The varnish work on the cabin sides continues, and the outcome is fabulous. Ruben finished the wood work a week ago and José has been hard at work finishing it. Here are a few snaps of what she looks like now. We're really pleased with the way the dark mahogany cabin sides bring out the curve of MAYAN's sheer.

I spend the morning removing all the sails from MAYAN, we have new sails coming in the next few weeks. She looks a little odd with bare booms, but this will give me a chance to re-paint the booms, replace the worn rigging for outhauls and topping lifts, and generally clean things up before the new sails arrive.

Gluing The Splines In The Locking Scarf

Yesterday we (meaning Ruben) fit and glued the splines into the locking scarfs on either side of the trunk cabin. Having made the gap between the planks straight and of even width, Ruben hand shaped piece of Honduras mahogany to fit. The picture to the right shows the locking scarf prepared for the splines.




In the photo below you can see the work Ruben has put in matching the color and the grain of the wood, so that the resulting repair will disappear after varnishing. We'll come back to this once it's finished, in about a week.


The third picture, on the right, shows Ruben holding up the spine being slathered with gorilla glue just before tapping it into the slot in the side of the cabin. Each piece is press fit and doesn't require clamping.


In the final picture the spines have been inserted and the excess Gorilla glue is pouring out. This is easily cleaned up and we will go after it later today.  The next step is to hunt down all the small imperfections in the cabin sides and fit them with small dutchmen or wood plugs to fill years of damage to the wood.  We should be able to start sanding and the initial refinishing early next week.

Gluing The Cabin Side Planks

Glueing in the new panels:

First, after everything is cut to a nice press fit, both sides get covered with glue. The glue in this case is what Wayne calls "Golf Club Glue" for the center of the piece. This is a two part 50:50 glue of some sort, and I have to investigate exactly what it is. Wayne and the guys use it to double plank hulls (Which is their standard approach to fixing sad caravel planked hulls.) and they used it when MAYAN was rebuilt in 2005. It is a stretchy form of glue, that will hold well and dry while also letting the wood move more than West System. 

The outer edge of the piece and the lips covered in West Epoxy that has been thickened with Honduras Mahogany dust, heaps of it. One of my jobs was holding the angle grinder in a trash can with a piece of wood and grinding it into dust. It took me a while to get the hang of grinding a piece of wood with a powerful grinder, one in each hand, without being able to see anything as the top of the trash can is covered with a blanket to contain the dust. You grind until the grinder starts to overhead, which is darned quick, and then stop and clean everything out, capturing the dust.

Here's Ruben putting the port side plank into the cabin side.



Next it is time to clamp the plank down. Pressure needs to be built up in the center first and then towards the outside to allow the glues to migrate towards the edges. We were in luck with MAYAN, she has a large bulwark and it is at exactly the right height. On the port side Rubin had rigged up his normal clamping system, and I helped out with some braces and wedges to the bulward. He liked that so much we did the entire starboard side with just braces and wedges.




In the picture above you can see the clamps, with the forward one reaching through the port hole and the after one reaching over the cockpit combing. The plank that is between the clamps is a piece of beautiful Honduras Mahogany that is an off cut from two covering planks that we were installing. "Don't break that by tightening the clamps too tight! We need that wood for the next pair of dutchmen." said Ruben.

According to Ruben, clamping is a big challenge and often more difficult than getting the bits of wood and the hole for the dutchman exactly right. "If we were installing this repair in a painted surface, we would simply drill holes and hold all this in with wood screws. Then we'd plug them later and no one would ever see it. But, you want this to be varnished, so we can't injure the wood like that." Ruben is from Peru and his syntax is often more flowery than ours. "Injure the wood" I like that.

Once we'd started the glue flowing it's all hands to the clean up. Putty knives for the big ugly bits and lots of shop towels with alcohol for the final clean up. The biggest problem I had was a real knack for getting the glue on the back of my hands, my knees and my arms. Ah well, I used to have the same problem years ago building stuff with epoxy; somethings never change.

Now, it's off to the starboard side to repeat the process.




This plank is smaller so there wasn't a need for a central block in the ultimate clamping. I installed a central post and wedges while the glue moved/migrated and then removed it once we'd moved to what you see above. 

The posts and wedges are all made from scrap that I found laying around the boat yard. I was shocked to find that one of them was teak, old and battered, when I cut into it. Ruben says it came off the rail of a boat built in the 1890s, the wood was still oily and beautiful inside the piece. "You should save this" I suggested. Ruben just laughed and pointed at a stack of wood twice as high as my Mini, "You can put it on the stack with all the other old teak we've saved from boats that have died." It seems that Wayne and the guys save every piece of teak they can and that has allowed them to deck a number of 20 and 30 foot boats with the scraps left over from deck rebuilds. Ruben informed me that the beautiful 30' Danish cutter that is a few boats down the dock was due to be re-decked from the pile. "We like to use the old wood. It's stable and doesn't wander." Rubin continued.

After we've cleaned everything up, Ruben goes around with small wedges and adjusts the pressure to right where he wants it. In the picture above you can see the tiny wedges he has driven under the 2X4. Prior to using a 2X4 for this purpose, Ruben has used the joiner to insure that the surface is completely flat and true - a great use for what used to be the side of a palette that an engine was delivered upon. 

Below you can see a close up of the tiny wedges and the glue continuing to migrate out from behind the plank. The reason for the West with the sanding dust becomes apparent as well. While the Golf Club Glue is great for holding the plank, it is white when it dries. The West Epxoy full of dust will blend in with the varnished Mahogany cabin side and you'll never see the joint. Well not unless you're waking up from too much fun on the side deck. 




Next up will be filling the hook-scarf joints further forward on the cabin side. As I write this, Ruben is probably already at work cutting the odd splines that he'll need. Because the hook scarf runs across the grain at various angles, the spline needs to be cut with the correct grain angle to avoid being visible. It'll be interesting to see how he cuts these.

Back to work.

Progress on The Cabin Sides Continues

Yesterday afternoon we just about reached the point of starting to do the final fit the boards into the sides of the trunk cabin. The planks below are a nice tight fit, maybe a bit too tight. It's warm and dry here in Los Angeles, so this wood is about as small as it'll ever be. We'll leave a tiny bit more room than we would if we were fitting this up in SF and a lot more than if we were in the PNW. While this will be set in with epoxy, the flexibility of the epoxy will let the wood expand as its moisture content increases. The varnish over the joints will be plenty flexible enough to allow the joints to move a tiny bit.

Here are the planks of Honduras Mahogany which Wayne's team has cut. The wood for this has been hidden in Wayne's tug boat for well over 15 years, "Waiting for a boat that deserves this wood." Real Honduras Mahogany is terribly hard to find today especially in this size. There's more of this wood that he's "saving" for MAYAN's interior rebuild.



Here's the Starboard side cut. The round hole is for a bronze port hole. As you know, we're installing a Hurricane Combi boiler/heater for domestic hot water and heat. The stainless steel exhaust fitting, which is supposed to exit through the transom or hull side, is polished stainless and quite shiny. Wayne had a great idea. We'll put a port hole through the cabin side and mount the exhaust within the hole. When the weather is really awful, we close the glass of the port hole. The port hole is mounted backwards, with the glass on the outside. This is how Alden mounted the port hole into the engine room on three schooner's I've sailed on. Supposedly, it is mounted this way so that one can ventilate the engine room from on-deck, but it is also reputedly so one can open the port hole and squirt a fire extinguisher down the hole in the event of a fire. We'll follow this custom so that one can close the glass when the seas are rough or when washing down the deck so water doesn't get into the exhaust pipe. There will be a small gooseneck in the pipe also, to help keep water out.



This next picture is of the Port side cut. The round hole in this is where the AC power cord receptacle used to be mounted. I've relocated it down into the engine room and notched a hatch board to let the cord go below. I'm thrilled not to be looking at the thing and also thrilled to know that the plug won't be exposed to salt spray any longer.



On each side there are three 6" long bronze lag bolts that hold the aft edge of the cabin side to the corner post. We'll be documenting exactly where these are for future access, and then burying them with the wood piece. After this, we have two or three small dutchmen to put into the after side of the truck cabin, where it faces the cockpit, and then we're ready for the final sanding and finishing work.

Slowly Uncovering MAYAN's Mysteries

When Wayne Ettel set about restoring MAYAN's hull and deck in 2005, he was forced to replace many of her heavy white oak double sawn frames.  To avoid the rot that had eaten away at the oak, Wayne chose to build the new double sawn frames from Purple Heart, a strong tropical wood with many of the same characteristics of White Oak but without the tendency to rot.  This was one of many subtile changes made to make MAYAN even more resistant to the difficulties faced as these old wooden ladies age gracefully.

During the rebuilding process, the Keel, Horn Timber, Stem, Mast Steps and various other of the heaviest timbers were found to be in perfect conditions after 58 years of service, and are still doing just fine at 67.  Despite his tremendous knowledge of woods, Wayne was unable to determine what kind of wood had been used in Belize all those years ago to fashion these heavy timbers.

Sapodilla Wood

Today I received word from the grandson of MAYAN's builder, Robert Tewes, that the mystery has been solved.  In a conversation with Denys Bradley, Robert learned that like most boats built in Belize MAYAN's heavy timbers were made of Sapodilla wood.  This is a wood that is heavier than water, and thus sinks, is rich in sap and extremely hard to work on with woodworking tools.  All of this explains why the wood remains impervious to water and rot, and also why the paint flakes off it after a time as it is still secreting oil from within it's grain.

Ancient Mayan Sapodilla Door Jam

Sapodilla wood is so strong and durable that the MAYAN people used it to build lintels and beams in their buildings, many of which are with us today after centuries of use.  Today few Sapodilla trees are cut for wood.  Rather the trees are grown for their fruit, a favorite of the local people and the howler monkeys, and the sap is drawn to make organic natural chewing gum.

It will be interesting to see if future owners of MAYAN, a hundred years from now, can discover any degradation in the Sapodilla wood frames and timbers the comprise her backbone.

Building Out The Fo'c's'le - A Cabin For MAYAN's Small Crew

MAYAN's smaller crew is growing - we have one grand child and one more on the way.  Hopefully, these two will be joined by many others in the coming years.  As you know, MAYAN's mission is to take our family cruising with the occasional classic boat race tossed in.  A key piece of this mission is bringing along the next generation of sailors in the proper manner.  That means a proper cabin with the smell of tarred marlin, slightly damp anchor rode, kerosene lanterns, and the chuckle of waves under the forefoot.

Cutter SOL STRAALE - 23' LOD

In Beau's childhood he had the wonderful good fortune to spend many evenings in the small cramped fo'c's'le of the SOL STRAALE, sharing the tiny space with his younger brother, Tom.  It left a life-long impression.   

When we bought her, MAYAN's fo'c's'le was filled with lines, sails, an inflatable dinghy, an outboard, and various shelves and drawers filled with spare parts and tools.  Basically, it was serving as a typical domestic garage ashore in California; holding everything other than a car.  While it's a little handy to have such a space aboard, there wasn't anything stored there that couldn't be stored elsewhere or more efficiently.  

Small Door

Combining the needs of our growing extended family and the desire to sort out this pile of "stuff" in the fo'c's'le, we have re-designed the layout of the space to accommodate our needs.  

When John Alden designed MAYAN, this space was the the home to two paid deck crew.  With a settee below and two pipe berths above, a head far forward between the berths, and two hanging lockers aft. The fo'c's'le was accessed from the passageway aft, which contained the Captain's Cabin and the Galley, through the small door on the right.  The diminutive door is only about 20" wide and 4' 3" high, clearly perfect for our small and growing crew members.  The fo'c's'le was traditionally occupied during the summer sailing season by two young men working the months between college terms or by young sailors working their way up.  We will be returning the fo'c's'le to something much more like what John Alden had originally designed.

Two full sized fixed berths will run aft on either side from the newly built door to the chain locker.  They will meet forward where a cushion at the same level will provide a full width seating area and padded play space for the smaller crew members.  On either side, above the berths, pipe berths will be suspended from the deck beams and hinged at their outboard edge.  While the pipe berths will primarily serve to hold the Gollywobbler, Fisherman, Advance, Yankee and Genoa, those sails can be move on deck and two more crew can take their place.  Just aft of the berths we will be building a hanging locker to starboard, with drawers below, and a cupboard to port with additional drawers below.

Port Forward End of The Fo'c's'le

Demolition of the relatively modern shelves and cupboards in the fo'c's'le has been completed.  With only 4'6" of headroom under the foredeck beams, it will be the perfect private place for all the grandchildren.  The next step will be to strip the ancient paint, some of it appears that it could date back many decades, and refinish the ceiling. For those who aren't sailors, the "ceiling" on a boat is the horizontally planked surface that runs along the inside of the frames (ribs) and provides both a smooth surface to the interior and keeps gear and equipment from falling against the inside of the planking.

The varnished platform shown to the left will be extended to make the berths and the common space between them. We'll add mahogany doors over the chain locker entrance shown and a ladder that folds up to hang from the overhead when not in use. The ladder will be designed to double as a boarding/swim ladder.  Storing the boarding/swim ladder has always driven me nuts, the Wayne made the wonderful suggestion that we could dual-purpose the fo'c's'le ladder.  

Port Aft End of The Fo'c's'le

In the picture to the right, the broad space aft in the fo'c's'le will accommodate the hanging lockers and drawers.  We'll extend the top of the lower section of the drawers to provide a desk space.  

The hanging knee shown is part of the structure to support the foremast rigging.  The bulkhead runs across the boat just forward of the foremast.  Like all the structural wood in MAYAN these knees, the clamp, even the ceiling is substantially stronger than modern boat designs; this is probably why MAYAN is still here, after 67 years and tens of thousands of sea miles.

During the rebuilding process, it has become painfully clear that the wood working is the quickest and easiest of tasks.  It has been the plumbing, electrical and mechanical tasks that have taken the bulk of the time.  Or, as Wayne puts it: "If someone gives you a complete hull, deck and interior, you've only got about a third of a boat."  We're looking forward to building out the fo'c's'le in short order.

Making MAYAN Look Nicer

Making MAYAN look nicer:


Since first setting eyes on MAYAN, probably over 35 years ago, I have been struck by how starkly "white" and "gray" she looked. I loved her lines, but David's desire to minimize maintenance and to reduce it to something that his hired hands could do lead to ever growing fields of white paint and bare teak. As a footnote, we've found that over the 46 years David had folks looking after MAYAN, she had more than 30 "skippers". Sadly, all that change shows at times. While a paint-n-bare-teak finish makes a great deal of sense in Florida, where MAYAN spent the first fifteen years of her life with David, it is unnecessary here in California. Especially while she is under the care of someone who actually enjoys the process of keeping her looking good.

MAYAN In Santa Barbara, Circa 2010

After a few months of working on MAYAN's other issues, we stepped back and taken a look at the various options. The most common bit of trim that folks add is a varnished cap rail. While MAYAN does have a teak cap rail, advice from Wayne is that it is too weather-worn to serve as a varnished piece at the level of quality that we like to achieve. "I can replace it with two weeks work, but we don't want to start that now." was Wayne's advice, something with which we agreed.

The second bit of traditional trim to be varnished are the hand rails and the edges of the trunk cabin, I personally dislike both of these options as varnished hand rails are much more difficult to keep a grip on when wet and I've watched competent sailors slip and fall on their ass as they step on a varnished wet cabin edge. Indeed, we have traditionally gone the other direction, stripping both of these surfaces to provide better traction for hands a feet. The spars could be varnished, and they are lovely solid sitka spruce, but I'm feeling a little old to sign up for hanging in a bosun's chair for a week a year to maintain the gloss. Based on one final factor, that it's a LOT easier to maintain large flat surfaces than small complex ones, we settled on the cabin sides as the best target-of-opportunity for our scrapers, sandpaper and varnish brushes.

We did some test stripping, to see exactly what sort of wood we were dealing with and what condition it was in. We hoped that the wood had retained some of its varnish, as we have pictures from the '40s of MAYAN with varnished cabin sides. The test strips showed white paint deep within the grain of the wood, but it also showed that her cabin sides were solid Honduras Mahogany about 3" thick. We decided that we could sand off a couple of millimeters and it wouldn't be missed. So, it was game on.

Whenever you strip the paint off of a 67 year old piece of painted wood you're going to find some surprises, this job was no exception. It appears that the after end of both sides of the trunk cabin had been damaged at some point, also the after edge of the cabin, which runs athwart ship just forward of the bridge deck and is the most conspicuous piece of wood in the boat to those riding in the cockpit. Wayne's guess is that the cabin top leaked and the freshwater got down in around the corner post in the after two corners of the house, and down the sides of the companionway and engine room hatches. Around each of these areas there were well done repairs, but they are repairs that assume that the boat's cabin sides would be painted, not varnished, so putty was liberally used and the joints weren't tight.

"No problem." says Wayne, "We'll just cut that out and match it." I looked at the 2' high by 3' long chunk of the cabin side on each side and swallowed hard. "OK, now or never." and off we went.

Routing Out The Old Seam

All Cleaned Up, Waiting For A Spline

The first step was to fix a relatively small problem. The planks used to build the trunk cabin originally are about 18' long, so they couldn't do the run of the entire side of the cabin. The builders had installed a very nice locking scarf, but the joint wasn't tight. Someone had widened the joint with a router and filled it with an epoxy putty, probably because they wanted to put a hard paint over the surface (which they did) and the movement of the wood beneath hard paint caused cracking. In the picture below you can see Ruben, one of Wayne's team of master wood workers, has set up a jib for the router and is cutting a fixed width groove where the putty used to be. He'll fill that with a Honduras Mahogany strip and once sanded and varnished the joint will disappear. Varnish, being much much more elastic than paint, will have no trouble keeping this joint covered and sealed.

First Router Cut

A similar technique was used by Wayne's carpenter, Ruben, to start to remove the top layers of wood at the after end of each side of the cabin. Because we were going to cover up these joints and the bolts that were added to hold the cabin side to the corner posts, we've documented all this with photos and a description for future caretakers of MAYAN. The initial cuts along the edges of the area to be removed are guided by the cabin top, the deck, and two plywood guides that are clamped to the side of the house. This leaves clean edges. The next step, which Ruben has started here, is to router out all the excess wood within the target area.

Starting To Router Out The Area

In this close-up view you can see the first cut, approximately 1/2" deep, made by the router. Ruben then re-set his router depth to finish everything to a depth of 3/4". He choose not to do this in one cut because the load on the router is pretty high, but also because when the router is loaded up the tip of the blade tends to jump a bit and leaves patters on the finished surface. This way, the floor of the inlay will be much smoother and easier to glue to.

Aft Edge, Showing Lag Bolts

This close-up is of the after edge of the cut on the starboard side. The bolt heads, which hold the cabin side to the corner post and after edge of the cabin, can been seen; as can one of the glue joints that will be buried under the new wood.

Finally, the entire bottom of the area to be covered is smoothed with hand planes of various types to insure it is flat and true. The next step will be to fit a piece of wood to this hole, as a large piece of inlayed wood, or what Ruben is now calling "The Big Dutchman".

Over on the port side, we've taken the opportunity to remove the shore power plug, which was mounted directly to the cabin side, and cover the hole with the 3/4" inlay. I relocated the shore power plug into the engine room and cut a small groove in the top of one of the engine room hatch boards to let the cord get below. I've never liked having a shore power cord where the salt spray can get to it. Yes, we can put a cover over it, but the darn thing was the only piece of chrome aboard MAYAN and it looked UGLY mounted on the cabin side. In the engine room it'll be safe, dry and out of sight. Re-running the size 6 wires for the 50 Amp connector was a PITA, but now that it's done I'm a much happier guy.

Square Inlay Cut Awaiting New Wood