1930 Schooner MISTRESS

Transom number 3 I believe.Skip has now given MISTRESS’s transom a finished look with name and all.However, this is just another step towards the finished product.

From the last transom picture I showed you Skip put another layer of sapele over that.Then he epoxy coated the whole thing.Once this was finished, he put her name on to trial the font and size.

Here, Skip has glassed over the transom to get MISTRESS ready for the two big weekends she will have during the glassing parties.These two weekends will bring good friends to help us through the process.

 In this photo, Skip is fairing in the keel.She was originally fitted with stone ballast, however, sometime in her past it was removed and iron was attached to compensate for the weight.You can also see the first coat of red lead has been painted on her hull.

 This picture shows MISTRESS pretending to be the big giant pumpkin.With her second coat of red lead, the transom glassed over, the keel faired in, and the chain plate impressions set, she is now a fully restored wooden boat hull and is ready for glassing.

We are now about two years into this project and own a fully restored wooden hull.All the prep work is finished and it is time for the fiberglass.One finds out who one’s friends are when they throw a glassing party.Your very best friends come back the following week to glass the other side.It is a nasty, messy, stinky job. All of our good friends came back the next weekend to glass the starboard side.The Wednesday between, Skip and two other friends glassed the keel, which received extra layers for strength.In total, she received five layers of fiberglass alternating 24 oz Woven Roving and 1½ oz mat with an additional three layers from above the garboard to under the ballast. We ended up using two 55 gals drums of resin to complete this job.

Skip and I made up special tee shirts with a drawing of MISTRESS on the front, details about her, (length, year built, designer, etc.) and on the back in big bold letters they read, MISTRESS CREW.Each of the great friends who came for this glassing party received one of these shirts, along with good food, beer, and other cold drinks.A MISTRESS CREW shirt always gets you onboard.

Skip put 22,000 staples through the glass and into the hull to hold all in place. You're not going to believe what he does next.

Once the glassing parties were over Skip moved MISTRESS’s jack stands and laid up the glass in those areas. In this picture, he has started covering her hull with a sacrificial layer of white putty he intends to sand off in about a week. You see, Skip wants to post-cure the hull, which involves building an oven around MISTRESS, setting three bullet heaters on high, giving him 1,000,000 BTU’s, while using seven box fans to circulate the air, and cook her. This he did in order to shrink the resin so that the glass will never show through, that is, unless she ever gets hotter than she will on this day. The white putty acts as a barrier for the hull against contaminants caused by the heaters. Once the post-cure process is over and she cools down, the putty will be ground off taking with it any residue.

He was alone that day. I at work and Tim at school. It must have taken nerves of steel for him to start those heaters as he thought about the two years of work he had into her and how dry she must be considering how long she had been out of the water. He had my meat thermometer, which he stuck in the oven at several locations throughout the day keeping a watchful eye on all this dry timber. When the oven temperature hit 190 degrees, he went in, climbed the stairs, and went below to check on things. He tentatively placed his hand on her hull but could only touch the hull for a second because of the heat it held. Returning to his post outside, Skip paced back and forth for eight hours while she cooked at 191 degrees. By the time he was ready to turn the heaters off, all seven fans had died from the intense heat. He pulled the visqueen oven down so she could begin to cool. However, at the dead wood, (see Memory Monday 15 C) with the three to four inches of fiberglass that had been built up in this area, it took six additional hours to cool. Within a few days, all the white putty was ground off.

The next step in the process is to make MISTRESS fair. 500 of Skip’s hours were spent on long boarding to achieve the fairness we now have. Often, he would mud in the evening and long board during the day. Ladies, if you want your husbands to look buff, let them fair a 50 footer, it does wonders for a man’s physique. During this time, Skip refused to take any time off insisting that his shoulders would not accept such folly. It took a week of fairing before his shoulders stop hurting and taking just one day off caused his shoulders to protest violently. Early in the process, an acquaintance was hired to do some of the long boarding. When I attempted to show this man video of the

America’s Cup boats wishing to point out the fairness, mirror image these hulls have, he refused to look. I was only kidding, but those hulls sure are impressive. Once she was relatively fair, Skip began spraying chaser on the low spots to help identify those areas still needing his attention. Special care was given to her counter and Skip made that line, razor sharp. Although rarely seen, it still looks good. He carried a baton, which I believe, was eight foot to gauge his progress. He had sanded/long-boarded her hull to 220 grit. On the day he put that baton up to the hull and found her fair, he was obviously delighted. He then brought out a much larger baton; one I believe was twenty foot long. He placed that baton on her hull, surveyed the situation, then he took it back to the wood shop and hid it deep within. She was fair enough he thought.