Spudwell S1

Tuesday 1/30/07

I’m feeling in the groove here, like I’m living up to John’s knickname for me, “Tanker Princess.”

Ernie and I are getting along like a house afire. I’m feeling on top of this project.

I go down to check status of the forward spudwell. I never feel too welcome with this team, Roach always has a way of keeping his head down, no eye contact. I don’t have a sense of the other guy; but, I’ve always loved the cavernous, moody spaces of the cargo tanks and so this spudwork is great to photograph.

I’m loving photography again. The camera that Erica delivered yesterday, the latest little Elph, is astounding. Auto mode can expose images in low light and high contrast, it has a wide lens, a view finder even, and makes a 20 meg file! This little $400 cigarette pack is out performing my “pro” Nikon D1X that only makes a 19 meg file. No, Canon is not a sponsor. Hmmm…Hello, Canon?

Then I look down near the spudwell, I see that the Whalen’s gangway pin, a 4’ steel rod, threaded at one end with an eye at the other, has been used to lever the spud in place. The threads are mashed.

Something blasts out of me. “Yo pago, yo mando” (I pay, I give orders) and continue to dictate in Spanish that they will not use parts of the boat as tools, they’ll go off the boat for tools. I steam up the ladder “joder.”

Straight to Ernie “I have my first close-to-complaint.” Ernie is back in a few with the rod. He’s smirking. “I took care of it.” He waves the rod. “Yes, Ernie, the threads look better in daylight, yes, they can be recut.” I mutter about Roach’s attitude. Ernie tactfully points out, “you have to understand, it’s a macho thing… and his relationship to women is that they put bills in his underwear.” I laugh. Good joke about Roach's former job as a stripper, but maybe very wise. I move on.

I check in on the laborers cleaning out the crawl space underneath the forward engine room floor. Because the forepeak was not pumped out promptly, and the bulkhead failed, the water ran back into the next space; and as it wasn’t pumped out of THERE promptly, there are cakes of rust ice in the bottom of this compartment. Ernie doesn’t want to use heat to melt it as that will ruin the paint, so a team of Hispanics is hunkered in there smashing ice.

Diligent Freddy continues working round the hull, washing of steel. He’s always alone, up high on scaffolding or a high reach. Burning open the bow steel leads to lots of smoke and lots of looking from below and from within, looking to understand the structure, the damage and to devise a plan.

After lunch, I go back into cargo tank S1 to make nice with Roach. He says “this must be a special project, they never put me on work like this." I don't really know what to say, but at least we're talking. The day concludes without episode. We're all in the groove.

Looking for daylight

Monday 1/29/07

0715 I return to the Navy Yard from Oyster Bay to find a perilous cake of ice all over the place. No plows in operation here! Debby Romano is coming to borrow the pickup, and I warn her about my old tires.

0730 Boyfriend John Gladsky arrives in the Yellow Rose, his ex-Port Authority utility truck, with more steel plate. GMD has generously let us bring our own steel (squirreled away by John over the years) rather than make me buy it at new steel rates. China is gobbling up the world’s scrap steel supply, and prices for new steel ratchet up relentlessly.

1000 Erica Reynolds, PortSide wonder, is coming to tackle some office stuff. She was an amazing find at a Pratt Internship fair a year and a half ago. Her last job before art school was running a $2.5 million dollar Brooks Brothers store in Dallas. In addition, she has strong design skills, works as a contractor, and she can weld. A PortSide kinda gal! I pick her up at DUMBO’s York Street F stop. She laughs at me. “You look like a miner.” My face is covered in coal dust. I didn’t know.

Erica’s first task is to combine the various GMD estimates, from pre-haul out through discoveries of bad bottom steel, into one Excel document. Yup, we’re at max. I won’t be adding to the punch list. She’s also picked up a new digital camera and will set it up and give me pointers. The loaner camera has been overexposing and suffers from slow shutter. The photo record has been scanty as a result.

The spudwell pipe that will hold the spuds (internal pilings) is inserted in the forward deck hole, tomorrow they’ll trace where to cut through the bottom and let it down. There are some gaps where the spudwell meets the deck. Boyfriend John won’t be happy. He’s been coming almost daily to check in. I know it’s hard for him to let anyone else do steelwork, but sometimes I do wish he’d lighten up. I thought I was a perfectionist, but he’s intense.

Ernie comes in to report that the bottom steel under the forward engine room is not as bad as he expected. We go down together for a look see. The watertight compartment under that engine room floor was clearly not serviced for years. Rust mud must have sat at the lowest points and slowly oxidized the bottom and bulkhead (structural wall). It all gave way under the pressure of the ballast water put into the forepeak and the weight of the boat herself once she sat on the blocks.

GMD clearly expected the boat to be fragile or a mess because they put an awful lot of blocks under her. This spares any one section of the hull from carrying too much weight, but it also means blocks will have to be moved to get at the steel repair. We’ve been waiting three days for the dockmaster Bobby O’Connor to come by and approve block movement by the forepeak, and he finally does come, and does approve. Not a surprise, just news I was plenty ready to hear. I won’t know the full extent of the financial hit until we can see all the mess.

Ishmael begins cutting open bow steel, and I and go prowling for a hole I suspect exists. I had one of those jolt-me awake thoughts the other morning, a few days after we found the lower rub rail on the starboard side all wasted. “There must be a hole behind the wasted starboard rail!” Lying in bed, I remembered how one time last September, I came aboard after several days of rain to find two feet of water in cargo tank S4 (aftmost tank on starboard side). There had never been water there before; there were no holes cut in the deck above that tank as there were in S1 and P4 in anticipation of a spudwell hole. I pumped S4 but never saw water there again, and couldn’t figure out at the time how it got there. What occurs to me this week is that the week of rain lowered the boat just enough to put a hole under water, and we’d never seen daylight coming through the hole before because it must have been behind a hollow guard rail.

I enter tank S4 with Freddy looking for daylight. Nope, not behind the guard rail; but there it is higher and more astern, a small glint, too small to get a welding rod through. So small we can’t see it from outside even with a screw pushed through it. I descend into the tank again and insert a coiled pink Post-it because the pink shows up against the black hull. This works. A week after sandblasting, and we are still finding steel to repair, and yes holes this small are significant. Freddy and I check P4 for good measure. Nothing.

1630 I take Erica to the train. Next, the Red Hook post office to get a PO box. PortSide and I are in postal limbo. We left Beard Street because the landlord said he needed the apartment for his son (though we’ve just learned that he was using an old ploy; it’s not a relative with his name on the bell); but the tanker isn’t yet usable for sustained periods. We are camped out at my boyfriend’s in Oyster Bay--with a lot of stuff in storage. Time to get a PO box until we have full-time offices aboard the tanker and some pier address.

To return my pick up, Debby and I agree to rendezvous at Pedro’s in DUMBO, my new home away from home. How this hole in the wall, or hole in the ground (it’s below street level) has survived the gentrification of DUMBO I don’t know. Coffee is still 50 cents, and a hefty plate of pork, beans and rice at lunch is $5. Conveniently, it is a block away from the York Street F stop, so I decide to have all future visitors stop here for warmth and a coffee while I drive out of the Navy Yard to get them.

After dinner, I find trash from RR Framing, a barrel of wood slats, perfect kindling for the potbelly. I return to the Whalen for a night with plenty of heat but another criminally slow internet connection. Email is a snail; Blogger won’t upload. Will I ever get caught up on blog posts?

Leaking Mushrooms

Sunday 1/28/07

0430. I wake up for being too hot. Have my potbelly maintenance skills bounced back? Yes, but the cause for warmth is a freak jump in temperature-- I hear dripping. The upside of living aboard during a cold January is that all the deck leaks stop (and you can leave all the diary products on the table all day); now the deck leaks are back. I move my slippers from a new drip coming through a mushroom vent. I’ve decided all the mushroom air vents have to be pulled up and reseated. Most are leaking; best to get ‘em all before the last ones join in. I reposition all the drip buckets on the fidley deck and in the disaster cabin, formerly the Assistant Engineer’s cabin. This will become Erica’s and my office, but it has a long way to go. The Engineer’s cabin, just forward of that, is the soundest one on the boat.

The Whalen carried two engineers because she is a “bell boat.” There had to be an engineer on each watch because the engineers controlled the throttle while standing two or three levels below the captain in the wheelhouse. The Captain only controlled the helm (direction) and communicated speed and direction commands by ringing a bell or a jingle which prompted the engineer to move the levers on the telegraph. “Bells are direction, jingles are speed” says the crib sheet taped to the antique instrument panel. Speaking tubes allowed other commands to be bellowed up and down from engine room to wheelhouse.

The yard crew isn't working today. I'm hanging around for visitors. Two old friends show up for tanker tourism: Cate Cochran, producer for the CBC show Sunday Edition who taped oral history of Todd Shipyard for PortSide before IKEA closed on the property. She’s down from Toronto; and Elizabeth Zeschin a photographer who I assisted in the 1980s, in town from London for a shoot. Elizabeth was shooting Martha Stewart’s Gardening Book at the time, which gave me a solid grounding in how to fake naturalistic lighting--and real insight into how not to run a home. Cate and Elizabeth go gaga over the tanker, Elizabeth shooting more than visiting. Her esthetic seems to have morphed from her 1980’s obsession with Victoriana to industrial hulks. They race off after a short while, two more women who do too much, and I linger waiting for Bob Guskind, saavy blogger of the Gowanus Lounge.

After he’s had his fill of photographing and video-ing the Whalen, I’m free to head for boyfriend John’s, to rest up, enjoy running water and to try uploading more blog posts. Methinks it’s not just the slow connection on the tanker. Blogger’s interface is pokey, especially with photos. I arrive to find that little Lulu has cottoned to John during the 10 days since her eviction for the Whalen. She now cuddles up to him more than me. Little trollop.

A slow Saturday

Saturday 1/27/07

The crew has withered even more. Yesterday’s 9 degree day followed by a Friday night makes for a nearly abandoned yard on Saturday. Even Machine doesn’t show up. Ernie is here, and so is Freddy, forever burning steel bits off the hull, but hardly anyone else.

Brunch is brought by Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer, and his wife Elaina Ganim, an artist, archivist, text editor and fiction writer, their four legged sidekick Mila. With them are Mia Beurskens, a graphic designer who has been involved with PortSide, and her boyfriend.

Boyfriend John Gladsky, with his diesel mechanic Capt. Frank Persico, make a surprise appearance. We all have lunch in the galley. Frank runs a dive boat on the weekends and used to work on a tanker much like the Whalen and regales with tales.

Though Tim has spent lots of time on the Whalen, he’s wowed by her out of the water. Part of the jolt, I'm sure, comes from feeling that plans, talk, visioning are now becoming solid as the hull gets whipped into shape; but Tim also has an appreciation of steel fabrication. His artist father John worked as a welder in Maine shipyards before getting a position teaching art, sculpture, design and drawing at the Maine College of Art.

After the guests admire the Whalen hull and the granite dock, I propose we go see the caisson. Gladsky is not interested in the junket. “No, I’ve seen the caisson, I salvaged it once.” John’s line of work is heavy lift marine salvage. He picks up big things that sink, and workboats and harbor infrastructure sink more than one would imagine. John’s parting comment is to point out the muzzle of a buried cannon serving as a bollard. These cannons, Civil War surplus, dot this place -- reminders of how much history there is to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and how casually it has been treated.

There is such a meager yard crew to monitor that Ernie has time for tourism. He joins us visiting the caisson and the dock pumproom, a subterranean brick cylinder that houses the original 1851 pumps, now electrified. The dock is working on only one pump as one of the two tunnels is clogged. Ernie has plans to clean it out somehow.

Mia volunteers to select a font for the Whalen’s name. The last one was scrunched between fenders that took up a lot of space on the bow. Those are long gone, and Freddy has been washing off the remains of what held them in place, and the bow looks much cleaner. I’ve decided to return the bow paint job and name placement to what is likely the original position -- based on a photo of the S.T. Kiddoo, the Mary Whalen’s original name. Charlie Deroko tells me that "spirket plate" (“Amaze your friends and fool your enemies with that one”) is the name for the panel now repainted white. Spirket Plate?! I’ve never heard the term before and resolve to Google the word one night when I have nothing to do, should such a moment arise.

So… the work report being light this day, there’s more space for photos from the week.

Aft draft numbers are elongated so they read correctly when seen from above (from the dock or waterlevel) and looking down the concave shape of the after end of the boat.

Spent welding rod and blast grit in ice at the bottom of the dock.

9 degrees

Friday 1/26/07

I flip on the radio in the pickup. WNYC says it’s 9 degrees. Ugh. I think the crew would benefit from sugar and caffeine propulsion. I’ll pick up extra coffee and donuts. I call Ernie and ask how many guys are coming in. Eight he says, quite a drop from Mussel Men day. I pull in to the dock at 0730; it sounds abandoned. The cold affects sounds making them small and tinny. I give a coffee to Machine, to two Hispanic guys who look to be engaged in make-work near a bucket fire, and to Freddy the burner. Ernie is already too busy to stop for coffee. Does that guy ever get any rest?

The good news is that I can’t see my breath in my bunkroom. The oil-filled electric radiator kept the worst at bay once the potbelly went out. Note to file: I could have slept on board. The galley situation is otherwise. No dish washing today! As I pour, the water freezes to slush in its gallon container and freezes hard to the sink on impact.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I had a metal fabricator make a new chimney section to replace a corroded one above the galley stove, a cast iron “pot burner” that runs on diesel and I’m told makes the galley roasty toasty. However, I was too busy to pick up the new chimney part before we dry-docked; and though we got it before the cold snap, it wasn’t made correctly and had to be returned. My hopes of diesel-baked cookies are dashed for now, along with any chance of easily heating dish- and hand-washing water. I’ve realized it’s not the cold that is the big hassle, it is the effect on water that is the big drag. I can’t pour water down the galley sink drain for fear of freezing it shut. The portasan (cheerfully promoting itself with “We’re #1 in removing #2) is OK except for night visits up a gangway at 20 degrees while wearing pajamas. I resort to a bucket aboard, with salt water to deter freezing.

The cold has cascading effects on all systems. I have two camping stoves that run on butane aerosol cans. All the cans seemed to peter out early until it occurred to me that they were de-pressurizing in the cold air of the galley. I now keep a few cans on my desk in my potbelly-warmed cabin and bring them to the galley for each use. My cabin is acquiring a mountain man décor as a growing number of things are stored there so they don’t freeze, harden up, or become uncomfortable if cold: all my clothes, computer, cameras, batteries and chargers, butane, water (potable and non-potable), the honey, hand lotion, and contact lens solutions (no necessary chemical action below certain temperatures I’ve learned).

My ears perk up when Ernie says there are guys working in the caisson, the floating door that caps one end of the dock. I head over and down a steep ladder. What a great place to work today! A cozy, riveted bubble out of the wind. I find two cheerful fellows turning bolts and chatting in a language I don’t recognize. Armando and Nonoy, mechanics, Philippinos, there to replace an 80 year-old pump in the 156 year-old caisson. Armando is a big fan of photography, and upon hearing that I used to work as a photojournalist, offers volunteer mechanical services on the Whalen. Thank you! We have quite a laundry list of mechanical things needing repair.

The caisson is really a boat, elliptically shaped like a double-ended canoe with rounded ends. Pipes through its core allow the dock to be flooded, a row of valves inside down the center, controls the flooding of the dock (takes 2-3 hours). Once the dock is flooded, the caisson is pumped out (takes 1 hour) by the large pump Armando and Nonoy are replacing. When empty, the caisson floats and is swung open. A vessel enters the dock, the caisson is swung closed, and pumped full again until it sinks in position. The 285 foot dock is pumped out (3-4 hours) by a cast iron monster housed in a subterranean brick room at the head of the dock.

It’s tough to repair the exterior shell plating of the caisson as the dock is in constant use (there is a severe shortage in port of repair facilities for workboats), so the crew plugs leaks at the sides with “the sausage” a long dangling tube of plastic filled with plastic and sand.

There is little visible progress on the Whalen today. The crew has shrunk with the cold; and most work is about planning the attack on the bottom. There is nothing major. Charlie Deroko’s survey of last January very accurately assessed the hull as essentially sound. The yard is eager to move on the steel work; there is a New York City fireboat waiting to come in right after the Whalen. However, the yard is also reluctant to move the blocks under the forepeak until Bobby the dockmaster can assess the load on the boat there. Now I hear he’s not available til Monday. Bow work stops; and the focus shifts to cutting the holes in the bottom for the two spudwells, the sleeves that will hold the spud (internal piling) that will allow the Whalen to “dock” in places without a dock. This brings a new man on the scene Roach, the fitter. He’ll be doing “the penetrations” which leads to some joking with Ernie due to Roach’s prior line of work as a male stripper.

Fitting the spudwells requires precise calculations. The ship should not ride on spuds at a diagonal, so we have to determine the future trim of the boat (the tilt from bow to stern) and then cut the perforations to match that trim. You can’t use a plumb bomb to place the bottom hole because the boat could be leaning one way or another. Turns out that her trim when setting on the blocks looks about right (which has her keel almost dead level.) This trim makes much of the ullage trunk (raised center deck over cargo tanks) almost flat and more easily walkable, and tips the boatdeck (deck above the galley and cabins) down enough so rainwater should run off better. However, putting the spudwells in for her current trim means that we’ll have to get her bow down once she’s back afloat. ow

I discussed changing the trim with Our Anonymous Engineer last year; but for lack of ship plans, we couldn’t calculate how much weight was needed. Thanks to this docking, we’ve learned that a forepeak full of water, plus the two cement blocks achieves this trim. I’ve got to measure those blocks so he can estimate the cement weight, the water weight he can calculate by forepeak volume.

However, if we refill the forepeak with water, we should protect those steel surfaces. That means blasting, painting, and installing zincs there. I’ll have to talk to Ernie and likely Joe Eckhardt, the chief estimator, and see if there is budget to at least blast and paint now. We can do the zincs ourselves. owH

The work in Dry Dock 1 peters out early; the cold is exhausting. There will be no night shift, and I’m looking forward to this first long, uninterrupted evening so I can catch up converting notes to blog posts. But first, I’ll stop by Gary Baum’s carpentry shop to get some kindling, look in on my 26’ powerboat in Red Hook, and then type away.

I’m bustling around the tanker tidying up, multitasking as ever. While talking to Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer, I decide to take the poo bucket up to the portasan. I have my cellphone wedged between ear and shoulder; and right after I think this is not such a good idea, the phone falls into the bucket. Shit! Literally. Another digital failure…for purely analog reasons. I have a flashback to a book I once saw near a bookstore cash register where they keep those little impulse-buy items: “Women who do too much.”

I wipe the phone off with 409 to sterilize it and race to the Verizon store to get the data off it before it crashes, the life is flickering out of it. I try getting it replaced for free (“this phone is really crap, it drops calls…) and maintain a straight face throughout. It has in fact been a crap phone during it’s 2 months in my hands, but I don’t succeed. A hour plus and $260 goes down the tubes at the Verizon store. The workday ends not with a bang but a wimper.

Sea Chests

Thursday, 1/25/07

I ended up sleeping on the boat after all. While I was having dinner, Ernie had called to say the painting was done. So fast? I raced back to the boat to check and found an abandoned yard and a black hull. Rather startling change after all the delays getting here and then getting sandblasted.

0915 Charlie Deroko returns for more steel inspection and discussion. We have extensive conversations with Ernie about the thickness (thinness really) of steel, it’s relationship to prior repair areas, ABS standards for plate replacement and develop and work plan. Charlie is popping by regularly as is job is more than finding problems, he recommends solutions. He’ll audio gauge areas under the stern around the main engine room where Freddy has washed off the remnants of the vintage zinc straps.

Freddy diligently picks his way around the boat cleaning off all unwanted protuberances, big ones like the of the external spudwell-- “the carbuncle” as I used to call it, and the little vestiges of prior attachments, fenders and the like. Machine is beetling about and attentive as ever and refills my water jugs. I’m using the non-potable yard hose supply for washing dishes and my increasingly chapped face and hands.

Up forward, some of the blocking will have to be removed to get at the areas that need replacing. GMD doesn’t want to do that until Bobby O’Connor the dockmaster can come over, so action doesn’t begin there immediately. Damn.

Charlie and Ernie and I go into the main engine room to find the sea chests that correspond to the through hull fittings -- which we only found after sandblasting. When I hired a diver Bob Davidson to check them before purchasing the Whalen last year, he surfaced and said “you better call the Department of Agriculture.” The growth on the bottom was so great, he couldn’t find a single opening.

Most of the through hulls allow water into the boat to cool machinery, though one connects to the fire hose. Each is covered with a “sea strainer,” grillwork that prevents plastic bags or organic matter being sucked into the system. The structure inboard directly connected to the hull is the “sea chest” and is built of very, very heavy pipe to prevent failure from corrosion; because if a sea chest fails, an engine room can flood rapidly and cause major damage (shutting down the engine) and possibly sink the whole boat. As the Whalen’s engine is dead (just for now, we hope), the sea chests will be sealed after inspection or “blanked off” with plates welded to the hull. If and when we find parts for her engine (hello, all ye retired engineers, please come help find parts!) the blanks can be removed to re-open the water system. Charlie discovers a released frame just aft of the high water valve where Ernie found thin-sounding steel the day after the priming. The primer had not held in a few penny-sized spots; that was the signal that something was wrong. Some banging with a chipping hammer revealed a weak spot the size of a watermelon.

I’ve saved the sea strainers as templates and as “souvenirs” I told the yard crew to some scoffing. I’ve already found a use for them, they resemble over-sized florist’s frogs, and I’ve made a flower arrangement with the plastic pointsettas’ from the dead Christmas wreath. I leave it on the picnic table expecting this will trigger some remark from Ernie. Since his shock at my pink hard hat on day one, I like to tease him with some girlie stuff now and again. There are NO women around her.

Charlie is very excited to hear that Artie Ellems, an old-timer, works here, albeit part time. Years ago, Artie turned Charlie’s drawings into new steel yards for the South Street Seaport’s Wavertree when the vessel was hauled at Caddell’s Dry Dock. With an “I’d love to see him,” Charlie takes off for the plate shop where Artie fabricates in steel and will be bending plate to replace the wasted parts of the Whalen’s rubrail. "Bushey Rail" as John calls the stuff produced by Ira Bushey & Sons in Red Hook, was bent plate not half a round pipe. This is more expensive at the outset but lasts longer. The crest on a half round would wear down pretty rapidly, not so the flat surface of the Whalen’s rails. Of the 40 feet that is wasted, only 8 of it needs to be fully replaced by new bent plate; the rest of it can just be capped by flat bar; the supporting sides are still so thick.

1620 It’s hard for me to leave, I sit in the pickup for some 20 minutes looking at the boat. I can’t take my eyes off her. She is so transformed already. I contemplate how to paint her topsides. The hull is now black again; what colors should the rest of her be painted? How will we celebrate her departure? Not champagne, this is not a christening… I decide that a huge bow with ribbon blowing down her sides while she is underway will be the festive way to catch some attention during her short ride home down the East River.

1645 I tear myself away to check on Geraldina, my 26’ powerboat, and the lonely lightbulb that is keeping her engine from freezing. I couldn’t winterize the engine right before Christmas as I discovered the flywheel was ruined. I’ve been so busy with the Whalen that powerboat Geraldina, the last souvenir of my father who passed away in 2000, is being neglected. Even with the cold blast that is bearing down on us, one little 100 watt bulb is keeping the engine compartment well above freezing. While at the Beard Street Pier, I stop to consider the demolition of the Revere Sugar Refinery. What a tragedy, what a lack of vision. The PortSide team is convinced that Thor Equities would have a more valuable property if they’d coupled historic buildings and industrial remnants with some very modern design. Instead it looks like they’ll level the place and be left with a generic plot – a loss to history, to Red Hook, and to them.

And then off to Debby Romano’s once again to avail myself of shower and washing machine. I am into a groove on the Whalen, but I do wish she had working plumbing.

Reinforcements Arrive

Wednesday, 1/24/07

0630 Charlie Deroko, no lie-a-bed he, calls with his punch list of steel to repair. He tells me he’s taken almost 300 audio gauge readings on the boat between last year and this. He knows the bottom.

0930 smoke emerges from a forward vent. This is interior paint smoldering from heat on the exterior of the hull. Freddy, a very conscientious burner, is removing the snaggletooth remains of bow fenders long gone. “Weldments” Ernie calls these steel chunks, which always reminds me of a potential Altoids slogan.

0940 Joe Smallarz, a supervisor in Dry Dock #6 shows up, eager to see the Whalen. He provides the name of someone who may have parts for the Whalen’s cannibalized engine. I continue to hope some retired engineer will show up and adopt parts-hunting as a project.

Joe Eckhardt, the chief estimator, arrives for a walk through of the proposed steel work. I love Joe. He’s been working this harbor a long time, knows his stuff, and is a taut, old school man of few words but I think an appreciation of this endeavor shines through. Joe even knows what those weird long wasted bands of steel near the stern are. “An old way of attaching zincs.” How old? “Forty years or more.” Amazing that they survived this long.

1100 I have a chat with Guillermo, a compact, formal Mexican knicknamed “Machine” because he never stops moving. All the other workers have taken off for lunch, but he’s still tidying up the dock. He’s proud of his progress picking up the place, and well he should be. The last shipyard tenant here, known by some in port as Eastern Testicle, left it a mess. Despite the dock’s landmark status, the last occupant blasted dents in the granite, welded fence to a gantry rail, broke the top of the gantry crane and more. Machine is clearly all about work. He has lived here 14 years, and lives in Sunset Park, but has never heard of the Mexican funfest in Red Hook where the Mexican baseball league, and Latin American soccer teams and food vendors make Bay Street hum on weekends.

1200 reinforcements arrive. Karen Dryland, whose father Alf Dyrland, was captain from the late 50’s to the late 70’s, and her husband John Weaver are coming to help clean up. Sooo welcome. The accommodations are a mess. The sandblast dust pushed its way into the boat, some of it shot up the galley sink pipes before I put saucepans over the drains. A weekend of slush has carried the larger grit through the cabins. Dried mud is everywhere. I’ve been too busy to finish washing dishes, a slow process that requires boiling water in the unheated galley, and a sink full of dishes sits covered in frozen suds. Karen will tackle the galley, and John will shopvac the cabins.

Despite the mess, I feel things coming together. I’ve bounced back. I was so exhausted the day we arrived. I’ve re-mastered my firebuilding skills and carved out some domesticity in a world of no plumbing or central heating. I now know how much steel work there is to do, and there’s money to cover it. I can breathe. And in that space I can reflect on how GMD is doing.

Things feel good. The senior staff like the boat, and seem to like the effort to save her. They are impressed with her condition “we’ve seen worse in working boats.” They are allowing us to penny pinch and bring in our own steel, and they’re willing to take the time to give me estimates as we go along so I can match work to funds. The Hispanic crew clearly likes my being able to discuss the work in Spanish. Ernie, the dock supervisor, is really on top of things and totally supportive, and a kicker to work with. And this historic dry dock is a grand, handsome place to be. It wows all the visitors. I appreciate all this tremendously, especially given the brush we had with another yard, a lower bidder, who didn’t do right by us in the end.

We lost five months waiting for them to book us. I agonized during the wait but am now hugely relieved that they’re not doing the work. Everything feels right here. Actually, in retrospect, the wait served us well, thanks to the generosity of the free berth and support at American Stevedoring. What felt like a hiatus then I now see was time to get more in tune with the boat, to pull off some large proposals, and to give some very popular tours of the tanker in the Red Hook Container Port during openhousenewyork weekend. Right now, I could wish for warmer weather, but otherwise wouldn’t change a thing here.

1330 smoke curls up through the fidley grating. Freddy must be burning off those weird long steel pieces. A firewatch is set up. Power cords and water hose snake through the fidley. Blowers blast air down the cowl vents to push the smoke out. More mess and racket.

Karen plugs on behind the closed galley door. She calls me in excitedly about an ashtray. “It’s Norsk tin! Maybe my father brought it… well, maybe not. There were lots of squareheads (Norwegians) aboard then.” Her father emigrated from Norway; she explains the patterns to me,. I’ve made it a rule to not discard things on the boat (except the girlie calendar in the kindling bucket) until I know what they are or might mean. I’d admired the ashtray but had no idea the provenance. Karen and John are great to have around-- not only because they are helpful and fun-- they have such personal associations with the boat and are eager to share them. Alf died in the late 90s, but they have all his papers and have begun pulling them out so PortSide can compile some history of the boat, her crew, and her service. John has been emailing me excerpts. I now recognize Alf’s foreign handwriting in some moldy logbooks I found hidden under the drawers of the captain’s bunk.

1500 Freddy knocks off the hotwork and the day crew begins to pull out.

1625 Karen and John leave and I rush to tidy up and leave. Painting will start tonight, and I’m keen to avoid that smell. Another night off the boat.