The foremast is going into the boat next thursday (10/17) and we wanted to make sure that everything lined up properly ahead of time. After some final tweaking, the top and cap were set up and the fore topmast was brought out of storage for a test fit. Matt and Alex coaxed all the parts [...]
We’ll start with John’s new breast hook. He needed to start with a substantial timber to allow for the sweep of the hull (imagine looking down at the bow of the boat from above… that fore-aft sweep) as well as the sweep of the camber of the bulwarks (imagine standing on deck and looking forward [...]
There are 3 spars being worked on in the shop these days: the bowsprit, lower foremast, and main topmast. We’ll cover the first two today. Trev has finished with all the shaping of the bowsprit. Ali planed off the shellac that had been used to seal the wood, and painted everything. Trev cut a sloped [...]
Let’s start with some of the activity down in the hold recently. Jamie has been building a shelf that will hold ballast down in the stern of the boat. Ali has been spraying a borate salt solution around the hold. This is a regular task around the boat. Got some free time, spray a little [...]
Over the coming months, most of the work on the Morgan will be focused on the spars and rigging. Two big spars are currently in the main shop. They’re both douglas fir from Washington state. The first is the bowsprit, a massive timber. Trev has been working on shaping this fellow for a while now, [...]
I assume that most people who take the time to read this blog have already seen the launch from just about every possible angle, so I won’t be posting lots of photos from that ceremony. In case you did miss it, there’s an excellent page from the Seaport’s site that gives a synopsis of the [...]
Launch day is tomorrow, Sunday 7/21 at 2 pm. If you are planning to come visit, get here early to make sure you can park. There will be monitors set up on the green under tents if the crowds near the boat are too much. It’ll be shady there too… We brought the boat up [...]
If you’re local, you’ve probably seen stories about installing the Morgan’s billet head. Roger hand-carved this back in 1991 to celebrate the Morgan’s 150th anniversary. The Morgan was a quaker vessel, and as such, her billet head was more conservative than the figureheads or busts that would commonly decorate the bows of merchant vessels of [...]
It’s been pretty busy around here, and I apologize for the long gap between entries. In the next few days I’ll try to get caught up with a series of entries. Here we go. Let’s start with moving the boat down to the lift dock. This was a big milestone, and we were busy up [...]
The side pull went off without a hitch yesterday. In the previous post, I got the date wrong and said that the side pull would be happening on Tuesday (today). I apologize to anyone who came by thinking that it would happen today. The good news was that the entire event was in fact rather [...]