Drunk History: The South Pole from sandwichgirl on Vimeo.

As many of my loyal followers know, Martina and I spent the summer 2004/5 season in Antarctica (visit our posts beginning here).  This year is the 100th anniversary of the race to the South Pole by Amundsen and Scott.  Here is a spoof video made by some of the people we worked with 6 years ago (Ben and Sandwich are two).  To those who have a passion for Antarctica history or have visited there, I think you will enjoy.  Here is the direct Vimeo link:  http://vimeo.com/35084075

Remember the rowboat race this summer?  Of course you do.  Well, I foolishly purchased three half-completed Norwegian faerings (traditional rowboats) last year and it’s time to get down to business and fix these up.  You can see  one of three faerings just beyond the Onkel Ole (blue boat).

Here is the sail that came with the boats–also one square traditional sail.  This is a dipping lug.  With this sail and the half finished hulls, our local shipwrights and I begin to piece together the missing parts…..

The above photo is the second hull filled with all sorts of sailing stuff–masts, yards, rudder parts, and what is normally regarded as ‘furniture.’   All the lighter wood is yellow cedar and represents our continuation of this project, started by a Port Townsend boat building school about 10 years ago.

These seats fit passively over the thwarts and are carved on the underside as to placement…..

We’ve three boats, with four oars each so Petersburg’s premier shipwright Andy cuts out these 13′ masterpieces and begins to shape them perfectly.  Andy is the “Stradivari of spruce.”

Here is Andy storing the masts and oars he’s built– what craftsmanship!

Remember Michael from this past summer’s Katahdin refit?   Here he and I are forging nails, rivets and roves out of iron to fasten the rest of these faerings.  Ho ho ho!

Here are the nails, rivets and roves…..

And here I’m backing the rivet while Michael peens the rove into place–drawing the plank into the frame.  We make many sizes–some 2-3″ which fasten the thwarts as well–making this faering sturdy enough for coastal plundering.

Here’s the rudder design and execution–all hand forged.  The gudgeon is designed to slip down on the long pintle while underway.  The top of the pintel is visible above the waterline and is  a perfect curve so the rudder  can be removed/engaged while converting from sail to rowing.  Another elegant Norwegian design!

Many of the fasteners are not iron, but oak tree-nails or “trunnels” as they are pronounced.  Here, Andy is hand carving slightly tapered (at the head) oak drifts that are driven through the hull into frames and then wedged on the opposite side.  This is all that holds them and when they are wet, they swell slightly making the faering stronger.  Most ships in the early viking age and beyond were entirely fastened with such “trunnels.”  OK–time for launch….

Only one leak–we left out a nail but a quick knife sharpened plug and it’s good to go.

I’m ready to leave the dock like a fearless Viking on the maiden voyage.   This boat is very ‘tender’ meaning it’s tippy.  I clearly need more ballast especially if I’m going to sail this.  Here’s a movie of the maiden voyage:

Here is the faering’s new home–The South Kupreanof Yacht Club located here at Totland.  This is the newest addition of our fleet of 13 boats!  Can’t wait to rig her sails and pillage and plunder the coast like a good Norwegian…..  Stay tuned.

Before leaving  Orlando, we got clobbered with a big rainstorm which dumped 15″ of rain on our tails as we fled north.

Only in Photoshop can you make a big storm cloud look like a nuclear explosion.  It’s time to drive north!

Before we  enter the Parkway, we visit one of our poster sites:  Fort Marion as it was called in the 30s when the WPA poster was created–using the British name.  Today it is  PC correct as Castillo de San Marcos:

Here’s the 30s poster–a beautiful poster design.  There is a shortage of eastern park WPA poster designs so this is indeed a rare poster, yet this park won’t sell it–but Ranger Doug does right here.

Martina with canon–not the camera…..  Incredible history here!

We lumber our way northward stopping at campgrounds on our way up Appalachia.  Here “Ranger Doug” can’t resist playing ranger again–he’s interviewing the modern camper replete with fifth wheel, piggy-backed “Smart Car” towed by a big-rig.

Above is the location of our 75th anniversary Blue Ridge Parkway poster….

….and below is our poster design:

Appalachia….truly a relaxed way of life.

Hiking trail with autumn colors….

Martina models in a neighboring Airstream–art-westeaux.  Never seen such an interior complete with a mounted bull’s head…..

every campground has it’s unique visitors….

This is Mabry Mill–quite a scenic stop and quite functional with a river driven waterwheel.  Essentially, this was the source of power for 200 years, before electricity.  This mill still grinds flour which is for sale.

We drive out the north end of Blue Ridge Parkway shortly after and skirt a storm in Shenandoah arriving in Washington DC for a 1/2 hour meeting with the Director of the National Park Service, Jon Jarvis.  My mission is to host an exhibition of all original WPA national park posters for the 2016 NPS Centennial at the Smithsonian–we have now found 13 of 16 known originals.  And Jon is certainly enthusiastic about my mission.

Since finding one castaway poster in 1973, I’ve republished the historical set of 16 parks plus contemporary designs for those parks that didn’t subscribe to the WPA’s federal poster project.  We now publish over 35 park designs and have  sold over 100,000 reproductions of this fabulous poster collection.  Our goal is to hang a WPA poster in every home in America.

Here Martina and I have finally arrived in Paterson N.J. the location of America’s newest National Park, just signed into law by President Obama–Paterson Falls National Park.   PFNP is located just 17 miles west of New York City at the site of a 77′ high/300′ wide falls that powered America’s first industrial town.

Founded by Alexander Hamilton, Geo. Washington’s Secretary of Treasury, he realized the industrial opportunity here as opposed to relying on the British.  General Washington camped on the fall’s edge during the Revolutionary War….  Quite interesting.

This hydro power allowed the Colt Firearms factory to be located here–also most of the American railroad rolling stock including the engines for the construction of the Panama Canal.

This park will take several years to mature with restoration and interpretation of many buildings and manufacturing plants.

Keep your eye on this place.

We keep driving north to Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.

With about 500-600 restored wooden boats!  Seattle has how many?  Maybe a dozen.  The Wawona was just chainsawed up before risking sinking in South Lake Union….  Shame on the NW Seaport for 40 years of supervised neglect!   Here’s how Mystic restores vessels:

This is a 6 year $8.2M restoration of the last whaling vessel left.  As a former board member of the Virginia Five,  I was proud!

OK–time to store our trailer (near Boston) and jump on an Amtrak train for a relaxed trip to Seattle–just barely beating a huge snowstorm in the NE.  Here we pose beside the modern “Bambi” airstreams and the larger goliaths.  I’ll stick with our 13′ footer….

Enroute across the Northern US, this photo was taken at sunset near Au Claire, Wisconsin where my great grandparents immigrated from Norway–no wonder they later moved to Bellingham!

And this was probably the very same train they rode on….   Minot ND.

Incredibly, we have no photos of our ferry trip from Bellingham to Petersburg–perhaps it’s too mundane for us after dozens of transits.  We arrive late at night to find our home (here, our garden fence) smothered in snow and 41F inside!  Time to fire up our masonry heater and move back in!  Stay tuned.

Every year, we host a Rainforest Festival here in Petersburg and one of the events this year was a tour by Breakaway Adventure Tours of the Le Conte Glacier which is a tidal glacier.  To get you oriented here’s a NE Google view–the yellow line is the Canadian border and beyond that, the Stikine River.  Also visit this site hosted on pbase by John Scurlock.

Icebergs can be seen here in this digital photograph–and many of them make it past our house about 25 miles distant in the Wrangell Narrows.  I lassoed one last year and dragged it up our beach for free ice.  And the Petersburg fishing industry in the past century used this as a source for ice for the fishpacking industry.

We’ve had record rainfall this August–I measured about 25 inches over a 30 day period and officially in town about 18 inches fell during this month.  Of course, the rivers ran wild and waterfalls were abundant–this is the approach into Le Conte Bay.

This berg is grounded at the entrance of the bay where fjords are shallower.  This is because the ice (which reached the entrance up until about 250 years ago) released their rocky contents when spreading out into Frederick Sound.  Today, this glacier is backed up about four miles.

This is a side canyon with Castle Mountain in the distance.  These peaks we see due east from our house; they have been honed sharp by glacial action over the millennia.

As we enter closer to the source, we encounter hundreds of harbor seals.  Sometimes Orcas will hunt in here–a captive meal of sorts.

And here’s the glacial face with a huge serac breaking off.   We are parked about 1/4 mile away so the sound arrives late–which is equivalent to dynamite!   A gleeful passenger raises his hands in excitement!

And here’s the consequence–a small tsunami–this one about 15′ tall and surging towards us–what excitement!  This glacier extends down below sea level to bedrock; here about 700′ so when submerged bergs break off–they’re launched into the air with no warning or sound.   This is indeed a wild place!

Glacier ice is not white, nor clear, but absorbs and reflects many spectra resulting in many beautiful colors.  I call this the Horsehead Iceberg–what a beautiful trip!  Come up for our Rainforest Festival next year.

So as not to let down our most ardent fans–here is the next chapter in the refit of this 112 year old tug….

OK–we’ve painted the upper and lower house, plus hauled out on the marine rail and cleaned & painted the hull.   So I’m now turning to the interior machinery–so put on your overalls and enter the the engine room by clicking the above link…..

OK–you’ve seen the engine running but it wasn’t that simple.   After four years of sitting at the dock, all this beast did was to hiss and spit rust and water from everywhere–and at 250 lbs starting pressure this is a lot of hissing.  The engineering is a snake-pit of pipes, tubes, valves,  etc.   Below is the control part of the engine which can either be started from the bridge, back (‘Texas’) deck or right here with the manual over-ride.

Part of the problem was this air valve which pumps air in the 7th cylinder–at the very top of the photo above and stores it in two huge air receivers for future starts.    This is critical–as this engine lacks a transmission and clutch–it is a direct reverse–meaning that in order to back down the boat, I have to shut down the engine, shift the cam and restart–all within a second–and then power in the opposite direction.  This means bringing the entire crankshaft, rods, pistons,  main shaft and propeller (many tons) to a complete stop, then moving the cam 2″ and restarting everything in the opposite direction.  This takes a lot of air.    So all valves must function.  This how I found one when I took it apart:

This is the valve responsible to supply air into the receivers and reaches several hundred degrees in temperature and is under a constant 250 lbs. pressure.

This is the “seventh” cylinder all rebuilt including the valve pictured above.  It is powered by the main engine to pump air–which is needed for restarting the engine.  On top are two triangular valve housings–letting air in (green piping on  right) and out (yellow piping on left–to be stored for the next start).  The blue pipe is water coolant.

Here are two open bays showing the camshaft–each supplying the needs of a piston–which is 10″ in diameter and weighs 250 lbs. each.  The head is about 400 lbs, and a piston rod is about 200 lbs.  This is a lot of mass to turn and reverse direction.

Each bay exhibits four cams and each cam has two lobe strategies for running in both directions.   No clutch, no transmission…..very simple.  Moving the cam engages the second set of lobes and the timing is now directed to a reverse start and the engine runs the opposite direction.  The cams (in order from left to right here) are 1. fuel, 2. intake valve, 3. air start, and 4. exhaust valve.

This engine was built in 1944 by Washington Iron Works and is a model 6-R-13 (6 cylinders, 13″ stroke and right hand).  In dual engine applications, these engines were cast as mirror opposites so an engineer could tend to both from a center isle-way.  In the Katahdin, it is a single engine but this was built as the port engine for the USS Glassford, a ship that was never built as WWII was winding down at that time.

Washington Iron Works built thousands of engines for 101 years in Seattle (where the two sports stadiums now exist).  Only eight Washingtons are still powering vessels.  Here’s the engine when it was built in 1944–still in the factory.   It has powered three other boats including the Foss 15 which spent a lot of time here in Alaska.

BTW, everyone asks me where I get parts–I’ve a 40′ steel container with two other engines all broken down.  The Katahdin engine will run forever.

OK–here are all the moving parts exposed which require oiling every two hours times six cylinders.  All the pushrods are exposed on the outside of this engine, unlike the modern automobile engine.  The four functions that run this engine (see above) are:  Bendex (fuel) injectors, intake valve, air start valve, and exhaust–see cam description above.  Everything moves when this puppy lights off.  OK–here we go:

and….

After three days of fiddling around with all these controls, I finally found the shifting problem–I’d inadvertently positioned a brass disc in the selector valve backwards–no air, no shift.  This has been corrected so it’s time for dock trials, then sea trials….Stay tuned……

Now it’s time to haul the Katahdin out of the water and clean the hull.  I have to tow her with our skiff and can do this only at high slack.  Problem is, that everyone else moves around at high slack–including this skiff, two seaplanes, a fuel barge and a ferry so it’s a crowded harbor.  The current is still running about half a knot and we bounce around until we can get a line on the dock at the marine rail.

Then we hand pull all 120 tons into the cradle….

Once we get her wedged in and blocked, the rail hauls us out slowly to reveal quite a mess on the hull–the result of five years of procrastination.  Actually, we’ve devoted all our time to the restoration of 10 buildings at Totland but now it’s time to catch up.

Yikes!

Double Yikes!  Look at this mess–even starfish!  This is Marine Biology 101!  Time to get out the scrapers and pressure washers….

No wonder I couldn’t steer!

All the growth was removed by hand, then pressure washed.  In all there were 25 wheelbarrow loads of this stuff.

Then we get out the tools of the trade–caulking mallets and irons….

With the help of a local shipwright, I first reef the seams that are questionable, cleaning them before threading first cotton followed by oakum (hemp and pine tar).   Then the seams are painted and then cemented with hydraulic cement. We spend two days cleaning up seams, plugs, etc. before the two coats of bottom paint just prior to launch.

Here are a couple of  seams ready for touch-up.  The hull is now spotless.

The wheel is polished and zincs are welded in place.  Ready for launch–Click  here for the the video of us sliding down the rail and  here to see us drift out off the rail.

Meanwhile the bears move in without an invitation.  Here, mom checks out our barbeque.  Fortunately, we didn’t have any fish on it.  This bear has been making the rounds along the Narrows and seems quite agressive….

….with a cub in tow.

Kupreanof prayer flags….  Looks like we’ll need to post a Katahdin III.  Stay tuned!

This is what 10 years in Alaska will do to a boat.  Actually, it’s about 6 years–the amount of time we have spent rebuilding our homestead across the Narrows.  Now it’s time to turn our attention back to the Katahdin–my first home here in Alaska.  The “Kat” was built in 1899 and has all the associated problems with an old wooden boat–you can read more about her in my new “Pages” section directly above the “Archives” in the right sidebar.    So it’s time to roll up my sleeves….and hire a couple of hardworking youngsters.

Michael is an excellent shipwright and loves old wooden boat projects.  Here we’re digging out rot from the bottom course of the bulwarks.  We discovered this by using a pressure washer!  Not a good sign–probably some of the Mt. Saint Helens blowdown in the 1980s.  This area was logged after too many years which yielded a lot of poor quality boat lumber.  And this is not an easy place to get to.  We’ll slide in a new piece from both sides bolting them horizontally to the existing vertical lag screws–it will be yellow cedar.

Here, Michael installs new siding in the pilothouse–also yellow cedar.  He milled this up with a 3 degree bevel so it follows the curve of the house.  In all, he replaced about 10 pieces here.  Check out the yacht in the background–there are two of these traveling around together–some sort of British flag.  There goes the neighborhood!

I’m lucky to also find Leland, who boasts from Florida.  He’s a faux-painter–that is, he paints things to look old or to ‘disappear’ and all kinds of special effects.  He’s hard working also and loves his craft (or art).   Here’s the results of his magic–it’s a brand new house!

The stairs and rails will be last.

Same treatment below on the main deck.  This tarp I had made years ago has now paid for itself in maintenance saved.  The decks, cap-rails and doors are spared from the vicissitudes of the Alaskan rainforest.  I used varnish on these doors and like all outdoor varnishing, it ultimately fails.  I’ll remove each door one at a time (there are 7 double doors and three full doors) and refinish them with Sikken Cetol.  I use this on all the cap rails, rub rails and the lazarette cover and it is great stuff!

The main mast has rotted out at the base and top–it was installed last in 1982 or so in Seattle.  It is 9″ in diameter and 27 feet tall.  I want to extend it four more feet so I need a pretty sizable tree.  Here I’m measuring with a caliper and this one looks right.  It’s spruce which grows very straight–but the trade-off is it’s also susceptible to rot–oh well, the last one made it almost 30 years.

Earlier in the week  about a hundred yards away on our creek we spot a mamma bear and her cub.  So we look over both shoulders before we begin our ‘logging.’

After laboriously dragging this out of the woods with my tractor and two strong helpers, I peel it and then drag it back into the net shed to dry for a year.   Whew!

Part II will be the hull.   The shipyard has reopened under new ownership and I’m scheduled in a couple weeks.  I’ll redo a lot of the previous work and the hull will be like the pilothouse.  Stay tuned!

Our last major project is to rebuild our net shed; aka warehouse; aka barn.  It’s pretty tired and probably dates to the the founding of Petersburg in 1910.  It was once a gaff-hook factory.   It’s 20′ X 40′ and two levels built on creosoted piers with the tidal edge at the 14′ level, more or less. As you recall (those of you who are fascinated with this blog) we rebuilt the dock two years ago so now it’s time to reclaim the visible structure–our net shed.

In the early days, everyone in Alaska fishing towns had a net shed–to dry and maintain their nets and to store essential fishing equipment. Remember, everything then was made of wood or natural fibers. Today, most of the net sheds have crumbled to the beach and been reclaimed by mother-nature…..with a few exceptions….and we’re lucky to have one.

The SE corner is the weather-ward side of this warehouse and the ledger has severely decayed so I need to raise the second level flooring which rests on this critical beam. Not an easy task. My neighbor has a 6″ X 6″ X 25′ beam which handily slips into this space……..

I’ve jacked up the second story here and removed the rotted 20′ section using a ‘ship-splice.’

Here I’ve winched up the end of the beam (note the splice already cut) and opened up the siding (to be replaced) to slide in this 6″ X 6″  beam.

Working alone, I build a tripod support and winch it in with a come-along.  I made a ‘tray’ platform so I could roll small pieces of pipe to reduce friction when it slides in–worked perfectly!

Slick!

And the splice fits perfectly!  Two large bolts complete the integrity to the building.  Braces are removed and the second floor joists now rest on solid wood and about 3″ higher.

Now that the beam is in place, I order up some yellow cedar from Prince of Wales Island (still no mills in Petersburg) and tow it down the Wrangell Narrows about 2 miles–it’s a free ride with an ebb tide….

This is about 2000 board feet of yellow cedar at $1.20/ft–we support our local mills.  I managed to refloat this pile on the 4am high tide and drag it right to the dock saving me lots of work.  These are 1 X 10′s, 2 X 8′s, and 2 X 6′s which we’ll use for boardwalk ramps, raised garden beds and board/battens for the netshed.

After dragging in the lumber, look what floats by–an errant iceberg from the nearby Le Conte glacier.  I run and grab a couple ice screws and some rope and after another hour, have this sitting right in front of the house–refrigeration for a week or two….until another higher tide takes it.   But first, this thing almost dragged me backwards out into Frederick Sound–a funny site at 5am.  This is about 8′ tall!

After all this monkey-business, it’s a rest on our newly built (red cedar) porch swing.  Note the Garden Gate Trellis beyond.  We’re ready for summer–time to sit down and watch the critters:

Our third bear so far…..stay tuned.

With oil prices climbing, it’s time for me to climb, too…..climb trees and remove limbs to install a solar system.  As you remember, two years ago, I tried to harness the hydro capacity of our creek only to be met with thousands of dollars of fees, federal and state permits and annual assessments just to take water out of my creek and return it back 300′ downstream.   Not worth the hassle.  But, the government can’t tax the sun (although I’m sure they’ll try) so we’re off and running…..  And, man, this is not how I remember the rock climbing of my youth–this was hard work.

After precariously climbing three ladders lashed together, I re-cut these  spruce limbs with our 14″ Stihl chainsaw (beautiful little saw, by the way) and repaint the ends to camouflage the mess.

My first attempt to prune this massive spruce was entitled:  “Chainsaw on a stick,”  which was a total failure leaving the running saw stuck in a partially cut limb 20′ in the air.  To solve this dilemma, I crafted  “The Great Ladder Pyramid,” which ended in utter disaster with me waking up on the ground with the chainsaw stuck vertically right beside me….still running…..don’t ever do this.   Well, at least now we have photons streaming to our site….

I’ve designed the frame to change the panels tilting towards the sun at various times of the year.  This is summer solstice mode.  The formula for tilt is simply the angle of the the tilt from horizontal is equal to your latitude but this during the equinox.  Given that the earth tilts on it’s axis another 23 degrees, I move this up 11.5 degrees in winter and down the same amount around the summer solstice.  We live at:  Lat = 56.803, Lon = -132.993.  Plug these values in on this website which is better than Google Earth for Alaska, and you will find our solar site.   I’ve installed 12 panels of Kyocera KD135GX-LPUs hooked in series/parallel (2 circuits of 6 panels yielding about 132 V at 16.5A in an ideal situation.

One of the engineering challenges was to transport this power 250 feet (underground in #2 aluminum wire) to our battery bank in our well house.   To achieve this, we experimented with different configurations and finally came up with the 6 X 2 wiring which maintains resistance loss under 2%.  On a clear summer day, I’ll pack in over 7 KWh–enough to run our home without supplemental generation.

Interestingly, the colder it is, the more efficient yet dangerous this system becomes with voltages climbing–hence the 6 X 2 configuration.  With a 1 X 12 configuration we could only operate down to 20F but our winter temps can get down to -10F.  The only charge controller that can handle this current is the Midnite Solar Classic 250.   I didn’t know this was so complicated.

Manna from Heaven…..This is sweet!

Speaking of solar energy, here our Puget Sound guests bask in the afternoon sun in our back yard over G&Ts–more Manna from Heaven.  Summer is here!

It’s Syttende Mai here in Petersburg Alaska–where the locals don’t forget their culture.  The day celebrates Norway’s Independence in 1814 that transferred their rule from Denmark to Sweden–a bit closer to home.  

Our guest cabin is tricked out and we’re ready….  Of course, the recently self-proclaimed Commodore of the South Kupreanof Yacht Club (yours truly), challenges anyone with a wooden rowboat to a race.  To generate interest, we tow our three rowboats in the local parade:  the SVEN, Onkel Ole and a recently acquired Norwegian faering:

Here I pull the SVEN and the Onkel Ole with my newly restored 1961 Model L Gravely tractor.   This is no easy fete as I have to drive the tractor out on my dock, wait for a high tide, winch it into my skiff, drive it over to town, and then reverse the process at the city crane dock; then tow over the three boats, find them trailers, etc. etc….  I’m still stiff and sore.

So we’re up and running….here is Martina and our good friend Lizzy in traditional dress.  Lizzy sports a spiffy bunad and Martina a Bavarian dirndl.  This place looks like a small town in northern Norway…..just look at these outfits:

Is this class?  These guys, dress in the traditional (Viking) dress and serve up (literally) finger food–shrimp, potatoes and corn right in the center of main street.   The beer garden is to the right….

And where there are Viking Boys, there are Viking Girls sitting next to small icebergs hauled out of Frederick Sound from the LeConte Glacier to keep the beer cold…..   Move over Madonna….

Back to the parade.  This is the faering boat I recently acquired (actually, three boats–to be published soon) and plan to stash one behind the house in our slough and conduct raids on the unsuspecting tourists as they motor up the narrows.

More Vikings.

OK–next the rowboat race as mentioned earlier.  This is the pace boat–this is really going to be the race of the century and notice the durable Yahama engine on the back of my skiff?  No more Mercury engines for me…..  The race features six boats and they must be wood and hand powered.  Entered in the race was the faering, the SVEN, Onkel Ole, Runamok, a wooden canoe and another Davis Boat.

And it’s off to the races!  Here Commodore Doug is hand-powering the Onkel Ole behind the SVEN and the faering around Buoy 59.  This course is about 1/2 mile from the North Harbor Dock around the buoy and back again.  The wooden kayak won the race, the faering second, SVEN took third, me fourth and Runamok fifth.   Oh well, I’m nearing 65 years old and it’s not that easy anymore.

After the race, it’s a boat show!  Look at these beauties–it’s hard to pick these or those beautiful hand crafted Norwegian wooden skis.

After all the festivities, we all work up a powerful thirst and retire to the local restaurant–The Beachcomber Inn–fabulous food and the Pickled Herring Band, no less……

Oh boy, next day, it’s five boats back to the South Kupreanof Yacht Club headquarters; three trailers to return, a tractor to crane up and down and guests to deliver to ferries and jets.  Oh boy…..  I’m all pooped out!