The Morgan is resting on a giant cradle made up of I-beams on wheels. These wheels ride along railroad-type tracks. We’ve painted them yellow so that people can see them better. Next Tuesday, we’ll pull the boat sideways along these tracks until we get to the tracks that lead to the lift dock. There are [...]
We’re used to the yard being full of timbers and milled wood to go onto the boat. Now the yard is being used as a staging ground for all of the wood coming off of the boat. Here’s one of the piles of staging along with the I-beam track system from down in the hold. [...]
One of the benefits of working at a museum like Mystic Seaport is that we have a phenomenal amount of information at our fingertips. Case in point, when looking at one of the collections of historical photos of the Morgan to get more information on the shape of the fashion piece, Roger suggested we take [...]
The job list certainly didn’t stop after the shutter plank was installed. Here are a few projects from around the boat. Jon and Rodger have been working on the hawse pipes and the pipes that were used to route the cables for tying a whale to the side of the ship. Here, Jon is working [...]
From time to time I like to sweep through the photos I’ve taken but not included in recent blogs. Maybe they didn’t fit well into the train of thought of a given entry or I ran out of time when writing. Today’s entry will have photos from all over the past month, so there’s a [...]
This day has been a long time coming. Rob, our project foreman, has been an oak. The day before shutter plank day was pretty wet. It opened with fog and drizzle, which was beautiful in its own way (particularly when well-photographed).
By the way, don’t forget: Shutter Plank Party, Friday May 10 at 2 PM. It’s a pretty common thing for museum guests to walk back through the shipyard and ask someone, “Where is the Morgan?” It’s not always obvious that the huge shed around the Morgan actually has a boat inside of it. Once they [...]
The shutter plank will be going on this coming Friday, May 10th at 2 pm. There will be a party to celebrate, so if you’re in the area, come on down and join us! Everyone is completely focused on the hull now. The final planks are getting fastened in place such as this one near [...]
A while back, Roger cut the hawsepipe holes for the anchor chains. I want to show you a slick little trick that he used to map out the shape of the hole as it exits the boat. The hawsepipes are round in cross-section, but when they exit the curving hull of the boat at an [...]
These days everyone is focused on getting the hull ready for launch. In the last entry you saw some of the paint prep happening around the boat. But wait, there’s more. After all the stripper is applied, someone has to come along and scrape it off. Someone like Ali, for instance. Or John and Maggie. [...]