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Date: Friday, August 2, 2002
Ernestina Hauls Out at DN Kelley Shipyard in Fairhaven, MA

 
Schooner Ernestina hauled at 1:30 this afternoon. The chart image shows the end of the passage back to New Bedford yesterday and the location of the ship today on the ways at DN Kelley and Sons Shipyard in Fairhaven.

You can see in the photos to the right the crew from the yard running cables over to the Ernestina that are used to position the ship over the cradle. Once positioned, the huge electric windlass on shore at the head of the slip cranked away slowly pulling the cradle up the rails and out of the water. You can see the series of images below and to the right as the ship came up the ways. Notice the large chain running down into the water between the rails.

From the platforms on either side of the cradle, yard crew can pull on lines that draw the wedge-shaped blocking in along the hull to keep the ship upright. The keel is blocked along its length.

In the photos (lower right) you can see the rubber sheathing held on by nailed wooden lathe placed over the garboard seam by the divers. The final photo shows the crew immediately to work pulling off the sheathing so we can get at the hull.

As we knew for certain before, the caulking was gone from the garboard seam on both sides of the keel from the mainmast forward. What we also noticed was that the zincs were totally gone. Zincs help protect all the steel fastenings in the hull from corrosion since the zinc will go first, will be sacrified for protection of the steel.

It is also clear that, although the keelson and other structural members of the hull did not move as observed from the inside of the ship, it is apparent the keel delaminated from below, it moved down a half inch or so, and was the root cause of the cotton being spit. This means the fastenings of the keel to keelson must be checked and will be replaced. These fastenings are of two types on Ernestina including keel bolts that run through and are tightened with a large nut and drifts which are steel rods that are driven into snug fitting drilled holes with a clinch ring at the end that secures the peened over rod.

Knowing that keel bolts could be a problem, we had the yard block up the Ernestina extra high on the cradle. This extra height will be useful when we go to drive in new keel bolts from the bottom up. On the inside a steel washer or plate will go over the threaded bolt ends and the nuts will pull all members together as we crank down on them.

How many new bolts will go in? We are opening up the interior of Ernestina to get at the top of the keelson to find existing bolts. This involves pulling out foam floatation in the fo'c's'le and jack hammering out concrete poured over lead ballast in the main hold. We're mapping existing bolts and drawing up a schedule for proposal to Coast Guard for placement of additional/new bolts.

The rest of the hull planking is looking great, largely replaced over the past eight years.

The Ernestina crew worked though the weekend and we'll have an updates through the coming week.

Captain: Sophie Morse

Yard crew run cables over to position Ernestina over the cradle (above and below).

Ernestina still coming up the ways pulled by the large chain to the right.

Sheathing held by battens installed by divers in from Douglass Marine in Greenport to keep water from traveling into the hull through the seam. This enabled Ernestina to transit back to her home port.

The Ernestina crew hard at it. You can see an open joint at the very forward end of the keel on the right side of the image.

We would like to thank Lotus and IBM for donation of software, hardware and funding to enable regular electronic updates from the ship.

NOAA Chart is provided courtesy of Maptech using Cruising Navigator 4.3 and grabbing the image using Grabit Pro 6.02.

 
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Copyright 1997-2002
Schooner Ernestina
89 North Water Street, P.O. Box 2010, New Bedford, MA 02741-2010
phone 508.992.4900 -- fax 508.984.7719
www.ernestina.org

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