The story of the Wood That Got Away (Almost)

It's spring and I was still driving around with too much stuff in the car from the house-clean job I got in January.  So I spent the whole morning on Thursday cleaning out the car, including wood I had meant for the wood mill (my brother's place), the guitar pickguard material for the switch plates, tools and other parts.  I set the wood on top of the car to load later... and then forgot it, got into the car and drove off.

Without watching my speed I hit about 55 MPH on River Road, then of course slowed down.  I turned to go over the tracks, stopped at the market for iced tea (and crisps), and then turned, went over the tracks again, straight down Chester Avenue and then along the river (as I often do) to the marina.  Upon turning in to the marina I heard this rattling on the roof.

'Oh; I am an idiot! --I forgot that was on there!'  Over the next two minutes I just mulled it over, talking to myself.  'Maybe it's still on there.  Maybe it's back by the side of the road.  Maybe it's in the yard beside the house....'

Stopping the car at the boat I got out to look.  The plywood for the galley cabinet was there, half-jammed into the roof rack.  One of the mahogany planks was there, simply lying at an angle atop the plywood.  The longer of the two mahogany planks was gone.

I worked the whole day (too poor to waste fuel on two trips) and worried about it.  I even looked about the boat and searched my mind for any way of replacing it with other wood: but there isn't.  I had these planks milled at Edgewater Building Supply about 4-5 years ago, just for this application.  They're for the underside of the cabintop to both serve as backing blocks for the handrail bolts and to trim off the edges of the foam-backed headliner material.  They want only a notch cut along one edge to receive the foam stuff, which is not installed yet, but I wanted to fit them for length on the two sides and get some finish on them as they're still raw and beginning to look it.  So now I was out of luck.

Worse, sap that I am, I worried about the poor piece of wood outside in the drizzle we had in the afternoon.  Well; now even if I could recover it, it'd be waterstained (this shows through most varnish unless it's sanded down pretty far first).

Towards evening I was still at the boat and my mother called and invited me to supper.  (I am a sucker for any free supper.)  I kind of expected this and was saving what little fuel I have left for the trip home for a shower and back down (past the boat again) for her place. On the way home I took the right lane, went slowly, and kept my eyes across the road for some forlorn-looking piece of mahogany with maybe tire-tracks across it.  Sadly, I did not see it, went home, had a shower, turned around and started back along the same route for my mom's.  I thought I saw it (off the road) and made a U-turn, drove by, decided that wasn't it.  Then I saw it! --far off the road, parallel to the train tracks.  I made a quick U-turn (in a parking lot with a sign: No U-Turns) and ran across the road to see it.

How it managed to fly 35 feet from the road and land perfectly parallel to the road (and tracks) can be attributed only to the fact that I was doing 55 MPH, right at about this point.  The board is indeed waterstained; but I can sand that out.  Best of all the corners are all intact.  How did that happen? --I can only guess that it blew so far off the car that it never hit any tarmac at all but landed neatly in this grassy area.  I've seen pieces of plywood go flying and they usually end up as ovals (no corners) from cartwheeling as they land.  This piece survived in perfectly-usable condition.

Now there is yet another piece of this boat with a funny story.  Someday (soon) I'll be showing people over the boat and point up at it and say, 'That was the one that almost got away.'  If there's any nicks or stains showing it'll only be proof of the story and not considered 'ugly'. (There is really nothing on this boat that's 'ugly'.)   It'll be like the backing plate under the foredeck, the ladder/cooler assembly, the 'extra' locker after of the quarter berth, and the 'Uncle Joe' sticks on the cabin sole-- just one more part of Diana's composite personality.

(See here for more of the same....)

I've used so much reclaimed and repurposed mahogany on this boat that it's kind of a motif.  Most of the mahogany that looks like it doesn't match is from older boats, such as one C44 that got a major interior-remodeling project done to it.  It's mostly 1970s-era wood, which, used in Diana, lends an authentic look.  Diana doesn't look newly-restored.  She looks like she was always meant to be that way, indeed like she was always that way all along.  My cabinetry fits aren't perfect (see Steve for that kind of work - https://www.facebook.com/Notcher-Designs-227378264271864/?fref=ts) but overall Diana has a 'factory' look to her.

Think of her as a Hunter 25 built by Cherubini Boat Company!  You'll see when the commissioning party happens!

- JC2

Press release

for general distribution

Family boatbuilding business association breaks up for good

Burlington, New Jersey
22 June 2015


After a long, productive history, John Cherubini, Jr., and Cherubini Yachts, LLC, of Delran, NJ, have severed all professional associations, sources close to both sides report.   John, Jr., whose father designed the landmark Cherubini 44 double-headsail ketch and Cherubini 48 staysail schooner, had worked with his cousin David’s business almost since its onset in 2003.

John, Jr.’s history with the original Cherubini Boat Company began at Burlington, NJ, in 1973, with the lofting and planking of the original Cherubini 44 plug with his father, John, Sr., brother Steve, uncle Frit (Leon), and cousin Lee.  This family group remained, in spirit and in substance, the nucleus of the boatbuilding concern that hand-built 42 boats through the 1990s.  John, Jr., worked in direct labor, production control, purchasing, sales support and marketing, payroll, and especially in design and component engineering, being responsible for devising custom-made deck hardware, tanks, and brackets that made the Cherubini 44 unique.  With Lee he designed the long-popular two-stateroom interior plan, giving the C44 a spacious galley and roomy head compartment at a time when such features were reserved for much larger yachts.

After his cousin David resurrected Cherubini boat production, John, Jr. served throughout the hierarchy of the business, variously as a contractor, direct employee, and encouraging friend.  Taking on his late father’s role, he worked closely with the staff on design and engineering issues to conservatively modernize the C44 design.

David, ten years younger than John, had not the hands-on experience nor the technical education that comes from growing up with a gifted yacht designer as a father.  ‘I had hoped that Dave would want to benefit from my expertise,’ says John.  But, amid family and professional differences, the two fell out for good in spring 2015 and John was constrained to remove his own Hunter 25, Diana, from his cousin’s yard where he was always so proud to have kept it.

John’s complete departure from Cherubini Yachts marks the finale of the surviving family core who began the business in 1975.  His brother Steve and cousins Lee, Rick, Brian, and Mike have all been, to one degree or another, rendered redundant as employees, contractors, vendors or associates of their family’s legacy, leaving David the sole Cherubini at Cherubini Yachts.

John, Jr.’s future in the boating industry remains uncertain.  He has declared an intention to offer reproductions of his family’s artwork, including drafting work by John, Sr., for consumer markets.  It is doubtful if any of the Cherubini 44 and 48, as designed by his father, will ever be built again.

 

- Cherubini Art & Nautical Design

* * *

It's been a long, cold, lonely winter.

The winter of 2013-2014 has been harsh to New Jersey. Most people of a certain generation are hard-pressed to recall more nasty weather. It hasn't been the frequency of snow, nor the intensity, but something like a combination of the two. We had two major power outages in the region and the township plowed exactly once in six major snowfalls. Plus I was commuting 52 miles each way to work at a marina on the Shore and lost plenty of time and income due to weather. Nearly nothing got done on Diana between early December and about five weeks ago.


Here are some updates, in no particular order.

Foredeck hatch

I finally got the foredeck hatch done (or done enough) and set it on the boat the other day, just before one of the rainfalls we've been having on and off all week.

The poor contraption has been kicking about for about three years. Here it is getting a coat of varnish after I plugged the screw holes in the two sticks on top. (They are aligned over the two ribs which stiffen the frame and the Plexiglas.) I had to take the mahogany down to about 80 grit in some places. Right now it has about three coats of Captain's Varnish on top and about five or six on the sides (on the frame).

 

Here it is (below) after I set it onto the hatch base. The construction of this is exactly as we do on the Cherubini 44-- it is essentially two boxes, a frame and a coaming, made separately. When you have fit the frame box to the deck, you slice off the top portion (in this case 2-1/4") with the table saw, rolling the thing over the blade to cut the four sides. This ensures you have a mated base and hatch. Once the base is installed on the deck, you install the coaming inside it. I set the front of the coaming back about 1/16", using some lauan doorskin plywood, to allow the bottom inside edge of the hatch to clear the coaming as it hinges open. I also slightly tapered the outside faces of the coaming, above the base, to provide clearance. Actually there is a bit more clearance than is necessary or desirable; but it's not bad.

 

As viewed in profile, the hatch base is probably too high. During my usual intellectual communing with my dad, I apologized to him for it. He would have had it a whole inch lower to the deck.

At 24 x 26 inches, this opening is sort of a forward "command center" from which one can lower or raise the anchor, navigate and deploy or stuff headsails. The dimensions also allow for the hatch cover to be unpinned from its hinges and lowered through the opening to stow it below-- a consideration I considered paramount and one which led me to increase the former molded coaming's opening (in essence I sliced out the whole molded coaming entirely).

Today I got to enjoy this in a light drizzle, which was actually pleasant. The translucent white Plexiglas allows majestic light below and even when only partially open allows adequate ventilation.

Electrical panel

I have since added the rest of the trim to this; this is a pic from a few days ago. Today I concentrated on wiring the guts of this panel. As you can see the electrical space is located along the hull shelf above the quarter berth, using the original faux-teak-plywood shelf and just adding a front and top.

 

 The small panel to the left (aft) is the 115VAC panel.  Below the double breaker is the slot for the battery-charger's breaker.

The two main 12VDC panels are for the lights and other circuits.  There is also the bilge-pump switch, voltmeter, fuel-level gauge and a 12VDC outlet.  The voltmeter reports the status of the three batteries (a two-battery house bank and one starting battery) by way of three push-button momentary switches.  There is a switch to turn on or off the fuel gauge as well (switch is not in this pic; it was installed today).

The two rotary switches forward of the double panels are selectors; one is on the running-lights circuit to choose between the masthead tricolor and the pulpit-mounted lights and the other one is on the cabin-lights circuit to choose between the white and red lamps.  In this way no one can activate a white light below when the boat is being navigated at night.  The two rotary switches are aligned with their respective master switches in the panel to their left, as though pointing towards their home circuits when they are in the "normal" positions.

Bookcase

I installed this a while ago but never got a decent pic of it. (This isn't really a decent pic either.) The bookcase is an alcove built into the head (aft end) of the starboard-side settee, under the galley counter. It is scaled for paperbacks of 6 x 9 inches and accommodates things like the Eldridge's, novels and certain tools manuals. There is a blue LED lamp inside, activated by a switch above the galley. The little plywood end (to the left in this pic) opens to a compartment outboard of the books where I can "hide" (stash) CDs and DVDs that are not immediately needed or already loaded into the computer or iPod.

 

Head compartment

Almost all the trim in the head has been installed. As built, the Hunter 25 did not come with a basin in the head; there was just an open bin above the footwell of the berth on each side. Diana's PO took out the floor of the starboard-side one and added a hanging bar so that coats on hangers draped into the footwell of the bunk. I restored a floor here and made two "duffel-bag lockers" for guests' gear. This pic shows the top of those lockers (without their access panels installed) and the trim.

 

To port I installed a proper basin for foot-pump pressure water.  The portion of the countertop aft of it lifts up to the old bin's original floor, providing a space about 4" deep for "lady products" (for my daughters) and other stuff that isn't needed every day.

The old-style black-based Whale faucet is mounted in a 7/8"-ID stainless-steel flat washer serving as a trim ring.  The other washer lying on the countertop was meant for the bottom but I haven't been able to get my (arthritic) fingers up into the access hole underneath to install it.  The aluminum tube of the faucet is a little tatty and I may opt to replace it later; so this is a job that will remain "temporary" "for now".

The lockers outboard of the sink are for towels (aft) and toiletries (forward). Right now they hold everything I took out of the galley lockers in order to finish those now.

In this picture I still owed the fiddle of the lift-up some varnish; but as of this writing it's been done.

The black conduit tubing will get tidied up. But due to the crossmember (on which the junction box for the spar wiring is mounted), the wire loom can't drop straight along the bulkhead; so it is led about an inch away along the cabin side and through a hole in the top of the locker. I did not make a fiddle here; the trim is just a common corner bead. It's too narrow a space to put anything on it anyway.

My mother, the accomplished seamstress, is making the curtains for these windows. They will span the full width of the space so that, when closed, they will be proper drapery that regularizes the oblong shape of the deadlights. The same will go for the main saloon as well.

I still have not connected the fresh-water lines to this sink. The holdup is solving the water-filter question. It's looking like I will install two undersink cannister types, one here and one in the galley. RVers tend to use a "pre-tank" filter, hooked up to the garden hose as they fill the tanks; but this requires that the water in the tanks is presumed good. Most of the bad-tasting water I've encountered has gone bad in the tanks. I'd rather apply the charcoal and coconut-shell filtration at the tap(s), so I'm looking into Purete and Whirlpool compact filters. The one I've got in mind for the head sink is meant for icemakers and its connections are for 1/4" tubing. I may be able to do without the small-ID "quick connectors" and adapt it to 3/8" supply hose for the head sink. The galley can get a 3/8" one adapted to 1/2" supply hose.

* * *

Waterline stripe

I've been getting frustrated that the progress I have been making on this boat does not look like progress; so I reached a limit recently and opened the can of Pettit Protect I've had for over a year and just went for it.  I cannot say this is a perfect job; there are minor spots in the hull I really should have faired better or filled better, and of course the first roller cover broke down after two coats and for the third I had to dig into my horde of stores for another which was too nappy and not as good.  But the paint's on the boat and that's good enough. 
   
I chose the Pettit Protect over Interlux Interprotect for one solid reason.  To reach the desired thickness, Interprotect requires five coats where as Pettit Protect requires only three.  It goes on thicker.  Therefore I accomplished this with only one roller replacement and in only about three hours of a hot Saturday in August.  
   
The rugged outline of the top edge of paint wants explanation.  In filling and fairing the hull's numerous cracks, I encountered quite a few of what I determined were 'bottom-style' cracks above the designed waterline, especially in the bow.  These are typical of any boat; and for a sailboat that one must conclude will be heeling more often than not, under way, the imposed delineation of a waterline is pretty arbitrary.  So I prepared these places as I would for any 'underwater' area; and once the waterline is established the gray can be sanded down above the line to accept topsides paint.   
  

The black Sharpie lines, applied at the upper edge of the green-tape stripe, will represent the lower edge of the painted stripe(s).  Thus I am 'cheating' the original waterline up about two inches.  

I lowered the rudder in its shaft tube but without digging a hole I was unable to remove it entirely.  As of this picture it has been sealed and re-'glassed (the yellowish stuff is epoxy, with some Microlight filler).  I found every seam in the rudder shell to have been open and filled with bottom paint (not a good sign), which was responsible for the whole thing being saturated in water.  As I used up all the Pettit Protect on the hull, I will have to buy more for the rudder and the stand squares.
   
From earlier photos one can see that I stripped the entire hull bare-- leaving no stripes.  Earlier I had plotted all three lines-- float waterline, designed waterline, and top of bootstripe-- and recorded the measurements.  These current lines come from those plots.
   

 

This sort-of-closeup view shows my 25-foot Stanley tape clamped along the toerail of the boat.  Using this as a kind of number line, I dangled the other Stanley tape from this, at prescribed intervals, taking 'soundings' down along the hull to the stripe.  To get the waterline back onto the hull, I had only to read my numbers back and to plot the marks from them.  
  
I am not sure I'm happy with the replotted marks.  Though I did the plotting accurately, I fear the boat is going to be too heavy, especially forward, and especially to starboard, which worries me.  To starboard are the engine-starting battery, the galley, the toilet itself, the toolbox, the primary anchor and (short) chain rode, and the microwave oven as well as the skipper's usual sitting area below, where the computer and stereo are located.  Everything else is more of less balanced out by a complement to the other side.  For now I shall let these lines alone and count on shifting some weight about (possibly by storing all canned goods to port, for example).   
   
In the background Jerry's 1980 C44 can be seen.  Jerry's a liveaboard who's been doing a heroic job stripping bad 'glass from his boat's bottom and re-'glassing the whole thing.  His stamina and indefatigable fortitude are an inspiration.
  

  
After taking some of these pics I just had to snap this view of Diana's underside all recently done in pewter gray undercoater (Pettit Protect).  
  
Yes; the keel looks a little bent out of shape.  Believe me-- it was much worse before I got my hands on it.
   
The paint does look a little blotchy in this view.  Maybe it's glare.  I can vouch for the effort than went into smoothing this; and the result really is pretty good.  Undoubtedly it's better than it was when new.  
  
The little oval block affixed to the bottom, aft of the keel, is the fairing block I made for the bronze drain plug.  Maybe it's just overkill; but, then again, every girl can use a little help....  
 
  

* * * 

Some inconveniences are beyond counting

I once told my young brother-in-law, as he was building some plastic model airplane and complaining about glue on his fingertips, that to do a good job sometimes you have to love your project more than you care for your self.  This is especially true when it comes to convenience-- after all, most of the things we love are patently inconvenient.  And yet we pursue them anyway; and in this pursuit is how we acknowledge their value to us.

This photo is not great; it's intended to show the nice fat mahogany splinter I got in my foot.  (How? --I wasn't even barefoot.)  In this one week I got this splinter and another as well, tore my fingertips on a jigsaw blade (it was not running), jammed the meat of my hand in the drill-press chuck and mysteriously gashed my leg which bled all over the project in process.

The West Marine sticker is on my daughter's laptop.

Here is the top of the cabin, with no hatch or hatch shroud in place, the day I was fastening down the new hatch-slider rails.  The green tape along a piece of wood is a dam to keep epoxy from coursing down the side of the cabin and over the windows (already let that happen once, so never again!).  I had noticed a stickiness whenever I was kneeling a certain way but in the semi-mad rush to get the sticks into position and screwed down I attributed it to something stuck to my leg.  Only when I was done the most urgent part of it did I happen to notice the red stuff, which I then concluded was blood.

That's the foredeck's hatch coaming in the distance.  At the time of this photo the hatch shroud was being used to cover up that opening-- that's it even farther beyond.

Below you can see something of the main cabin, the compression post, the settee and head trim, and whatnot.


So I took this photo downwards at my leg, probably just to record the solution to the mystery.

Here I am standing up on the quarter berth, my other foot on the ladder step.  The quarter berth is (at this time) the current lumberyard.  The gap below my foot is the 'wet locker,' the one place inside the accommodation that goes straight to the hull skin itself.  Over this I would like to make a panel of slats, like the white-pine ceiling we make for C44s.  On the side of the ladder, behind my leg, goes the stainless-steel double hook to hang up wet foulies.  On the teak cabin face behind me is already another of these hooks.


You can see the cooler under the bottom shelf of the ladder; its cover is accessible when you lift the shelf.  A Fastpin stuck through a hole in the ladder side holds it up.  It's made so that if one should descend the ladder while the shelf is up the shelf won't stick out so far so as to catch a heel and break off-- although it does mean there won't be a second shelf in place for the one coming down.

Also two sections of the three-part cabin sole are visible here.  At the time of this photo the center section is just rough plywood-- it'll be varnished mahogany later.

* * *