In the wake of Sandy

Stunning view of the Mantoloking Bridge with Beaton's Boatyard in the upper left quadrant.

Views of the devastation at Beaton's frontong on the river.

Sjogin as she was.

Tuckerton Seaport

Scenes of devastation at Morgan Marina on Raritan Bay in central NJ where Adam Turinas, a fellow blogger, keeps his boat. Apparently Adams boat was damaged but not irretrievable. More at Messing About in Sailboats

Well, quite a storm. This is not meant to be a comprehensive report, but a bit of local news. And a plea for some help. Both Beaton's and the Tuckerton Seaport are reporting heavy damage. Both, as of Thursday, are in need of generators, so if any of you can help with this, try and contact them. It may not be easy, I'll post both their websites which have contact info, but phone lines are likely still out, cell also, my best guess is to contact via Facebook, where the requests were made.

As far as I can gather, CBMM, ISM and Mystic are all relatively unscathed, as are most of the 'tall ships' in this area.

Alas not so for Russ Mannheimer's  Sjogin, a much adored double ender of Swedish design. She sank in the storm, moored at Beaton's. No word yet of her location or condition, though hopes of salvage are circulating on the Woodenboat Forum and FB. Time will tell. There a moment on this NBC clip where you can see Sjogin and Suzanne Beaton.

And finally, we must mark the sad passing of the HMS Bounty, crew member Claudene Christian, a descendent of Fletcher Christian, and Captain Robin Walbridge.

Originally posted by Thomas Armstrong on 70.8%

Sjogin decoded!

Sjogin on the hard for her annual maintenance ,

and this season, measuring.

Here's Russ laying down the first 'finger' at the keel bottom.

The 'fingers' are set to critical measurement points, the rabbet, where keel joins to hull, top of the garboard, or first plank up, and at every lap until reaching the sheer, or top of the hull.

Another view, a little further along

The measurements are recorded and the lines for each section are drawn on a piece of ply . It gets a little congested where the lines converge.

A batten, a thin strip of wood, is used to plot the measurements and allow drawing a line of the hull shape at a particular station.

This is how it's done. The jig is laid down on the table to a preset position. The position of the ends of the fingers indicate the various measure points (at the laps). These are marked on the board,

measured, and the measurement recorded into a sort of spreadsheet, called a table of offsets. A table of offsets (shown above) represents a set of numerical measurements in three dimensions which will allow a designer or draftsman to recreate a drawn picture of the boat.

Here Steve's marking the finger points

Here he's 'pinning' the batten to the drawn finger points.

Batten pinned, here Steve draws the line.

And now taking the measurement from the drawn line to a baseline, giving the height of a point on the hull.

Here Steve is pinning the batten to draw a lie for the next to last station, no.9. Stations are cross sections through the hull at measured intervals, and the measurements describe the hull shape numerically.

I rarely like posed photos, but really felt this was an 'historic' moment, with the line being taken off Sjogin to be preserved for posterity. Russ and Steve reluctantly obliged

all images thomas armstrong

A little poetic license taken in the title for this post, actually, Sjogin described, or documented would be more accurate. Sjogin turns heads, both in person and on the internet, and it's easy to see why. Probably built by a retired Swedish ship captain, there's no denying that, whether by luck or by true artistry and insight, the design of this boat distills the essence of Scandinavian working craft and has an ineluctable charm. I am far from being the only admirer who shares this opinion. Back in February, a WoodenBoat Forum thread was started by 'RodB' about how to get the lines taken off so Sjogin could be reproduced. A gentle firestorm ensued, and to date there have been 271 posts on the thread. Several designers were approached, and at least three, Francois Vivier, Paul Gartside and John Welsford have expressed real interest in producing a set of plans for boats built in their attendant styles based on Sjogin's lines, with the intention of adhering very closely to the original lines of the boat, though with possible variations in the material and construction used. These would be plans available and accessible drawn with the home builder in mind. Two of the designers, Paul Gartside and Francois Vivier have already formed pools of subscribers, meaning interested parties who'd like to get a set of plans, and who band together to raise the funds to pay the initial design fee. Inquire if you are interested. Both Francois and Paul have done preliminary sketches based on photos of Sjogin, but in order to actually draw up plans from which a boat can be built, they need accurate measurements from several areas of the boat. This part's not about imagination, but precision, as the intent is to replicate that indescribable sweetness of this boat, this design.
Paul Gartside sent Russ Mannheimer, Sjogin's owner, detailed instructions on hoe to 'take off lines', ie, to take the measurements a designer would need to draw the boat in three dimensions. There are several ways of doing this and the method Paul described is simple and low tech, but the work is exacting.
The bulk of the work was done last Wednesday, by Russ and his accomplice, Steve Martinsen, up from Oxford, MD. The measuring took place at the venerable boatyard David Beaton and Sons, in Brick, New Jersey. Beaton's is a third generation boatyard still building and caring for wooden boats, and has a fabled history, more on the boatyard later. Beaton's is Sjogin's home, and exudes an atmosphere of the past, moving into the future, a real treasure.
I arrived at Beaton's in the afternoon to find Russ and Steve hard at work. They divided the work, Russ using a jig with fingers set to each of the salient measure points, then laying the jig on a board so Steve could measure the points of each of ten cross sections through the hull, and then measure, record and draw the curve. It was interesting to see this process, but I didn't get it all and am probably not explaining it very well. If you'd like to dig into how this process is done, there's an excellent ebook/resource put out by the Museum Small Craft Association. This is the go to text for documenting boats. I'll also recommend investigating this association, a group worthy of your attention.
All in all, a good day, even great, seeing Sjogin documented for all time. That doesn't imply that clones built to her lines will possess the same grace as Sjogin, but all will replicate her seaworthiness, if built correctly and if lucky have a little of her magic as well.

March13 2010 Nor'easter at Beaton's Boatyard

I can't tell what this is and Suzanne didn't know either, thought it might be a boat part.

Marsh

Mantoloking Beach

Beaton's from a parking lot across the bay

Mantoloking Beach

Mantoloking Beach

Mantoloking Beach

Mantoloking Beach

Mantoloking Beach

Mantoloking Beach

Mantoloking Beach

Mantoloking Beach

Looking south from the boatyard

Sjogin

Boatyard awash

Marsh



all photos courtesy Suzanne Beaton

I remember this day vividly. Even inland, nearly 100 miles from Beaton's, we experienced high winds, up to 50+ mph and constant rain, a wild day. Rain hard enough to create the first ever leak in my apartment.
The photos here were taken by Suzanne Beaton, wife of Tom Beaton, the third generation operator of this venerable boatyard, known for it's very high quality of workmanship, it's attention to several Barnegat A Cats, left to the yard for upkeep and a builder of high quality. Responsible for at least five A'cat builds, Beaton's is also home to Sjogin. I found this suite of storm photos while casually browsing Facebook. At first blush they appeared to be ordinary snaps of a tremendous weather event. My memory of the day and the furosity of the storm held me a bit and slowly I began to sense something more interesting. I began to see these photos as a straightforward attempt to communicate experience of the storm, probably as seen through the eyes of a gifted amateur photographer. They were pretty gray, so I played with them slightly in my photo editor, pulling out some color here and there, adjusting luminosity. Inevitably I began to compare my response to these photos to my perception of the photos on the gulf tragedy I had recently put up. I was struck by the ability of these photos to somewhat innocently convey the event, without reference to their maker, in contrast to the highly self conscious ( though beautiful) photographs by professional photographers and photojournalists in the previous post. During a phone conversation with Suzanne, she answered my question as to whether or not she was a professional photographer "not quite" and confirmed her status as a gifted amateur as I had guessed. I thought so for two reasons, first, she had not manipulated the photos and second, and more importantly, her 'style' did not intrude on the communication of the photographs. They are pretty straightforward, beautiful in their own right, but not self referential and loaded with 'art' baggage. I found the contrast with the pro's pictures revealing and instructive. Suzanne's work exhibits a good eye for composition, a demanding search for the fact, but are unencumbered with the need to convince us that she is a 'good' photographer. I applaud this and feel it makes for clearer communication. Let me know what you think.

The bay and marsh pictures are from the vicinity of the Beaton Yard, and the beach pics are Mantoloking Beach.
You can view the original photos and much more on the Boatyard's Facebook page, if you are a friend.

Thanks to Suzanne and Tom Beaton.

I am posting these photos with joy and a great deal of admiration for Suzanne's 'braving the storm' to document it.

Thanks