The new interior will be completed by the 2009 sailing season. This image shows some of the new saloon features. The L-shaped settee with a gimballed dining table are in the background of this shot. The picture is taken looking forward with the new galley and crew quarters to port and one guest state room to starboard. Two more guest state rooms are forward through the open companion way.
A chance meeting with man on the dock during last summers Port Townsend wooden boat festival revealed that he had worked on the MERRIE ELLEN building her pilot house around 1979. We had a long talk and learned more of our boats history. The topic of the installation of the diesel stoves came up and he said that he had rescued the original 1922 Lunenburg wood cook stove from the junk heap. He still had the stove in a storage shed and generously donated it for our restoration. Here it is as we were installing it at the aft end of the new galley.
We had planned to take overnight charters during the summer this year but did not quite get the interior finished before the season arrived. Our summer season was still very busy visiting harbors all over Puget Sound taking passengers on day sailing trips. We started out in May at the inaugural Kitsap Harbor Festival and worked nonstop until the end of the Port Townsend wooden boat festival in September. The Merrie Ellen spent a week at a time visiting ports and taking guests out for three hour trips sail training. The day sails involved a lot of hard work for the crew and I would like to thank all of our volunteers but most especially Don, Jim, Bryon and Mike for the seven day a week effort that it took to not only sail the boat but to keep her ready for every days sailing. We did miss eight days in July after finding some rot near the top of the main mast. You can see and read about making and replacing the main mast a little farther down this page. Harbors and communities all over the Sound invited us in and made us welcome.
The new Bremerton marina hosted us for five days during the inaugural Kitsap harbor festival. Guests and sponsors of the festival sailed with us for five days in May. We are planning to attend the festival again this year.
Rob Sanderson of the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend contracted with us to work off of their dock for ten days each month of the summer with their youth programs and giving educational sails. People in town got used to seeing us under full sail every afternoon.
One day in early July a mast inspection revealed a pocket of rot about six feet from the top of the main mast and changed all of our plans for the next eight days. The port worked with us by allowing access to the work dock side of the big travel lift dock to crane the mast out of the boat and the new mast in. Between those two events Arlyn, mike, Dave, Jim and Clint worked like beavers with the captain shaping a Douglas Fir log into the new mast. The pictures below show the process.
Setting the 110' douglas fir log up on the work benches
Dad and I level the boards that will guide the first chain saw pass
Witness points put in by chainsaw and adze to guide the second cut
Dave and I cut the second face
Mike and Dave square up the fourth side
Arlyn helps move the guide for eight siding
Precut plywood templates are used to check the taper
Clint gets ready to use a hand plane. We used the planes to work the log to eight sides then sixteen and finally thirty two
The facets were laid out by hand before planing
Above and on the right we crane the new mast into place seven days after finding the bad area in the old stick. The next day we were at work with the boat under full sail at the Alder Brook resort.
Above you can see two double and six single blocks being built for the new main mast.
These two shot show the Merrie Ellen under sail at the Port Townsend wooden boat festival
Bottoms up marine services or "BUMS" for short painted the bottom as part of the anual haul out while Anthony and Marny added one more coat to the top sides. Jill gives the shot some scale.
One of this winters projects for the Merrie Ellen is to build a new tender. We decided to build a traditional yawl boat so that crew members could use it as a tug to assist in docking. This series of shots show the progress to date.
Mike and the captain set up the first frame and transom
Don and Mike chisel in the keel rabit
The first hot planks clamped in place ready to fasten off. Steam in the photo indicates that another plank is getting ready in the steam box.
Kelly shapes a plank on the band saw with the steamer in the back ground.
Dave gets in on the planking
It took every clamp I own and could borrow
Mike volunteered to help. The pivots added to the stem and transom really helpped to save knees and backs.
Almost planked above and below a yellow cedar king plank sets off the mahogany decking.
The cotton corking only took two days! Af ar cry from the weeks spent corking the Merrie Ellen with cotton and then oakum.
