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

* * *

Listening to WXPN 88.5's '885 best and 88 worst songs ever' countdown

24-25 October 2014

I delayed all work to prepare for this radio event, of which the 'worst songs' part was simply hysterical.  'XPN's program director Dan Reed deserves much credit, firstly for being an excellent DJ, providing information, context, and witty banter (as well as interviews with artistes and persona guests), and secondly for actually enduring all seven hours of the worst songs ever.

One thing I had to do was to move the speakers out to the cockpit to continue work on the hull.  On our Raider 33 Antigone we had cockpit speakers which my brother Steve made for his old Fiat, which had come with none.  They were nifty little white-overlay-plywood boxes with aluminum grilles and Sparkomatic 6x9s in them.  I came up with the idea (which I don't remember if we actually did) of mounting a Herreshoff-style cleat on the top of each one, to serve as a handle and a place to wrap the cord.  We just took these out and stood them on the cockpit seats whenever we wanted them.

For Diana I'm doing the same thing, likely with these nice little speakers which come from a 1980s Sony component portable stereo (which is currently in the boat).  I have already run the speaker cables back to the lazarrette but have yet to decide if I want to install connection points in the side of the little Dorade box or just to leave them below.  I hate how I screwed this little box to its mounting cleats; I should have used the cleat-on-cleat method that CY's Ziggy uses all the time as it hides the fasteners (provided there is interior access).  I will most probably plug these holes and add the cleats inside to do it that way... after the cover goes on and I remove the box for varnishing inside.

The Sea Dog low-profile vents are meant for the Dorade boxes on the cabintop.  The ones back here should be the taller traditional kind but as yet I have only ordered the low ones from Defender.

The one shown installed (and not totally pushed-in) is the one that vents through the Dorade box  and through a hose to the foot of the quarter berth.  It works great.  The other one leads directly through a hose to the bilge, where I have yet to fit a bilge blower for the gasoline vapors.  It is plugged here because, as Diana is not now swinging to weather on a mooring, I can't keep the cowl trimmed as an exhaust vent.

The patched hole in the cockpit was where I installed the Whale manual bilge pump, one of the first things I did when I got this boat as the cabin windows leaked like a sieve.  I decided to relocate it to the inside of the coaming, both because it's easier to operate while steering and because it'll free up access through this cockpit-seat locker.

WXPN is at xpn.org

The 'XPN radio event was really a lot of fun and I helped clog up Twitter with many comments.  As a result of the event's effect on listeners, '@885countdown' was the number-4 most-Tweeted event in the US on 24 October, easily number-1 in the Philadelphia region, and the station's own website crashed due to too much traffic.  Truly an event for the ages!

BTW: the number-one favorite song, as it had been at the last countdown in 2004, was Springsteen's 'Thunder Road'.  The worst one, on this, the first-ever worst-songs countdown, was Starship's 'We Built This City' (I am not making this up!).  And here I had thought 'Billy, Don't Be A Hero' was a shoo-in.

- JC2

* * *

Visit from Santa Claus!

The Cherubini boat shop was graced with a visit from our very own Santa Claus on Friday, 14 December 2012.  This is James Turrell, noted artist and new owner of C48 hull no.8, Amazing Grace, now renamed (after Mr Tyrell's ouevre of choice) Light Reign.  Pictured (in front of one of the former Atlantic City billboards that Dave acquires for use as heavy-duty covers, dropclothes and curtains) are me, Mr Tyrell, Lee, Steve and Dave.  Photo taken by C. Michael Lawrence.

Happy Christmas to all!

Reverse-Mooyock technology

  My cousin Rick has a philosophy by which he believes that sometimes the best solution is the simplest.  We were talking about a C44 that was built-- because the buyer insisted-- with a sea chest, a watertight compartment with one opening to the sea and into which all through-hulls empty at once.  The theory is anti-technology-- in the question of a leak, shut off the one opening and that's all you have to worry about.  Rick's point was that, in the face of all the complexity and clutter, the easiest thing was just to add another seacock and through-hull.  It's a boat-- just check it like anything else you check and you're fine.  Why complicate anything?  So if the head sink's drain were leaking you'd shut off the engine intake?  Really?  'The best solution is the simplest.'

  My brother Steve was working out in Wisconsin recently, doing cabinetry and later restoration work on old wooden runabouts.  Apparently there are many of them out there; they don’t tend to rot in the cold dry weather the way they do in Florida or at the NJ shore.  And, this shop being the land of cordless drill/drivers. everyone had the Bosch or Makita setup with the two batteries, one of which is perpetually in the charger.  But the thing about a cordless driver is that, in production, one needs about four batteries and will need to replace them more often than most people do.  Most of us know that lithium tool batteries develop a ‘memory’-- they remember how long they went from charge to charge and if you charge them too often, say at only 40% of the way down, they will develop a working life of only 40% of capacity.  Like a lazy production drudge they will get to their frustration level and announce, ‘Break time!’ and then pack it in for the day till you recharge them.

  The general advice for those using such tools is to run the battery all the way down till the last breath of life and then give it a full, healthy (overnight) charge.  This becomes problematic for the production worker, who is caught between two undesirable extremes.  Either he exchanges the battery for a fresh one at the first hint of slowdown-- and thus costs himself in reduced productivity and replacement batteries in future, or he endures a slowly-fading battery for much too long, suffering through extremely slow and powerless work just to save the tool.

  One day Steve and his boss were trying to come to grips with this problem and Steve suggested, ‘If only we had a way to deplete this battery without having to use it on the job.  What kills 12-volt batteries really fast?’

  The boss, what we Italians would call (and politely spell as) a mooyock, contributed his idea.  ‘Well, I don’t know about tools; but what kills my car battery is when I leave the headlights on.’

  And Steve got the Eureka moment.

  Having just upgraded the high-beam headlamps on his classic BMW, he brought in the old pair, made a beautiful bracket of plywood, mounted the lights in it high on the wall over the shop area, and ran the leads down to a battery dock on the bench.  The battery de-charger will drain a half-done cordless-drill battery in about a quarter of the time actually using it will; it provides light-- for a while at least-- costs nothing to use and saves the long-term life of the battery.  No production shop should be without one.
 

  When I heard about this I laughed so hard I couldn’t see straight.  ‘It’s reverse-mooyock technology!’ I called it-- the whole concept of using a klutz’s answer to solve an intricate problem.  Sometimes the stupidest, lamest, most mooyock of suggestions really is the most elegant solution.

* * *