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Thanks to our Patrons! They are the reason it’s possible for me to make this my full time job and guarantee you’ll see a new episode every two weeks. A new year’s resolution if you will. Soon, we hope to be able to give Patrons early access to episodes and every other week there isn’t a new episode a real-time update. Salt & Tar is growing this year as Rediviva is coming into her own and we can make both a priority! Thank you for your support and helping us grow 🙂

~Ruthie

p.s. If you are interested in becoming a Patron (click here) every $1 helps. You can pledge a dollar or up to infinity and the amount will be withdrawn only when I release a video. This is how I earn a paycheck. I work for you, ourselves, and most demandingly the boat 😉

Waiting on the driveline to be complete is proving difficult… Garrett can’t move on the rest of the interior until he has the engine fully hooked up to the driveline because there’s the possibility of needing to raise the floor. But by how much?

..so we wait..

 Can’t complain really because obviously we’ve been making good progress. I can always tell when Garrett’s been on a roll with projects because the boat desperately needs some tidying 😉

A few finishing touches on mounting the engine rounded out the week. The 3/4in rubber arrived in the mail. Replacing the plywood risers the rubber fits between the engine beds and the new mounts. It’s crazy thick stuff. Garrett tried to rip it with the jig saw but that just started to tear it up. A little team work usually solves the problem.

The rubber will help absorb some of the shake and noise from the engine. Now all the bolts and lags are in, the engine is secure!

Garrett’s pretty ready to switch to some deck work, feeling a little trapped inside, but it would mean totally changing gears and he’s set up for interior projects right now. It’s hard but the best decision is probably to wait. Easier said then done for this captain.

A final rattle test:

ok! Ready for the rest. The driveline company said “end of week” so maybe tomorrow will be the day!?!?

 

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We’ve had bulkheads in the boat before but this feels real. Garrett constructed the template and we finally got to pull out one of the sheets of ply we’ve been sleeping on to cut out our first bulkhead. 5 sheets of plywood have been resting inside the boat under our sleeping pad in the v-berth since the final cabin walls went up. Garrett thought it would be useful to have several full sheets inside the boat for when the time came to build the interior.

A bit cumbersome…

Our cabin is about 6.5 feet wide and almost 16 feet long so the 4×8 sheet of plywood took up more than half our working space but this allowed Garrett to make the bulkhead in nearly one whole piece. If he’d cut from a sheet outside the boat there’d be no way to get it through the companion way. The head bulkhead comes out from the cabin wall 3 feet and with our 2 foot side decks Garrett needed to make a foot wide spacer piece. It’s much nicer to have a seam under the side decks than straight down the middle where the bulkhead would be no longer a decent structural member of the interior.

Now to visualize.

And make a bulkhead appear.

The spacer piece will be behind cabinetry and the whole bulkhead will later be paneled in beautiful western red cedar.

After the bulkhead was secure Garrett moved onto the forward settee of the dinette.

He dismantled the template for the bulkhead and reused the pieces to construct the face of the settee. This will be the forward seat of the dinette which is a lot like a picnic table. It will seat 4 comfortably but I’m sure there will be nights where we squeeze more.

We have more plywood up in the garage so this is when Garrett carries the templates for the smaller jobs from the boat up to the house.

Getting our head right and setting up proper work space is key. Thanks to our host we have and awesome area out of the weather to work. I’m so grateful to have my space inside where I can edit videos especially while most of the interior work is single handed. It’s so nice to still be close by if Garrett does need a hand or if I need a break I can always go film or oil something.

Home Depot is a 5 minute drive away as well as the grocery store. Our favorite burrito spot is a 5 minute walk around the corner and on long work days when we don’t feel like cooking dinner there’s a Chinese restaurant that makes incredible hot and sour soup too. It’s important to remind ourselves how fortunate we are. I feel extremely blessed to be where we are. The drive to get sailing is still as intense as ever because we are NOT land people. It’s great to have the supplies and amenities of society but Garrett can’t wait to catch our dinner! To be free and self-sufficient isn’t the easiest because you have to be capable of handling obstacles, sometimes with little to work with, find happiness in small things, and work with your partner. I feel lucky here too. We’ve never had a whole lot and our tools definitely could manage an upgrade but I find myself happy even with the little things. Garrett works so very hard and is extremely inventive in problem solving. Even in our heavy weather sailing history we’ve never argued. We know our roles and we respect each other. Building this boat has at times felt like one big squall after the next but I try to find the best in everyday.

The day concluded with the rest of the framework for the settee and the inner floor complete with a hatch to the bilge.

There will be a raised floor between the two seats of the dinett

Garrett was a little perturbed at how long it took him to complete a relatively simple days work. It is hard because the mind is so very active it’s exhausting while the body is just plain exhausted. These last years of building Rediviva into the boat she floats as today has taken a lot. Much more than time or money but energy. Garrett’s often joked that he was 23 when he started and now is 53. Funny how four years can feel like thirty. BUT cruising/sailing has a way of turning back the clock so we’ve got that to look forward to. It’ll all even out. Right?

 I drew up the interior as it stands currently. I messed up on the angle of the cabin walls, it’s actually the opposite and angled in at the bow. Our side decks are also bigger than the representation drawn, they are 24 inches, but this will give you an idea of the layout. So Garrett’s completed the forward full bulkhead that is the wall separating the head and the dinette. The first half (the forward seat) of the dinette is mostly finished. Today, Garrett’s big hurdle is constructing the engine box. It has to be completely removable and half of it is apart of the aft seat of the dinette and the other half has to be a high enough of a counter for the exhaust elbow to fit underneath.

 

I wish I could send elves or gnomes in the middle of the night at take away all the rest of the work left. The only way out of it is to go through it, I guess. So much is done! She’s in the water! This is of little solace for my partner when his post-launch list is bigger than the pre-launch list; and it grows daily. We press on. The next video will be out on Tuesday and tomorrow the sun will come out, this I know  🙂
~Ruthie

4 weeks and 2 days soaked and Rediviva has swelled tight. Really at 3 weeks she was pretty dry but we are comfortable now moving onto interior preparations.

For the millionth time this means sorting through and organizing our lumber. We ditched our lumber in multiple places before launching the boat because we just needed it out of our space in the boatyard SO now we had to wrangle it all together to assess what we have. My awesome parents let us make a lumber yard out of the side yard at their house. Garrett cut sticks so we can properly store the wood through the rainy season. We got our workout for sure. One solid day, moving wood into the truck out of the truck, from the bottom of my parents property to the top, and from inside the boat up to the garage. A summary of what we have: Oak, Locust, Fir, Cedar – Red, Spanish and Port Orford, Redwood, Wenge, Blood, Zebra, and more Douglas Fir.

Now that we’ve got that sorted out next was framing for the cabin sole. In about 2 days Garrett got the ruff sole finished. We’ll be planking the floor and adding the floor boards after we’ve settled on the rest of the interior layout.

“Building the interior is so much harder than building the boat…”Garrett confessed. “I’m not an interior designer. We can’t simply just use the interior drawings from the plans because the one thing about the plans we didn’t like was the very narrow side decks. Now that we have 24 inch side decks the interior Buehler had planned will no longer work…so we have to design it ourselves. There’s so many different possibilities and building the boat I had a do-this, do-that, to this measurement instructions but the interior is a blank canvas. It is NOT something I want to do a second time…or third..so the pressure to think about everything is exhausting.”

It’s been about 2 weeks of discussion; or more like staring at our “blank canvas.” In my opinion what got us out of that stalemate was going over to Peggy G (Tiffany and Tyler’s boat, our old boatyard neighbors) and taking some real-boat measurements. Garrett dictated to me the dimensions and I made notes then drew up the interior, upper picture to right. Peggy G is an Aries 32, a round bilge double ender, making her smaller than Rediviva but since we are hard chined our interior space is comparable. It was extremely helpful to see the minimum space needed for things like walk ways, tables, and seating. Peggy G’s walkway at midship is right around 16 inches and her salon seating is at 18 inches with a table only 16 inches wide, and the settee is 21 inches perfect for lounging. These measurements are much smaller than we thought we could get away with. From cabin wall to cabin wall Peggy G is 6 feet where as Rediviva is 6.5 giving us a little more room to work with. So our head will be bigger at 3 feet deep and 2’6” wide:

 

Our head (toilet) will be on port (left side of the boat) with a full size bulkhead (wall) separating it from the rest of the cabin and a half bulkhead just inset front of the forward cabin face to divide it from the v-berth (main bed in the bow of the boat.) This full bulkhead is the first part of the interior, besides the cabin sole (floor,) that is one step closer to making a final decision on the interior layout. Like Garrett said earlier this is not something we want to do over and over again, especially when we start to plank and use finish lumber like Redwood, Wenge, and Blood Wood.

 

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We laid out our idea of the flow of the interior with sticks. A lot is still up in the air as we’ll continue to figure it out as we go but as the pictures scroll above:

Picture #1: Coming down the companionway, a good 2.5ft or so between the two-quarter berths and an 18-inch walkway between galley to starboard and engine box on port

Picture #2: Long counter galley (kitchen) on starboard (right side of the boat) equipped with 3-burner stove/oven (we already have) a fridge/freezer (don’t have) and sink (do have but might change)

Picture #3: Dinette seating with table. We were hoping for a U-shape or L salon but this is what’s most practical for Rediviva.

Picture #4: Port Quarter Berth. Extending under the aft cabin face it’ll be 7 feet or so long and wide enough for two. This will be for additional crew or visitors but also our under-way crash pad and where I can see us watching movies and having morning coffee.

Picture #5: Starboard Quarter Berth. Will be a single bunk, mostly under the aft deck so it may be storage when there’s no additional crew.

Picture #6: Looking aft. Companionway ladder will come straight down between the two-crew/passage bunks. The engine box may have the sink to allow more counter space for the galley. Box will be completely removable for engine maintenance. Partially, the last seat of the dinette will also be apart of the engine box.

Holes. Holes in the cabin ceiling. “It’s so hard to drill holes into the boat when you know she’s completely water tight and doesn’t leak any where!” Garrett said just before he lifted the drill overhead. I was happy to hear his reservations as there was a time I could’ve sworn he loved putting holes and tearing things off the boat… 🙂

 

Garrett added another beam to the ceiling to support the full bulkhead for the head. The rest of the frame work comes down the cabin wall then he’ll construct some cross planks over the ribs (frames) to secure a vertical support for the bulkhead to screw into and finally along the cabin sole there will be another board for the bulkhead to secure at the base.

 

 

We paused in the middle of framing the head because before we install the permanent wall Garrett had a good idea: soup the bilge. I know I’ve written about boat soup before but for those of you who don’t know boat soup is a sailor’s slop designed to keep their wood thriving. Each salt has their own brew. Garrett’s mix for this purpose is mostly Stockholm tar with linseed oil, to keep the wood saturated and protected.

This halted our progress for the rest of yesterday as it’s quite potent. I remember our second wooden boat, Bravata, how her bilge sparkled after her first souping in years. I felt this same pride now.

4 weeks old as a floating boat and she is taking her first steps towards total completion. We are still waiting for all engine assembly parts to arrive but sinking our teeth into the interior is such a joy. The masts and deck hardware come next. Before long we’ll be waving at you from the bay under full sail!

~Ruthie

Now that we’ve decided where the engine is going to be it’s time to permanently secure the Westerbeastie. Resting on 4×6 engine beds wasn’t enough for Garrett…maintaining his “if it’s worth building, it’s worth overbuilding” mentality. There will also be angle iron runners. “What if we get overtaken by huge seas and Rediviva rolls…the engine has to remain on its blocks!” How can I argue with this guy???

We’ve also ordered new engine mounts (picture above on far right) so we’ll have the old ones for back up. Garrett’s also ordered some 3/4 inch rubber sheet that will be a spacer between the mounts and the beds.

The beds are fixed into the floors with foot long hot dipped galvanized nails in three places.

Lubed up with Garrett’s Boat Soup (mainly pine tar) the nails are hammered in.

Then the clean up crew.

The engine mounts aren’t in yet and nor are the driveline parts to complete the engine installation so we’ll have to move the engine one or two more times after this (but we’re getting good at moving it back and forth.)

The beds are secure and now onto the angle iron runners. Garrett’s marking the spots where the lags are going to go so we can take the runners over to Tyler’s neck of the woods and use his drill press to make the holes.

Some how this worked out perfectly: the aft floor is taller than the other forward two the engine beds lay on and Garrett wanted some sort of bracket to tie the runner into the third floor AND the over hang happened to be the right size!

We drove over to Tyler’s spot in the yard and using the drill press made the holes that will tie the beds into the floors a little more.

Then we did the same thing with the overhang for the brackets.

All that’s left before fully installing the runners is to paint the steel. Tyler has some two-part rockstar paint that’s perfect for this. I believe the brand is Devoe, it’s an epoxy coating. We went in on a gallon together because we don’t need a lot and the stuff isn’t cheap. We also used this for our rudder fittings months ago.

Garrett’s been on the phone, on the internet just researching and filling his brain with as much information as he can about u-joints and the various parts that go into the assembly. We’ve ultimately decided to go with a driveline company that specializes in this kind of thing. Mostly cars; however this might be in our favor as we will never have 400 hp or be running an engine at 9,000 rpms so anything they create will most certainly work for our little 52 horse motor where 2500 rpms will be pushing her. The assembly as a whole will include yolks, thrust bearings, a shaft, spiders, and a coupling. I too, have been looking at diagrams and am starting to understand what it is we are doing. I’m looking forward to when we have all the pieces so I can better explain and answer my own questions. This is another experiment of sorts and I think Garrett’s got a very good idea of what he’s doing. More to come!

~Ruthie

Episode 39 is fresh off the boat

We sheath from the waterline down to the chine in a single day. Check it out!

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Happy December!

~Ruthie

It rained for four days; with another 4 days following after the 2 day break in the weather we dropped whatever other project we were working on and decided to embark on Rediviva’s first voyage.

 No matter how big or small the trip might be you always plan ahead. My task, my beloved task as first mate, is to pull out the charts. I’ve so missed doing this! Together, Garrett and I check the weather and tides. Monday was going to be our perfect window. Light and variable winds, tide moving with us at high noon giving us until 3 o’clock before it switches around and works against us, partial clouds, and available crew.

So where are we going?

I have to give my mother credit. She is a match maker weaving all kinds of relationships. Even growing up she’d find me friends, I know that sounds like I was a lame kid and had trouble making friends but my mom loves meeting people, with no concern for age, and finding out their story and interests then hooking them up with other people interested in similar things generating conversation, knowledge, and mutual benefits. It’s a bit of a gift. Back to this story, my mom is in a book club and knows this lovely woman who has a private dock on the Napa River. She made the introduction.

Sunday, the day before, Garrett and I took the kayaks from the dock out to the river entrance to get our bearings. We pointed out landmarks, yellow tree and gazebo mark the half way point and the Italian gondola marks our turn in. After feeling confident about the surroundings it was time to figure distance and if we had enough time between tides to pilot Rediviva with only a dinghy lashed to her side and a 4 horsepower outboard. Making passage plans and researching all options is one of my favorite things. To me it’s like math, there’s always an answer. I found the journey to be about 5 nautical miles and even traveling at 2 knots we’d have plenty of time before the tide switched. Garrett, as captain, has the task of safety and making fast everything on deck. As I stowed and bungeed all below deck, Garrett set up our emergency anchors and fueled up the outboard. He rigged up a bridle for the bow and one for the stern and attached the anchor rode. This was just in case we lost power or steerage and needed to halt the boat.

The captain, seeing all was good, pushed us out of the slip. Tyler and Tiffany, our old neighbors in the boatyard, were our crew. Tiffany helped me film and Tyler was in charge of propulsion.

The four of us worked so well together there was definitely talk of becoming a solid crew in the future, operating a 100ft tall ship charter company. Harebrained Sailors! That’s a dream for another time perhaps 🙂

 This movement marks a new chapter. We are out of the Napa Marina. When we launched the boat and got the slip it was understood that we couldn’t live aboard and couldn’t do any major work. This was okay as we needed a spot to keep the boat but eventually would present a problem as there is still so much work to be done. We could work on the engine and a few interior things but there’d be a point we’d need to look for another space because the table saw and sanders counted as major work.

Thanks to my mom’s extrovert personality and the hospitality of a stranger, we had a private dock to now call home. It was a wonderful day. The sun came out more than we were expecting and with plenty of beer and awesome crew there’s no place I’d rather be. At one point we turned the outboard down to a “high idle” so the trip wouldn’t end. There were shouts from the shore line, fishermen and homeowners, “what a pretty boat,” “sweet boat,” and our favorite “honey, look at that!”

All too quickly we passed our landmarks.

Garrett leaned into me and said, “You’re going to take her in.”

I about yelled but it came out a squeak. I steered the entire way but had no idea Garrett was going to let me dock the boat! There was a time Garrett ran around and did everything on the boat. I don’t know if it was because he wanted to save me the trouble or didn’t want to scare me away. It might’ve also been because I didn’t speak up and say I wanted to learn but that’s changing. I want to be apart of this project and this boat not just the bank or galley wench. I found a love for hand steering and navigating. I drool over charts and am exhilarated by the tender movement of the ship as I push or pull the tiller. I’ve docked only two boats in my history and about a total of 4 times so it was a big honor to guide Rediviva into her slip.

The day had perfect conditions and with no wind to speak of we docked in slow motion, just about as easy as I could have it.

The one concern with this dock was that it’s only 25 feet long. Rediviva overhangs by 10 feet. It didn’t appear as ridiculous as we thought it might. Since her stern has that recurve to the transom she looks “as cute as a button.”

 

Now it was time to feed and drench the crew in libations!

Successful passage to Port Davenport

Thank you for sticking with you folks!
I’m 3 months behind real time but now that the boat is floating I’ll have more time to bridge that time gap 🙂

Hope you enjoy it!

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Meet Charlie. Charlie is a fellow backyard boatbuilder. He launched his build in 1994 down the very same ramp Rediviva traveled last week. He and his wife started, like us, with the construction of a shed to house the steel Robert’s sailboat that was to become. The year was 1970 and in the backyard of their Napa home.

Nearly 50 years later he’s shaking the dust off his father’s 1940’s lathe once again to fabricate boat bits.

 So what are we doing Charlie?

He starts by making square blocks out of the locust lumber we gave him. He then turns those blocks on his lathe to make dowels. Then he chops those dowels up into pieces. Back to the lathe he turns those pieces into parrel beads.

He’s only done a hundred…

A gaff rigged sailboat works by raising the gaff up the mast with the peak and throat halyard (two lines) then making fast the throat you continue to haul on the peak to tension the sail. Unlike a marconi rigged sailboat (today’s standard configuration) which raises its sails along a track the gaff requires either hoops (photo on left above) or parrel beads (right photo), the later being what we’ve chosen. Charlie is spending his weekends turning beautiful black locust beads for us. Not quite sure how many we’re going to need, including some spares, but the guess-timate is somewhere around 300 or more.

 

“How many do you want me to do?”

 

 

Thank you Charlie!

He places the round of locust with the grain orientation just so, so that the jaws of the lathe doesn’t tear or split the bead as it’s spun. Side A gets rounded and counter sunk then flip to side B and repeat. Then switch the counter sink bit for a drill bit and slowly clear the middle making a bead.

It’s so wonderful of Charlie to make these for us! It’s neat to be making progress on the rig before Garrett and I even get to that stage. Charlie’s hungry for more projects apparently because he wanted to talk belaying pins next! He’s an animal.

Two handsome self-made shipwrights who learned by doing and saw their dream float. Charlie and his wife have some time on us as they floated off into the sunset years ago and logged some serious sea miles, we better catch up!