Boats Thread 2.0

[roguetoaster]

My two:

'69 Starcraft Seafarer '14 - got it for free with a same year Johnson 9.5 which was pretty dead, titled/registered for the princely sum of $31 and promptly spent almost 54 times my initial spend on a really well kept '07 Yamaha 20.



Dragged it home, replaced the transom, mounted the motor, and have covered hundreds of miles near shore on the western side of the Chesapeake Bay. The longest trip was about 21 miles each way, and solo I can get the boat to just over 26MPH.











It takes me to places where it's peaceful, and it's been all you can ask of a boat for almost no outlay. Since it's perfect, I figured I'd better replace it.

'89 Grumman GCC184 18' - clearly recently revamped from probably abandoned by a couple of students from my alma mater, and I may have slightly overpaid them for their work. Has a '89 Mercury 90 ELPTO on board, and it's about the largest boat I can launch/recover solo without waiting for high tide at my local private boat ramp, so the $3900 price tag was fine for a hard to find boat type locally.









Did a few things after the first test ride, pulled the floor behind the console and put the control cables under the floor, tidied some wiring, cleaned old carpet goop off of the interior hull. Spent quite a bit of time on the motor too, tried to do a carb link & sync, but found some plastic bits on the way out, and replaced every fuel line. Greased the heck out of it and made it run nicely for a probably high hour old two stroke.



On the second outing I took it further than I'd ever taken the smaller boat and did a nearly 50 mile round trip. So far I've only managed 38.8MPH, disappoint, need more power.

Bonus boat- a '77 Tartan 34 that a neighbor has at the local marina, he had it blasted this spring and that uncovered some pitting. We filled, sanded, bottom painted and anti foul coated the entire hull. Even got it in the water in time for the June regatta and won on time, but came third because someone cheated, and we had to give index time to another boat.

[808ETA]

Beautiful boats and scenery

[E30SPDFRK]

I should buy a boat.

[george graves]

I got a "little" Newport 27'. She's kinda like the e30 of boats. I bought her from a guy who was prepping it for the "R2AK" (an epic yearly sailboat race to Alaska - would love to do someway - even if we come in last) - The keel has been glassed in, and everything is as smooth as a baby's bottom. Down below is comfortable enough for week-long stays if need be, but she's small enough that you can single-hand it (I usually sail solo).






















There are a couple of great docs on the R2AK race. The better one is on Amazon Prime I believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1WEM2AlYHc

[roguetoaster]

^
That would be a fun trip in that 27.

Wish I could tag along for a bit with some friends heading south for the winter in their Island Packet 42. It seems like an ideal size boat for just about every use, and really seems like a practical yacht rather than the usual racer/cruisers I've been on before.

It is sad to see how empty the local marina is getting this time of year when there are still plenty of boating days left before the cold really sets in.

[BlackbirdM3]

I did a thing back in June... Had someone told me I'd be the owner of a 95 year old wooden sailboat at the beginning of May, I'd have laughed and said "yeah right." And then came Hummingbird...

Hummingbird is a bit of a special boat. She is one of 26 San Francisco "Bird Boats" built between 1921 and 1946. The Bird Boats were the first one design class on the west coast, and one of the oldest in the United States. The original idea was to come up with a class of great sailing boats for racing on SF Bay after WW1 as many of the returning GIs were taking to golf courses rather than going sailing. The local yacht clubs realized this, and thus the Birds were created. The actual design was a collaboration between Fred C Brewer, a naval architect from Sausalito, and John Crocker, a member of John Alden and Associates. Hummingbird was built buy George Kneass in San Francisco in 1929, for himself. He built only two Birds, Hummingbird, and hull #5 "Falcon" Sadly Falcon sank during a race in 1989. Of the 26 Birds originally built, Hummingbird is #22. There are only 19 left. With that said, Hummingbird has had a lifetime of ups and downs. She has been partly rebuilt at least 3 times in my lifetime. Though designed as a race boat from the beginning, and apparently a very good one, she was never raced much over the years. That said, when she was raced, she apparently was the boat to beat.

I was looking on Craigslist back in January and saw the ad for Hummingbird and thought, "Wow a Bird is for sale! Oh, $18K, that seems really cheap for a 30 foot sailboat with the pedigree of a Bird. Eh, I hope it goes to a good home." A month later I again saw the ad, but now she was $15K. In March, it still hadn't sold and was now $10K. In April, $8K, May $5k, and the last week of May, she was down to $3K. At this point I really wondered why she hadn't sold and what was wrong with her that NOBODY wanted a this Bird. I raced the SF Master Mariners race where there were 3 Birds that came out and raced and kept thinking about Hummingbird, and was worried that if someone didn't step up soon, she'd end up being scrapped, and a piece of history lost forever. So, I looked again and sure enough, $1k.... Okay I have $1K, this is likely a bad idea, but its $1k... I sent the guy an email asking for any surveys he had. He promptly sent several over and after reading them multiple times, I couldn't find a single reason for this boat to have not sold a long time ago. So, I sent the surveys off to several people I know who both own and love wooden sailboats and asked what they thought. They all said "Buy the boat" Hmmm, can I really afford a 95 year old wooden sailboat? Aren't they massive holes in the water into which you shovel $$$$$? Seriously, B.O.A.T, Break Out Another Thousand... But something kept telling me, take a chance... Well, it wasn't quite that easy as the boat was going to have to move from where it was in Sausalito and I was going to need insurance to keep it somewhere. Ah, I've never owned a wooden boat, and the one insurance company that would insure a 95 year old boat pretty much laughed at me. So, While I was off shooting the air racing Pylon racing school in Reno, and trying to figure out how to get the boat insured, someone came along and bought her out from under me. I was SO ticked when I found out after getting home. Then I got a random email titled "I bought Hummingbird, I understand you were interested" and a phone number. Apparently the previous owner had given the guy who bought the boat my email and told him that I would have bought it before him, but couldn't get insurance for it. I gave the guy a call, and met him in Sausalito the following day. He then offered me a 50% share in the boat. I'd never met the guy before, wasn't sure of his intentions, and why would he offer me a 50% stake in the boat? So, we took the boat out, and sailed it around. He wasn't that impressed with it, but I absolutely loved the boat, and by this time had found some of the history, and a couple of the more recent owners, including the guy who sold the previous owner the boat. (He still regrets selling the boat in the first place.) So, Greg (the now co-owner of Hummingbird) was impressed that I had done my homework, did have some sailing knowledge (it was rusty but there) and that I had a lot of woodworking and mechanical knowledge. So, it was decided that we'd split the costs on the boat, he could get it insured, and when he was done with it, I could buy the boat from him for the original $1000 asking price.

Down the rabbit hole I went. As it turns out, I had pics of Hummingbird from 2018 and 2019, before it was sold to the previous owner. Sadly the previous owner had made some really bad decisions with the boat and got rid of all the original wooden blocks, as well as the rub and toe rails (said they were rotten, and he didn't like them) as well as painting it a horrid peachy tan color. This included painting the solid Mahogany transom that was beautifully varnished in 2019. So, I knew what the boat looked like not too long ago, and I knew that the worst thing about the boat was simply the paint color, and that is likely why nobody would buy it. The paint was of poor quality, and quickly done. This was after the guy replaced several planks below the waterline and some other work. The actual work appears to have been well done, but the finish work was total crap. We hauled the boat out over July 4th weekend for an insurance survey and found a single issue that prevented the boat from going back in the water later that day. Since it was a long weekend, the yard that normally doesn't allow people to work on their own boats told us that we could have access to the boat over the long weekend, and didn't specifically say we couldn't work on the boat... So, friday afternoon I arrived at the yard and work began. That beautiful mahogany transom that I knew was there, yeah that was a good place to start, as well as the rest of the remaining teak trim needed to be varnished. So, I started sanding and after a couple minutes, I could see the name start to appear from under the paint. I decided to break out the heat gun and see if I could scrape the paint off. About 2 hrs later, I had a bare mahogany transom that showed why it was painted over. Someone had attacked it with a sander, cross grain and really made a mess of the wood. This still wasn't the end of the world, and about an hour later, I had everything looking pretty good with just a faint shadow of the name showing. I had some black paint, and some small model paint brushes, so I hand painted the name back on using the existing shadow as a guide. It was warm so the paint dried quickly and I was able to get the first coat of varnish on the transom that night. (Wow, that escalated quickly...) Over the weekend I managed to get the transom refinished and looking amazing, as well as the very wavy teak toe rails around the cockpit cleaned up, stained and varnished as well. We got a bunch of other little issues taken care of and the boat went back in the water on the next business day.

Since then I've had Hummingbird out sailing almost every weekend, with a couple weekends that were 3 days of sailing in a row, but the record stands at 5 days in a row of sailing. So, that $1000 95 year old sailboat actually turned out to be an amazing find, and has become the most frequently sailed Bird on SF bay.

This is Hummingbird as she looks now. I shot this about 3 weeks ago.



Yes there is still more to do, but we are looking to haul her out over the winter and repaint her back to the original color. I managed to find several pics of her when she was new in 1930. (Yes the date on the transom says 1932, but that is wrong. Even the title says she was built in '32, however the great, great, granddaughter of the builder says she was built in '29, as does the S.F. Maritime museum records. Clearly, pics taken and dated to 1930 prove she was not built in '32.)

LOA 30' 1"
Beam 7' 6"
LWL 24' 0"
Draft 5' 3"
Designer
John G. Alden
Boat Type
Bird class
Builder Name
George W. Kneass
Location Built
San Francisco CA
Year Built
1929

My pics of Hummingbird from 2018.




My goal is to return Hummingbird to looking as close as I can get to how she looked in 1930.

Will

[roguetoaster]

^
Absolutely fantastic!

Finally put my little boat away for the winter. Still plan to take the 18 out, but now it's wader season, which is much less fun that barefoot on the beach.



Forgot about a passing fancy of a boat this summer. Got a free hypalon 1984? Zodiac with a hard floor/console that actually held air...for fifteen minutes, but couldn't bring myself to do the tens of hours of glue work needed to get it back in the water and ended up parting it. I just couldn't see it doing anything significantly better that the 14' I already had, and many of the fittings will live on in other boats, so it's okay.

[BlackbirdM3]

These pics likely won't stick around, but here are the pics of Hummingbird that I got from the SF Maritime Museum.



I've got another set of sails that are the correct cut for the boat. They are used, but they were free. I put the sail numbers back where they belong, below the wings on the mainsail. These are the pics I'm using as reference for the cosmetic restoration. I don't know what the transom looked like, but I do like the varnished transom, so its going to stay.

Here is a pic of Hummingbird on the hard. This was July 4th weekend.

A pick of the cockpit and aft trim from when I got the boat...

And what it looks like now... (blue tape is from a fresh coat of varnish.)



Another of my small projects, redefining the cove stripe and painting it. This small change made a huge difference in how the boat looked. As it turned out, there was 95 years of old paint, filler, and other junk in there that had to be removed. I didn't know it at the time, but the planks on both sides that have the cove stripe are original to the boat. It took some creativity to do this. The best tool turned out to be a wood dowel with some 80 grit sandpaper. That worked really well to clear the stripe down to the original wood. For the arrow tip, I ended up using an Xacto knife with couple different blades to clear it and define the tips of the points. I also used this for the back of the arrow as well.




I haven't done much from this point, just trying to get out and sail every weekend.

Will

[roguetoaster]

What's the material composition just below the paint on top of the cabin deck? Ply, plank/filler, both?

That seemingly dark green paint layer on the arrow probably would have been a nice accent.

[BlackbirdM3]

What's the material composition just below the paint on top of the cabin deck? Ply, plank/filler, both?

That seemingly dark green paint layer on the arrow probably would have been a nice accent.

The cabin top was redone with plywood covered in fiberglass (I think, not sure) I have some pics I need to scan of the cabin totally stripped about 20 years ago.

The dark green layer is actually the original Douglas Fir. That is bare wood there. It looks like it was first gold, then was red for a bit, white, back to gold, then globs of filler in places, back to red, more white, and finally more filler and this ugly color, before the black. I was going to do it in gold rather than black, but figured the gold wouldn't really show up well on the tan. I had more black left over from redoing the name on the transom, so black it was. After the repaint it will go back to being gold. I even managed to find some really old gold filigree paint from the '50s that I'm planning to use when the time comes. I did a couple tests and the paint appears to still be good. I thought about doing it as gold leaf, but I think that would be very time consuming and tough. It also might not stay on the boat well either.

I really wish I could find 20 feet of 7/8 inch bronze sail track so I can use the other set of sails I have. I don't really want to tie the main on like the blue sail as the cars for the track will dig into the boom and chew stuff up.

Will

[BlackbirdM3]

A small sample of the 100+ year old Cuban Mahogany that I will be using to make new rub and toe rails for the foredeck of Hummingbird. This stuff is crazy hard. I ran this section through the router to give me the double half round profile, and then hand sanded it. There is only a single coat of clear varnish on this, no stain at all. This stuff is amazing, and what the boat was originally built with. Finding enough of this stuff in the 8 foot lengths that I have is unheard of. I hope I have enough to do the job. Its going to be close.

Will

[roguetoaster]

That mahogany will be fantastic, hope you end up with enough.

Any marinas or organizations near you that part out or scrap boats? Those folks often save uncommon stuff, and at least around here they really get moving on clearing their yards in winter.

[BlackbirdM3]

The story being the mahogany is that it is left over from the 1915 Pan Pacific exposition in San Francisco. It was apparently stored for years in Golden Gate park, and then was moved to where I keep the boat. The owner of the marina felt Hummingbird was a worthy use for the wood.

I've been asking around but nobody has any sail track. It seems odd, but either 7/8 is an odd size or they simply don't have any. I found a place in England that makes it, out of bronze no less, but they won't return emails and don't list a price for it on their website. I don't want to know what it would cost to ship a 20 foot long section either.

Will

[uturn]

That Hummingbird is beautiful. I love the keel as it's the same as the J-Class yachts.
I doubt I'll ever get into sailing, I have a sabot and can't even find time to get it wet.

[BlackbirdM3]

That Hummingbird is beautiful. I love the keel as it's the same as the J-Class yachts.
I doubt I'll ever get into sailing, I have a sabot and can't even find time to get it wet.

Its my understanding that there were actually 5 different keel designs for the birds. I've only seen this design used however. I don't know if any of the other designs are still on the boats or what the story is. To this day, the Birds are some of the fastest 30 footers on San Francisco Bay. You read that correctly, 100 year old design that can still go toe to toe with more modern designs. I think that says a lot for the design, and why the fleet is special. I've seen this in person, I had Hummingbird out for Fleet week back in October. It was dead calm in Sausalito, and we struggled to get out into the main part of the bay. Once out in the bay the chop kicked up, and so did the wind. Bigger boats were reefing their sails, yet here we were flying everything we had like there was no wind, yet it was gusting to 30kts+ The boat came alive and showed her heels to everything around us. Water over the bow, we got wet in the cockpit, but she set over on a nice heel and cut through the chop like it was no big deal. The boat did exactly what it was designed to do a century ago. Down around Alcatraz the chop swells were 3+ feet, yet the boat didn't care. We were looking for a place to hove to so I could shoot the airshow from the water, but it was just too rough and windy, so we went around Alcatraz once more and by that time my friend was kinda freaking out as she'd never been out on a sailboat that small in that much wind, and so I made for the lee of Angel Island. The fun was done, but it was an eye opening experience to see just how good the boat was in typical summer conditions on the bay. We were the only boat out there without reefed sails and it was awesome.

Here are some pics of a couple of the other Birds in the fleet that I shot during a race back in July. I wasn't ready to try and race Hummingbird so I was aboard the 1929 cutter "Water Witch", built in Oakland. Water Witch is an amazing boat that I love seeing out on the bay.









This is such a cool shot, here Cuckoo luffing her sails, Freda (gaff rig with the off white sails), the oldest (1886 I think) privately owned yacht on the west coast, and Yucca, built in 1931 and still one of the fastest yachts on the bay, all in the same frame.

Here Oriole (11) chases Kookaburra (3) with Yucca off in the distance. I have Kookaburra's old set of sails for Hummingbird and can't wait to try them out.

Overtaking Oriole (it took a long time to catch her)

At the start of the race Cuckoo and a couple other smaller boats decided to port tack the start, on the start line. A bold move if you ask me as we had 30 boats starting on a very small line, all at the same time.


One of my favorite shots from this year. The Golden Gate shrouded in fog, Pt Bonita Lighthouse in the background with the light lit, Oriole and another boat on starboard tack across the bay.


I have to admit, I'm super excited to take part in the races with my own boat, yet I'm equally bummed that I won't be able to shoot pics like these since I'll be driving the boat, and its one thing to shoot from a 60+ foot boat that doesn't pitch like a 30 footer does, but after trying to shoot at Fleetweek, a Bird makes for a very poor shooting platform.

Will