Time was running out, however, before our plans called for a flight to warmer climes, so Richard went ahead with decommissioning the boat: furling, bagging, stowing the sails, and tying down the cabin cover for the winter.
We'll be back in October for sailing again in the Southern spring.
Meanwhile, now that I'm home amidst my files of photos and journals and records, I'll forge ahead with Abrazo's Memoirs, focusing on the history of her construction. You'll remember that we'd poured more than seven thousand pounds of lead into a wooden mold ... the ballast keel, anchoring the new boat in reality. This photo was taken in December of 1979: The boat-builder's hired man, Jay, uses a Skil saw in a jig to plane the surface of the lead keel nice and flat.
The creation of the wooden backbone took guidance from the lines on the loft floor, where Richard had laid out the design from Manuel Campos' paper drawing. But the reality of the backbone was an 8"x12" timber of old growth Douglas Fir, twenty-some feet long and weighing hundreds of pounds: the timber destined to become the wood keel.
Richard had purchased this substantial piece of air-dried wood in 1974 when Warren Everett, of Triple and Everett Marine Ways on Seattle's Duwamish River, decided to sell out. Everett's boat-building partner, Bill Modrell, had broken his neck in a car accident while hunting deer in Montana, and would not be coming back to work. Everett, not interested in looking for a new builder, had phoned Hank Baila, Richard's father, to say he was ready to sell out his shop.
Richard, who was living aboard his schooner, Sea Lark, in Bellingham's Squalicum Harbor at that time, worked his growing shipwright's trade out of a small shop space near the bay. He borrowed 10 grand from his father to buy that wood and machinery from Everett. Jim Thompson, a live-aboard friend from the docks of Bellingham, helped Richard load the wood from Everett's shop onto a rented flat-bed truck for the ninety-mile trip to Bellingham. Actually, it took them two trips to move all the wood to a rented warehouse out on the Mt. Baker Highway. When he returned the rented truck to Seattle, Richard reclaimed his old GMC, "Alpha Truck," and went back to Everett's for the planer.
He'd been working on wooden boats for fishermen and others in Bellingham, but didn't have a shop space that could accommodate this new wood supply. Over the next few years he had to move that wood twice: to a quonset hut on Holly Street, rented from Gordon Parberry; and then, in 1977, to his shop on Cornwall Avenue, in the basement of Bob's Super Saw Shop, where he called his business Bag End Trading Company.
So the fir for the wood keel, along with another piece that would become the deadwood portion of the wood keel were "on hand" so to speak, as Richard began to create the backbone. The gumwood for bowstem and stern post, however, he had to buy; and he'd started looking for it as soon as he'd sent for the plans from Campos.
By this time, mid-1979, he'd traded Alpha truck for a little green Datsun pick-up we called "The Green Bulldog." He'd built a steel lumber rack for the truck, so when he found a piece of gumwood, 8" by 12" and twenty six feet long at a lumber supply point in Seattle, he drove the Green Bulldog to Seattle to load the gumwood on his pickup's overhead rack. Big red flags both fore and aft on that long, heavy piece of wood warned traffic on Interstate 5 of the overhangs.
Richard resawed this gumwood timber so he had two 6" by 12" pieces, each twelve feet long. The extra piece, 2" by 12" and still twenty six feet long, was set aside to become the guards for the boat's stern. Bill Modrell had told Richard that gumwood could take the steaming for the hard curve of those stern guards.
So, a few hundred pounds of gumwood, 6" x 12" x 12 feet long for the bow stem; and a few hundred pounds more for the stern post. What next?
Richard took the bow and stern profile lines from the loft floor to shape the timbers. Maintaining the centerlines of his pieces, he applied the widths from the loft floor: both bow stem and stern post widened to their broadest where they met the fir keel. He joined the gumwood pieces to the fir keel, with solid knees supporting each joint. He drilled and thru-bolted the timbers ... with some difficulty. Thank you, Steve Tibbitz, may you rest in peace, for being there at the right time to weld that drill bit to the long rod.
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| Roughed assembly of bowstem to keel timbers, with junky boatyard debris and blackberries in background. |
Drawing again from the loft floor for lines, Richard built floor timbers at strategic points along the length of the keel. He wanted to bolt a substantial number of floor timbers through the fir keel and the deadwood keel for strength and solidity. Then he shaped the wood, according to his guru, Bill Modrell's directions: "You prune out this stuff, slab off that, pare the whole thing down and then scrub it a little with the plane."
The next step here is to carve the rabbet line where the horizontal planks will fit against the keel, bow and stern timbers. So much of this boat-building business involves anticipating where the next pieces will fit! Richard will use a Skil saw to cut the curve of the rabbet line, and then "prune out" the excess wood. Above the rabbet, he'll carve sockets for the vertical frames. Those frames will meet the harpin, at the deck line, every ten inches, but since the harpin is non-existent at this point, the formula for locating the frame sockets on the wood keel is a complex challenge to the boat-builder's imagination. Eventually planks, frames, deck and backbone will fit together to create a strong, enduring hull. This photo shows the port side of the backbone ready for carving:
The photo below is faded, but it shows the back side of the building at 1121 Cornwall Avenue, and the yard Richard used for his boatbuilding. Bob's Super Saw - in the upper story of this building, has an office in front on Cornwall Avenue. You can't see the third floor of the building, where Richard and I lived in a small apartment during the two years of boat construction. Up on the third floor he built that boat every night in his dreams, in between day shifts of building the boat in the yard.
In the yard you see the backbone flipped over with starboard side up, now. That took some doing. On January 23, 1980 I wrote a letter home to my Dad:
"This week we flipped the backbone assembly from one side to the other so Dick can carve the rabbet on that side. That was quite a project. Here’s 1200 pounds of wood all bolted together into a 34-foot long grin from stern post to bow stem. We rigged sheer poles at each end with blocks and tackle, then pulled the backbone upright & tipped it over. The poles got in the way, the whole thing was balanced on its edge & wouldn’t move, but after much exertion, yelling, and swearing the deed was done."
By early February, Richard had completed the carving of all those frame sockets, on both sides of the wood keel. He'd bolted the entire backbone assembly to the lead keel, with a layer of Irish felt in between.
Richard had shaped the wood, painted it with red bottom paint, and was ready to raise the backbone upright.
February 3, 1980: More sheer poles ... with hydraulic jacks to lift the lead towards upright ... and lots of help from our friends ...
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| Somebody paused in the midst of trimming the felt between lead keel and wood keel. Must have been lunch time. |
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