The Ship’s Log

Things are quiet in the office and down in the rig shop today. The office staff, the captain, and two of our mates are headed to Boston for the 44th annual Tall Ships Conference.  They'll be gone all week, so Adam and Bosun are taking charge in the meantime. (Chief...

This week, we've been busy with spar repairs (we're spending a lot of quality time with epoxy and sanding blocks) and sorting lumber. Four thousand pounds of Douglas Fir arrived at our doorstep on Monday, and finding a place to put it was, as always, an adventure....

Last Saturday was another sail training day, and despite snow and icy roads, so many people showed up that we (once again!) needed to move into the woodshop for morning muster. The highlight of the day came just after coffee break, when Captain Rybka gave a talk on...

It's official: we have a blank for the starboard fore channel! Yesterday, we took over part of spar alley to set up sawhorses and sheets of plastic for the Great Glue-Up of 2017. Lots of clamps and a few gallons of epoxy later, our three separate boards had become a...

We're running out of sawhorses, workbenches, and rig shop space—a sure sign that we're keeping busy. Down in the rig shop, we're serving, sanding blocks, and building some new stays and backstays. In the woodshop, we're using epoxy to glue up the blank for what will...

This morning, the crew took a field trip along the Bayfront to visit Dave Bierig's sail loft, where we learned a little about sailmaking in general, Niagara's sails in particular, and the challenge of making sails for reconstructed and replica ships. We talked a lot...

Today was the second day of winter sail training, and morning muster was so crowded with volunteers that we abandoned our usual muster spot and moved into the wood shop. It's the most help we've had all winter, and we took advantage of it—projects that would take days...

We're only halfway through our Tuesday-Saturday work week, but the rig shop crew and the carpentry team have already hit some major milestones—we've moved from sanding spars to varnishing them, and from deconstructing the foredeck to rebuilding it. The warm spell this...