Italian TV Film Crew

Feeling that it was just the right time to visit Maine with the gorgeous foliage and lack of tourists, Cristina Borgogna Di Capriasco gently requested to have multiple shipwrights pose in front of the 275 gallon oil sign with tools of their trade. They kindly posed one at a time with a variety of tools such as a chain saw, trunnel hammer, welding gear, laptop computer and about nine others.

Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor Shipyard had a team of six Italian TV crew here last week filming for the European show "Classic Boat". In addition to the still images of the shipwrights, they conducted interviews on two large projects in process here at the shipyard: Ernestina and Belle Aventure.

Each show is broadcasted in 4 languages: Italian, French, English and German. It is a 12 months program, with 24 episodes of 24 minutes each, which began in 2004.

Classic Boat's goal is to pass on the passion and the complicity of sailors, owners, and artisans who dedicated their whole life and their energy to the restoration of boats and ships. The show tours shipyards, showing the ancestral knowledge laying at the base of a restoration project.

Hosted by Michel Dejoie and produced by M & N Yacht, Classic Boat is a television program totally dedicated to classic and vintage boats, as well as to sailors, skippers, owners… but also to artisans and sea carpenters.

New Service Provided: Cathodic Protection

Cathodic protection is one of the most effective ways of reducing or eliminating the corrosion damage that invariably affects metals that are in contact with sea water.

Metal hulls, rudders, propellers, stabiliser fins, ballast tanks, water tanks are all areas that need protection. Paint provides only minimal protection from the corrosion of metal.

On the right is the famous ship the Cutty Sark. Below the ship is one example of corrosion damage, rust flaking off a stringer plate behind the figureheads on the Cutty Sark.

Boothbay Harbor Shipyard has expanded the scope of services to our customers to include the ability to perform an electrical signature analysis of metal hulls. This tool helps identify the risks of structural and mechanical corrosion.

This pier side activity begins with all onboard systems shut down and the placement of a submerged device adjacent to the hull. Starting with quality issues related to shore power, a multi-input data logging system documents the results of activating the entire range of onboard systems.

The analysis and interpretation of these results allows for a cathodic protection plan to be customized for each vessel. Correcting these risks not only protects the longevity of the hull but can extend the life of mechanical and electrical components.

It is recommended that a new analysis be performed at the conclusion of any major change in electrical related components. New equipment has the potential to create additional cathodic risks.

When the yacht is going to be harbored for an extended period of time, additional data logging can provide indication of risks based on the electrical signature found in that particular location.

An inventory and specifications of onboard systems and equipment is required to be able to provide a price quotation for this service.

Shipworm Not a Worm

Not only do shipwrights need to be concerned with gribbles but they also worry about the shipworm. The shipworm, which is not a worm at all, is actually related to the clam and mussel, therefore it is a mollusk.

These "termites of the sea" are able to digest the wood due to a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria that is stored in a special organ in their body. This relationship is much like the termite, which also needs a bacteria to allow it to digest the cellulose in the wood and turn it into glucose for energy.
The larva of the shipworm uses its small sharp shell to drill into wood. As they grow, the tunnels get larger and larger. Often, wood may have a tiny hole on the outside but the inside will be a maze of larger tunnels. The shipworm (teredo navalis) or sometimes known as the teredo worm, uses the shells near its head or siphon to burrow. Their ridged and rough surfaces rub the wood away as the mollusk turns its head one way and then another. It leaves behind a circular tube that is a bit larger than the shell. The shipworm eats the wood and the soft body's mantle leaves behind a white calcareous substance like chalk to line the burrow for protection and strength.

Shipworms have long been a global scourge of maritime activities. In 1502, during Columbus' 4th voyage to the Caribbean Sea, his ships survived a water spout, a hurricane, high seas, lightning and rocky reefs. However, luck ran out when two of his four ships had to be abandoned in the Hispanolas and Jamaica because of shipworm rot. He later used copper on the hull to protect it from shipworms.

Pier owners in San Francisco Bay saw an estimated $1.3 billion (today’s dollars) in shipworm damage in the early 1920s. In the last decade, the city of New York has spent well over $100 million to protect and replace worm-damaged structures.

One good way to decrease shipworms attaching and living on marine wood is to inhibit the symbiotic bacteria it needs to live. Some wood that inhibits the growth of the symbiotic bacteria is Douglas-fir, ebony, jarrah, koa, lignum vitae, narra, Osage orange, paduccah, purple heart, red alder, red oak, teak, verawood, and western red cedar. That is why Boothbay Harbor Shipyard spends much time and care choosing the right wood for each section of a ship for a new build or rebuild.

Attack of the Gribbles

Sounds like a science fiction title doesn't it? But the attack of the gribbles could be in most any shipyard, dock or under any wooden boat. These are one of the two animals that cause the most damage in wooden boats.

Gribbles are related to the lobster and crab. They are mostly a pale, white, small crustacean from one of the 56 species of marine isopods from the Limnoriidae family.

For a long time the gribble diet was a mystery; gribbles lack the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their bellies that symbiotically allow termites and shipworms to survive on the carbon riches of wood. In other words, they were endlessly gnawing through wood that provided little nutrition or energy to them.

The secret is the wood in seawater, like our harbor estuary, has a slimy surface. That slimy surface, scientists have discovered, is the true diet of a gribble. And by tunneling through wood, and having succeeding generations of gribbles widen those protected tunnels, gribbles dramatically increase the surface area on which the nitrogen-rich microbial slimes can grow.

Gribbles and shipworms, another wood borer, were absent from many harbors for generations because pollution levels were too high, and oxygen levels too low, for them to survive. Strangely enough, the very polluted harbors were often known as "clean harbors" because they had local waters that were so toxic that the unwanted organisms would die off of ships. Luckily, many of these harbors are healthier and the gribbles are back.

At the shipyard, we have classic wooden ships and yachts. Careful maintenance of making sure the bottoms are painted and all the seams are sealed, prevents gribbles from damaging these ships and yachts.

Twenty Five Years Lead to Boothbay Harbor in August

What do you suppose Key West, Florida, Charleston, North Carolina, Ketchikan, Alaska and Twin Bridges, Montana have in common with Boothbay Harbor, Maine?

They were all Charles Kuralt’s choices of places to be for a month in his book “Charles Kuralt’s America”. He suggests Key West for January and Ketchikan, Alaska for June. However, his vote for August was Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

Tired of the competitive, deadline driven news world, Charles Kuralt persuaded CBS to let him try out traveling and interviewing regular people from a motor home. He was given three months and it turned into a quarter-century project. "On the Road" became a regular feature on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite in 1967. Famously enough, Kuralt hit the road in a motor home (he wore out six before he was through) with a small crew and avoided the interstates in favor of the nation's back roads in search of America's people and their doings.

Much like John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” Kuralt looked for and found interesting people and places.

Here is a short selection from the August section about Boothbay Harbor, Maine from “Charles Kuralt’s America”.

I didn't get over my boat dream the whole time I was in Maine. I'm not over it yet. I am drawn to shipyards and anchorages wherever I go. If there's a bit of a breeze, the sound of a halyard slapping a mast arouses a great yearning in me.

In the perfect harbor …one late afternoon, no less than eleven of the passenger-carrying windjammers of Maine sailed in for a rendezvous. There was the last of the three-masted schooners, Victory Chimes, a survivor of the days when Maine bought its groceries in the West Indies and sent to China for afternoon tea. Anchored nearby was the pilot schooner Timberwind, which was launched in Portland in 1931 and has never left Maine waters; if you are born in heaven, her caption once said, why go anywhere else? There was the J. & E. Riggin, an eighty-nine-foot oyster-dredging schooner dating to 1927; and American Eagle, a gorgeous ninety-two-foot fishing schooner from the 1930s; and the oldest documented American sailing vessel in continuous use, the Stephen Taber, launched in 1871; and there were all the others, a maginificent show. These boats are captained by happy men and women who cannot imagine what else they'd rather do with their lives. I understand them. The passengers, most of them, return year after year for the sweet passages through the coves and islands, the quiet nights at anchor, the sea chantey concerts on deck, the lobster bakes ahsore. I understand them, too.

I went out to Nathaniel Bowditch, an eighty-two-foot topsail schooner which left the fleet in her wake in the Bermuda Race of 1923. Her captain, Gib Philbrick, is a wonderful man whose enthusiasm for what he does is written all over his face. Gib was once a fishing guide in te Rangeley Lakes. He was the basketball coach at the University of Maine. All the time, he wanted to be a schooner captain. He and his wife, Terry, took a deep breath and bought Nathaniel Bowditch twenty years ago.

"If a schooner ownes you," he said, "it owns you all year around. In the late fall, we go over every line and block, we have new sails made if we can afford it, we care for every tiny thing. We keep her in the water where she belongs, and throw salt water on her deck every day to keep the seams tight. In the winter when I'm feeling edgy, I come down and sit aboard.

"And then -- oh, man -- then comes the spring!"

Knees from Trees

One might ask, what do knees and the Larix laricina have to do with ships and shipbuilding? It turns out they have a prominent place in the history of shipbuilding as well as modern wooden ships.

The Larix laricina or the tamarak tree has shallow roots that grow almost perpendicular to the tree trunk. Therefore, they make tremendously strong knees. Knees are the right-angle root of the Eastern larch, or tamarack tree--also known as a hackmatack. Which are one of only three deciduous trees that lose their needles. The tamarack is a bog tree, fast-growing with shallow roots, which became prized because of its strength and durability to create braces in wooden shipbuilding. The tree often grows in peat moss and when it does, the roots do not freeze. It also is decay resistant, which is a big plus on ships.

For centuries, knees have been used in wooden ships and boats to strengthen and support deck beams and keels. When used vertically, they are called "hanging" or "standing" knees. Lateral knees are referred to as "lodging" or "bosom" knees.

Often, each mast has 4 lodging knees to help hold the shape against the stress of the movement of the vessel and the mast. In addition to the lodging knees the space where the mast fits also has several hanging knees.

The knees are seasoned from one month to four years depending on the thickness of the wood.

Until recently, Maine had one of the few “knee farmers” in the country. Newman Gee of Newman’s Knees from St. Albans, Maine would dig up the roots by hand just as they did 100 years ago. He used a Wood-Mizer mill equipped with a special sled, which allowed him to saw the knees lengthwise, pivoting them as the saw blade advanced.

Historically, the tamarak not only provided knees from the roots but young stems were used for dog sled runners, boat ribs and fishtraps. Even the fine roots were used to sew birch bark and the wood was used for arrow shafts. The bark was used for medicine and the soft needles were used to stuff pillows and mattresses. These people really knew how to live “green”.

Sailing Schooner School in Session

As students locally return to school, we see the Harvey Gamage getting its final preparations before it picks up the new students in mid-September for Ocean Classroom's fall Semester at Sea.

The Harvey Gamage was recently launched after a summer of repair for a major plank and frame replacement renewal project. The focus for this year was the mid-ship. As part of a five-year cycle, the shipyard replaced around 64 futtocks (ribs of ship) and 22 planks in the midship area.

This fall term, Proctor Academy students from Proctor, New Hampshire board the traditional schooners, Harvey Gamage and Spirit of Massachusetts and embark on an open-ocean adventure: sailing down the east coast...through the Bahamas...south to Hispanola...and finally into San Juan Harbor. Along the way they gain full academic credit for their studies in maritime history, maritime literature and writing, navigational mathematics, marine science and seamanship skills in collaboration with Ocean Classroom Foundation.

In a year, the Ocean Classroom ships will visit between 12 and 16 countries. They cover between 4,500 and 6,000 miles under sail while the students serve as ship's crew and are regularly attending classes. The Ocean Classroom Foundation has programs for students from middle school up through college.

Watch the VIDEO on the Harvey Gamage at Boothbay Harbor Shipyard.