Poor Diana waits for the season - Shrinkwrapped beautifully by Jer Masey of JDoc Marine. I had the mast put up as a ridgepole in case the opportunity presented itself to move her out of the most expensive marina on the Delaware River. The fastest and easiest thing seems to be to get the heck out of here ASAP.
All offered assistance and donations are deeply appreciated!
For those still interested - boat DID NOT get painted, due to lack of help. Now earliest launch date is late May. That’s how it goes - you miss a three-week window, you wait 9 months.
Yes; basically this means I had $350 to have the boat covered but could find no-one to help paint. I shall hire the lads at the yard to help as soon as I can take off the wrapping. They'll take my money.
Pics do not show it but progress is being made. What you do not see here:
I have been buying and trading sailboat hardware on eBay for years but lately it has become most productive. Most recently I acquired outhaul blocks and blocks for running backstays.
I designed the in-boom outhaul-rigging system and figured out where and how to cut off the back of the boom (it was designed to reach the aft end of the cockpit, where the mainsheet would go; but having installed a bridge deck for the traveler I no longer need so long a boom and will cut it off more in keeping with the E measurement which is 8 ft.). You'd better believe I won't cut it off till I have the boat actually rigged with sails on though!
I designed the tang for jiffy-reefing line and for topping lift. Machinist extraordinaire John Steinmacher promises to help with this.
I have enough winches. This is important because they all have had to be 1970s-1980s chrome-plated Lewmars, in keeping with the boat as a ‘period piece’; and most people do not replace these - as they are too small to come in self-tailing models, so what would be the point? Two of the ones I have need to be replated. Anyone know any decent plating shops?
I cleaned out the whole boat. This is incredible progress. The poor boat has been a toolbox/woodshop for so long it’s actually kept work from being done. Of course everything now is scattered all over the steps of my house; but the truth is I have very little major woodwork left to do and am no concentrating on finishing the plumbing and electrical system, ripping out and replacing a rotten bulkhead to fit in a refrigerator box, and finishing a few things on the deck as well as can be done under the Shrinkwrap.
The daunting storage bill is the worst problem. Anyone know better places for crowdfunding than GoFundMe?
- JC2
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
for general distribution
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
* * *
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.
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
