Building Excitement for the "Bon Voyage"!

(Dazed and hungry, I'm taking a break  to post some photos and notes of the last week!

https://picasaweb.google.com/103461058936929561161/BuildingExcitementForBonVoyage#

Contents!

Big fun at big party! 

Final projects

Voyage possibilities

Final Friday Get Together at Berkeley Marina!

We're getting ready for the upcoming departure from our Berkeley home-away-from-home, on our way to LA, Mexico and Beyond! Everyone is excited, trying to take time to finish our work here on the Libertatia, as well as enjoy the brilliant spring and our kind friends in the Bay Area! The weather has been perfect and we are all in good spirits for our upcoming trip to Los Angeles.

Big Fun at Big Party!

Thanks to everyone who came out to our big Party at Berkeley Marina! We could not believe the amazing people and great food who all came out. One big moment was at sunset where we had an estimated 80 people on board the libertatia! I was amazed. Special thanks to Cree Partridge for making the special arrangements possible for this special event. Also, thanks to everyone who rafted up and espeically 'Bama (Kurt) for holding down the party and making lunch starting at 10:30 am (!yeah!). 

Cree cooks out on the docks.

Emmett is excited!

Final Projects to get ready!

The Mackies take over the Libertatia

Crystal splicing new double braid halyards in the sun; a tough puzzle. 

We are all working hard to knock out the critical projects left and make final arrangements for food and other necessities. Joining us to sail for a while is Alden Mackie, a childhood friend of Emmett's and good sailor. We were lucky enough to party with the Mackie Clan and Grandma Jean recently as well as have Kimo Mackie accompany us on a sail to consider new suggestions for optimizing sail trim.

Among other projects, this week we installed new batteries, installed the rebuilt windlass, improved the running rigging and are installing a new compass.

James repaints the name on the Bow with awesome style!

Mary helps us out again!

Alden and Lowell install the rebuilt windlass

Anthony simulates temporary sea madness in
the rigging after helping us for just a single afternoon.  

We are parceling and serving our rigging with a traditional
serving mallet. The idea is to protect the metal wire rope
from rusting with oil. It's pretty crazy; you whip a roll of string around the
 rope and it creates a tight protective covering that soaks up oil
and resists the salty ocean. 

Voyage Possibilities

We're going to be taking off for the Channel Islands and will likely stay in LA for a week or so. Weather permitting we'll be on our way to San Diego and then Baja to enjoy summer and wait for a window in the hurricane season to move on to Central America. Our larger plans seek to put us in South America early next year, but we want to go where the opportunities for fun group projects and unique connections or opportunities to help people out! Stay in touch with us if you have unique ideas for connections or cool places to go!

Final Friday Fun at BMC

We're shoving off this weekend and throwing a last get together on Friday at 7. Please stop by! We'd love to see you one last time. I love california and we're all sad to go but excited to see the world!

check the photos from this week!
https://picasaweb.google.com/103461058936929561161/BuildingExcitementForBonVoyage#

Splashing Saturday Shakedown Sail and Fun on Angel Island!

Splashing Saturday Shakedown Sail and Fun on Angel Island!
(For more photos check here!)

https://picasaweb.google.com/103461058936929561161/BlogPost415

Hard work to get ready.

Sailing out of the gate

Big seas

Back to Angel Island

Getting ready for a big send off party this weekend!

Hello readers! We've been working hard to refit and tune our boat's systems to get  ready for our trip south! Everyone's been working hard on our rig, splicing Spectra running backstays, triatic line, Kevlar running forestays, and changing many of the lines and blocks for easier sailing. (Thanks to everyone (richard!)who's donated blocks and lines!) Additionally, we've improved our boat with new shelves, drawers, new oars, mizzen mastboot, cockpit seats, classic deck bucket, new VHF antenna, fixed the oven and stove, rebuilt the starter and raw water pump on the engine, painted and tuned the engine, new head (thanks again papa Steve), rebuilt our awesome windlass!, new manual bilge pump, and much more! Phew! we've been busy!

Big Waves and Bright Sunshine!

Out of the gate and back!

To celebrate, we planned a shakedown with some friends to the Farallon Islands last Saturday to test our many new fixes and improvements. 

Crystal's first day sailing out of the gate

Weather was beautiful in the bay and weather reports seemed favorable, but as soon as we got out of the gate we were right in the middle of big waves and the big ocean feeling! It was great to be out in big rolling seas, but the conditions were really tough, with tall, short period waves making for a queasy feeling among much of the group. However, the Libertatia herself was undaunted, and performed great with lots of new rigging and a crew of new and experienced sailors.

With brilliant sunshine in our face, but rough waves under our keel, we decided to return back to the bay. We were lucky to see some friends in the "Clipper Around the world race" reaching south to panama! Good Luck to Uncle Terry, Captain Richard and the rest of the Gold Coast crew! We are rooting for you! 

Back to Angel Island

Louie and the Vectis

Our Friend Bob and Angel Island

It was amazing to feel the wind die down and swell retreat as we entered the protection of the bay and we had a wonderful time anchoring off the NE tip of Angel Island. Most of the crew slipped off to sleep while some stayed up late in to the night enjoying the beautiful skies and good company of our friends. The next day found many exploring angel island and lots of rowing through swirling eddies and currents. Our afternoon took us on a brisk downwind sail back to Berkeley Marina. On the way, we spotted a good friend, Louie Richard at the helm of another classic wooden boat, the Vectis. Built in 1929, Vectis looked fast and beautiful in the fair wind and light swell. 

Getting ready for Upcoming trip!

Now, back at our home base in the bay at Berkely Marine Center, continuing to tune things up and dig in to the last big stretch of work. We are planning our departure at the end of April south to LA, Mexico and beyond. To celebrate, we are having a Bon Voyage party Saturday Evening April 21 at Berkeley Marina! To all our friends; please come!


(For more photos check here!)

https://picasaweb.google.com/103461058936929561161/BlogPost415#

Getting Crafty and Action on the Internet

Ahoy good people! Seasons greeting from Berkeley where the season has finally changed! The last week has brought us drizzle and rain as well as the first good blow we've had since being here. Exciting! We've taken a break from painting and other outside boat projects but have been busy indoors.

We've been having a lot of fun with rubber stamps and silk-screens, making prints, posters, t-shirts and business cards for the boat. It's been great to take a relaxing break from epoxy and head repair to delve into more artistic pursuits, a part of life that is sometimes eclipsed by boat maintenance. We hope that this is the beginning of a new era of creativity aboard our good ship. We also hope to make t-shirts, patches, and posters available for purchase in the near future. Keep your eyes out!


We've also spent a bit of time organizing on the old computer, organizing and making many of our photos from the last few years available for viewing online. It's about time! For anyone that is interested, you can see the photos at https://picasaweb.google.com/103461058936929561161?feat=email


Stay tuned as we update the picasa and blog with more photos from the archive as well improve the content on the pages of the blog. We hope you're warm and happy wherever you may be and don't forget to have a surfalicious day!

Happy New Year from Bezerkeley

Light wind off Treasure Island

Hello all! January finds us at the dock in Berkeley, living the East Bay dream. Although our lives aboard have not been nearly as focused as they were when we were on the hard, we've kept quite busy earning money, singing and pickin', hanging out with friends, and, as always, chipping away at the Libertatia project list...

I heard recently that one should spend the first day of the new year doing what one wishes to be doing in the coming year and, unknowingly at the time, we did a great job of this. On New Year's Eve, we cast off the docklines from the fuel dock and headed out into the bay bound for our favorite SF bay hunt, Aquatic Park, just down the hill from Ghiradelli Square. We had made plans to see our friends perform in the city (The Range of Light Wilderness) and after some discussion about how to get to and from the show, decided that we should take advantage of our mobile home and sail on over. We were graced with the presence of our good friend Kat, who we met in Hawaii, and had a delightful run across the bay, dropping the hook as darkness fell. Shortly thereafter we loaded the bikes in the dinghy and rode off towards the Mission to celebrate the new year with a long night of dancing and fun. 

Part of our inspiration to take the boat out that weekend was the annual  New Year's Day regatta and chili potluck, hosted by the Master Mariners Association. We made the acquaintance of several wooden boat enthusiasts while out in the yard who invited join in the fun. Despite the condition of the boat (splotches of primer, piles of wood on the half-painted deck, missing boomkin bobstays and lifeline stanchions, etc.), we were seriously encouraged to come out by our friends from the yard and so we tightened the running backstays and met everyone in Clipper Cove for the sail to Richmond. Often you can't wait for everything to be ready, you just have to go! The race (more of a fun rendezvous than anything else) was quite fun, with a steady breeze picking up in the afternoon, and we poked along to a last-place finish and grand entrance at the Point San Pablo Yacht Club. We had a very fun night of whooping it up with our friends, old and new, playing music, and talking about boats. Truly a great group of people.

The following weekend we again made our way back out onto the bay for an awesome daysail, out under the bridge and ending up again on the hook in Aquatic Park. As with the previous weekend, it was great fun to be out as well as quite important for get out there and remember why we are working so hard. Sometimes it's easy to forget...


We were joined by a great group of friends from the bay area and were accompanied by many at the monthly chantey sing, aboard the Balclutha at the Hyde Street Pier. If we thought that we had a lot of boat on our hands with the Libertatia, it was sure an eye-opening experience to be aboard the big square-rigger. It was very fun just to be aboard to marvel at the scale of the whole operation and imagine the energy it once took (and continues to take) to maintain and operate the sophisticated ship. Truly incredible. The chantey sing was just as amazing: loosely led by a core group of singers, over one hundred enthusiastic people filled the ship's topmost cabin with beautiful and spirited songs of the sea. Many different people (including Lowell and Vincent) led chanteys over the four hours which the sing spanned, punctuated only by the hourly hot cider breaks. All and all a great night. The next day we spent the morning in the city before hauling anchor. For us, one of the best parts about being in Aquatic Park is the no-engine policy which gets us practicing our maneuvers and seamanship without the old iron spinnaker. On the way in the previous night, Vincent towed us in the dinghy and Lowell provided the assist as we ghosted out the next day. That we experienced our first grounding in the mid-channel silt on our way into the Berkeley harbor on a big tide but we took advantage of the situation to have a group meeting free from distraction before floating off and back to the dock.

Vincent's valiant yet unsuccessful attempt to heel the boat and unstick us

We all have spent a good part of the past few weekdays off the boat earning money but we've had time to get a few things done. We are almost done with a fresh coat of paint on the trim, cabin , deck, and spars and we've gotten started on a few large projects. Vincent has begun to tackle the engine maintenance and I've been up in the rig addressing the soft eye thumbs which seem to unfortunately be migrating down the mast as the stays pull down on them - a good thing the address before doing any serious sailing again!

All and all, things are well aboard and spirits are high. Special thanks goes out to the Master Mariners for including us in their festivities, to all our friends who brighten our life (and sometimes help on the boat) and especially to the Berkeley Marine Center for being such excellent hosts. We'll be in touch as things progress. Don't forget to have a surfalicious day and happy new year!



For more pictures of our past few weeks click here. For a handful of pictures from our adventures and exploits in SF before the haul-out click here. Thanks!   

Haul-Out in the East Bay

On the way to Berkeley

Before

After

Aloha from the Berkeley Marine Center, where the Libertatia sits back in the water at the gas dock. The last few weeks have been busy as we worked everyday to rejuvenate the old gal after nearly 17 months of living aboard and over 5,000 miles at sea. We are all a little worn from our blast of work on the hard and boatyard living but we are quite pleased with the result of our efforts. The remain a multitude of above-the-water projects to address now that we are back afloat but below the waterline we did quite well.

The old look

The new look

As you can see from the pictures, the most striking change to the boat is the topside color. Although we loved our original black paint job, the Pettit polyurethane paint that we so very carefully applied a year and half ago was just blistering off because of the heat generated by the dark color. In places on the hull in the shade of the boomkin or the toerails, the paint was still in great condtition and it was obvious that the hot color was the issue. We spent a few days sanding off the remaining black paint, with great difficulty in some places, and decided on a cream color to replace it. Aside from the hull, we are going to stick with the same color scheme and hope to touch up everything (toe rails, rub, rails, cabin, trim, and spars) in the coming days. Even though we have been extraordinarily lucky when it come to the unseasonably great weather we've had while in Berkeley, it's still been difficult to find nice windows in which to paint. Between foggy mornings, dew, cold temperatures and early sunsets it's been a trick to apply paint and get it to skin over before the moisture settles in the afternoon. Despite the difficulty, we've been careful and have been generally successful in getting the paint to look good.

Seaworm damage

When we pulled here out we were pleasantly surprised to find no big surprises below the waterline. We knew of most all of the issues as we dove on the boat extensively while still in the warm waters of Hawaii. The one small surprise, however, was teredo worm damage on the leading edge of the rudder. While in Seattle we constructed a replacement for the old oak rudder, which was badly warped, and it was a bit of a shock to see the first inch of the year-old sapele wood riddled with small holes and tunnels. Of all the things that we had read about when it comes to operating and maintaining a wooden boat, seaworms were definitely the scariest and most mysterious of the issues that we had yet to encounter and it was actually kind of cool to get some experience dealing with the little buggers. Our fix consisted of carving out and opening up as much of the tunneled area as we could, filling with penetrating and then thickened epoxy, and finally covering the entire rudder with a thin layer of thickened epoxy in hopes of keeping out the worms in the future. This is definitely an area we will keep an eye on as time goes by...


Aside from the rudder, our other under-the-water projects included a few small spots on the deadwoods where we excised some punky wood and replaced it with new graving pieces, a fill and a scarf on the sternpost where our former boomkin bobstay chainplate had ripped out (it was lagged in, unfortunately, to avoid the rudder post), the move of the two remain boomkin bobstay chainplates to provide a better angle of support for the boomkin, and the replacement of the old cutlass bearing. 

Of anything during the haul-out, we spent the most time prepping and painting the bottom. We removed the remaining ablative paint with the yard's vaccuum sanders and scraped off the pooched-out seam sealer that had squeezed out a touch as the planks swelled up. Before painting the old cast iron keel we put a lot of energy into cleaning the metal with a pneumatic "needler," hitting it with a wire cup on an angle grinder, and wiping it down before applying two coats of a Rustlok primer and the bottom paint. We were very generously given over five gallons of Trinidad hard anti-fouling paint which we applied before slopping on the ablative paint we had purchased for the job. In Hawaii we had been frustrated by the bottom job we had and it will be exciting to see how our careful prep and paint holds up in the coming years. 

Aside from the paint it was very cool to see how well the boat has held up since we launched her in July of 2010: a testament to the quality of materials and craftsmanship that went into her when she was built. There is no doubt that many people have given her a lot of love over the years and really it's not much of surprise that she remains pretty sound for yet another year.

Our experience in the yard in Berkeley has been great. Cree and the team have been very good to us and it's been a real pleasure to be here. It's been nice to be in a yard with other do-it-yourselfers as well as watching the pros at work. One of the highlights for all of us has been watching Steve Hutchison doing a number of extensive repairs to a couple of old wooden fishboats. I think that we've always been intimidated by the prospect of larger repairs but to see guys blazing through serious projects gives us a new perspective. Hopefully we'll never have to do them though...

As usual, our time in the yard was brightened by many friends, old and new, who came to visit, help-out, serenade us, or just to hang out. We definitely couldn't have accomplished what we did with such ease or in the time we spent out of the water without the encouragement and hard work of a number of people. Although our boat-yard scene was still a far cry from the wildness of our time in South Park, it was fun to be back camping in the yard and reminiscing about our restoration. Although living in a boatyard is not what we want to do, it sure can be fun in small doses. When we were ready for a break all we had to do was walk out of the yard and we were in Cesar Chavez Park, looking out across the bay at the city and the golden gate to the west.

Now that we are back in the water we are shifting gears out of full-on work mode. After a break for the holidays, we hope to settle into a routine of chipping away at our project list, working and saving money, planning our coming adventures aboard the Libertatia, and having a lot of fun! Happy Holidays to all of you who are reading this and thanks for your interest and support. Our big thanks go out to everyone who helped out on the boat or given us materials this time around. We couldn't do it without you. Feel free to contact us and until next time...


For more pictures of our haul out click here