apologize."  So, we know he at least took responsibility for these things, whether he drew the lines himself or not.

10.) Note to Class #2

I am going to follow the rules and stick to the spirit of one design racing. In fact, one of the reasons I am writing this blog is to document everything I've done so there is no question about that.

I am certainly not expecting this boat to blaze by everyone else's; it might not end up being fast at all.  I'll only know when I am done.  Franny Charles told me that he actually thought he'd produced a very slow IC during the first year he sailed his hand-made craft. He was extremely discouraged.  He said he only realized how fast it was when other people started sailing it (including winning the Nationals).

We all know that the team sailing the boat is what matters most.  This is especially true of small dinghies. Many also know that while I am a decent sailor, I am a long, long way from one of the best IC sailors. Still, I think this boat may be at least a tiny bit controversial when it is finally finished and raced. I hope so, anyway.

So, in the spirit of openness and transparency, I want it to be possible for anyone to see exactly what went down when #48 was in my shop.

9.) Note to Class #1

As a side comment to my last entry, I'd like to note that it actually would be possible, at least technically, to go back to building wooden ICs of uniform design and construction. How? By digitizing the original S&S designs and then using this information to program a C&C machine to cut all of the wooden components of the boat uniformly.  The pieces could either then be assembled by a builder or delivered as a kit to people who want to take on the job of doing it themselves (much the way people now assemble kayak kits from Chesapeake Light Craft and others.)  I have no idea, though, whether this could be done for even less than twice the cost of a new fiberglass IC, which would run about $8,500.

8.) Holes and Loopholes

That's the bottom of the boat at the transom.  It's clearly not in good shape.

Right around the time I took this picture, I realized that it would probably be easier to make one of these boats from scratch than it would to restore one in this type of condition. Building one from scratch, however, is not an option. The Interclub Class rules prohibit the construction of a wooden boat.

Why?

It's an interesting story and the philosophy of one-design racing lies behind it. The last "homemade" IC was built by Franny Charles, the sailing master at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Franny followed the original S&S designs--up to a point.  His hull measures in to the specifications of the class, but he also made many improvements, some of which I will write in more detail later in this blog. Today, the IC he built races as #50 (confusing, I know, since it has nothing to do with the hull number, which was 740) and is considered one of the most, if not the most, competitive boats in the fleet. It has won several national championships.

After Franny finished making his boat, the class decided to ban further such efforts because it felt there was no good way to ensure that home-made wooden boats conformed to the one-design philosophy of the class, in which sailors test their sailing skills against each other in boats that are as nearly identical as possible.  The idea: it shouldn't be the boat that determines the outcome, it should be the crew who sails it.  The rule is different for fiberglass boats because they all can be produced in the same mold and the materials easily controlled.

The class did leave open a loophole, however, and it is the one I am exploiting: it's still okay to restore or rebuild an existing wooden boat.  

There may be only a few wooden boats still actively racing (including the first one ever produced) and the existence of these affectionately-called "Woodies" is part of the charm and legacy of the class.  But I wonder if the class will modify its rule after its members see what I come up with.  Probably wishful thinking on my part. Ha. Ha.

7.) Further Exploration

This photo shows the old layer of fiberglass very clearly.  It might help to click on it, which will provide an enlarged view. You can also see the multiple plies of wood used in the construction of the boat when it was built. They are not all mahogany.  I assume the builder used mahogany on the outside plies and used a cheaper wood on the inside to save money. Because it is sailed in the winter, Interclubs get hauled out of the water after racing and, over time, the area where the two sides of the hull join up at the bottom get a lot of abuse.  I have a lot of work ahead of me.

6.) A Voyage of Discovery

Sanding is a pain.  But it also can be like traveling back through time.  As one layer after another is removed, a story unfolds.

This photo shows the equivalent of time lapse pictures of the bottom.  The white area is obviously paint.  The cloudy brown areas are places where filler has been applied over time to fair the hull.   It's hard to see but just under the layer of paint is a layer of thin fiberglass cloth, probably 6 ounce material.

The seams of the planks also run at angles to each other.  This is how they were applied, in 1/16th-inch layers when the boat was constructed.  The fact that they are visible means that over the years, zealous racers seeking to achieve an edge or while refinishing the boat, gradually sanded off nearly all of the outermost mahogany plank.  So the hull is no longer as thick, as strong, or as stiff as it once was.  It's going to be even more that way after I get through with all the sanding I plan to do.

5.) Not In Real Time--Yet

If you're an astute blog reader, you may have already noticed that I couldn't possibly be writing this blog at the same time that I am doing the work on the boat. I'm not.

I started in earnest on the boat more than a year before I started writing this blog, though I took a few long stretches off from the project. One reason for the time lag is that I want to tell the story of the reconstruction in a way that's easy to follow and that makes sense.  For the sake of anyone who happens upon this, I want this unfold as a narrative and not just a random sequence of photos or comments that I post just because I happen to feel like it.

I have a fair amount of experience as a writer and I might as well put some of it to use here. One of the things I know is that a story will turn out a lot better if the author has at least some idea where he or she is going with it.

Ideally, I hope that the time distance between my posts and the work I am doing will converge as the boat nears an end.  In the meantime, this will allow me to spare the reader from a lot of side adventures and delays as the project unfolds.

It also will give me the right amount of time and the right pace to delve into some of the many topics related to this project: sailboat racing, boat building, modern materials, naval architecture, tools, woodworking, and what is fast becoming my favorite topic of all, wood itself.

4.) Getting Started

Now we're at the shop and I've started sanding off all of the bottom paint along with a layer of fiberglass someone added at some point to protect the hull.  I am going to strip the entire hull down, both inside and out so as to better inspect the condition of the boat and see what needs to be done to transform it into a vessel that's in better shape than it was when it was first built. That's right. My goal here is not just to get this boat back in the water, or even to do a museum-quality restoration. Rather, my aim is to exploit modern materials, tools and woodworking techniques to (hopefully) create an Interclub that's as competitive as any in existence.

I have to observe the Interclub class rules, of course.  So I can't just cover the bottom in carbon fiber and epoxy or materially alter the design.  But there's also a lot of room for flexibility and interpretation within those rules and I plan to exploit those boundaries to the fullest my imagination can grasp while retaining the one-design spirit of the class.  It's sort of the restoration equivalent of a sonnet.  You have to follow the form; the creativity comes in what you do with it.

I am approaching the project like this for a number of reasons, which I'll elaborate on as the story unfolds.  But the most important one is this: I LIKE DOING IT!  I enjoy working on boats almost as much as I enjoy sailing them. Actually, I might enjoy it even more (except for maybe those rare times when I am leading the fleet around the racecourse.  So far, that's only happened once in an Interclub, and my lead didn't last more than 100 yards past the first weather mark when the top boats started blowing by me to Starboard and Port.)

3.) The Star of the Show

Here she is, the boat I plan to rebuild.  You'll see better why I use the term "rebuild" rather than "restore" as this blog progresses.

This was the 48th Interclub made, so it is hull #48.  These boats are often referred to by their hull number. So you'll often just see me refer to it as 48. It was named Charabon by its original owner. I'm guessing it was built in 1946 or, at the latest, 1947.

The boat was given to me by Peter Bauer, an active frostbiter at Larchmont Yacht Club, who had been keeping it in his garage to prevent it from being destroyed or further harmed. He salvaged the boat from Derecktor Shipyards in Mamaroneck, N.Y., a place famous for building America's Cup racing boats and other large vessels that are the polar opposite of a frostbiting dinghy. The last owner who raced 48 was Gavin Higgins, who worked at Derecktor's. In 1986, the yard built Stars and Stripes, which Dennis Connor sailed to recapture the America's Cup he had lost to Australia. In 1970, it produced Valiant, the last 12 meter racing yacht constructed of wood.

Although the hull is still intact, 48 is missing all of its hardware as well as a couple of crucial components: the mast step (which you can't see in this photo) and the partners (which cross the boat about a quarter of the way back from the bow and support the mast). I am also going to make it a new centerboard, rudder, and boom.  The mast will be an aluminum section that will have to be cut, customized, and rigged to work with this boat.

The photo above was taken when the boat was still in Peter's driveway.  If it were placed in the water at the time of the picture, it would have quickly sank to the bottom.

2.) The Interclub: In Concept

As you can see, the Interclub was conceived as what I would describe as an elegant small tub. It has simple lines and a single sail, making it a "cat rigged" boat. The bow was designed to be "bluff"--which means broad, full, and square--with a sharp entry. At a later point in this blog, I'll address whether that was a good idea.

It may surprise you to learn that racing this boat is a two-person operation, with a skipper who sits in the back and a crew member whose principal job is to apply kinetic energy to help the boat sail better and to raise and lower the pivoting centerboard with the same goal in mind, altering the wetted surface of the board and the balance of the boat in the process. Both members of the two-person team also have many controls at their disposal to adjust the aerodynamics of the boat's principal engine: the sail.  This is not an easy boat to race competitively.  Every movement of the crew, every adjustment to the sails, every tweak of the rudder or centerboard immediately impacts the performance of the boat.  The best teams learn how to coordinate their efforts to be at one with their little ship.

1.) Visitors Welcome, Not Expected

Although I have written for some very large audiences (most notably The Wall Street Journal's), I don't expect to reach very many readers with this effort. No matter. If you have found your way here and haven't already moved on, it's likely that you at least share some of my interests in racing sailboats and woodworking. And that, of course, means you must be very special.  :-)

The purpose of this blog will be to document the rebuilding of a more than 60-year-old Interclub dinghy.  This class of sailboats, still actively raced today, was originally sponsored by Cornelius Shields, a prominent investment banker (Bache Halsey Stuart Shields) who once appeared on the cover of Time.

The magazine lionized him not for his financial wizardry but rather his skill as a yachtsman and proponent of one-design sailboat racing. The lines of the Interclub were drawn in 1945 by the country's most prestigious naval architectural firm: Sparkman & Stephens. The first models were constructed of a mahogany-faced plywood by the Zephyr Boat Co. of New York. Shields owned two of the first ten boats made, #3 and #7. Later, another celebrated sailor, George O'Day, began constructing the hulls in fiberglass. About 800 have been built to date, and because they have been treasured and cared for by some of the world's most-skilled sailors, most still survive.

The 11' 6" boat was designed for the craziest sailors of all: winter frostbiters. These are very addle-brained folks who gather every Sunday throughout the winter to sail these small ships past small icebergs, propelled by bitter and shifty winds under frequent threat of a very cold bath.  (A snowstorm does not bring a halt to racing; only a lack of wind, or too much of it, brings the these celebrations of shivering to a halt.)  Frostbiters sail with their hats pulled low and grins on their faces. I know because I happen to be one of them.