Age of Russia

Here's a cool boat that hauled out next door a few days ago. Age of Russia is a familiar sight in Richardson's Bay, where it is usually anchored, well offshore, due to its thirteen plus foot draft.

1992 ACC cruising conversion

Richardson Bay, Sausalito

The port of hail is "Leningrad, USSR", which could confuse someone as neither Leningrad or the USSR still exist. The short history of the vessel is that nascent St. Petersburg yacht club built it in hopes of competing in the 1992 America's Cup, shipping it to San Diego in one of those giant Antonov cargo planes in 1991. Well, the Soviet Union collapsed, they never had the money, and in spite of an injection of cash from an American sponsor (Stolichnaya "Russian" Vodka), the boat was never assembled and languished in San Diego for many years. Another group then trucked it up to Vancouver, BC where, after doing some work, it was abandoned again.

Proud owner

Tyone (above) then bought it, built the cabin, installed an engine, etc. He's put up a website about the boat and his experience owning it. Apparently, people often coming zooming up alongside and yell at him in Russian, which Tyone does not speak. Before he messes with the keel, he should probably learn enough to say, "It's my Dad's boat...I don't speak Russian!".

I can see there is a great temptation to buying an old race boat and converting it to cruising, but...it's a temptation that (IMHO) should be resisted.

Over 13' of draft

A gigantic, steel mermaid fin

Well, that's just a bitter, jealous, old man ranting. Because whatever Tyone's doing, he's doing something right 'cause he's got a cute GF...although, maybe she's just a painter at Bay Ship.

BS&Y painter in protective clothing

Zdravstvuĭte, tovarishch! YA iz Sankt-Peterburga. YA hochu piva. Mogu li ya kosnutʹsya vashyeĭ zhenoĭ?

Five ply challenge

A few years ago, Joel Welter had the bright idea for a developmental class of sailboats with a low barrier to entry. By low he imagined boats that could be built in seventy hours and cost less than 300 bucks...he did it! Joel and his coworker, Brooks Dees, came up with the "5 Ply Challenge". Last night at the Northern California SNAME section meeting the first (and, to date, the only) contestants showed their stuff.

Joel and his lake scow yawl Les Affames de Porc

Brooks with his FJ variant 64 Valient

Niko and the Cal student team aboard the unnamed proa

Here's a link to the class rules, but the main feature is that "All parts of the vessel’s hull, foils, and cross members (for multi hulls) must be made from no more than 5 sheets of 4’ x 8’ x ¼” thick plywood". Interesting idea (followed by the emoticon for a studiously blank expression combined with raised eyebrows).

Very fun meeting, although there were no takers for the offer of rides as the possibility of total immersion seemed too great. There was a little suppressed tension during dinner as Niko's proa disappeared down the busy Estuary with no running lights ("They prohibited by Class").

As a connoisseur of events of this type, I'll give full marks to Niko for innovation and speed potential...hampered by control issues. Joel clearly won the cheapskate award (and the honors attendant to it)...his floation was bags of trash lashed to the gunwales. Brooks apparently is the overall sailing champion. He (pussy) did not put 64 Valient in the water last night, so we had no way of verifying it. And although there was no evidence of rule evasion, I suspect he must have cheated.

Plastiki

I had to post a comment about an article I read in the Chronicle this morning. My complaint? The idea that Plastiki is "made" out of plastic bottles or is "recyclable" is deliberate disinformation and self promotion.

The vessel has an engineered, composite structure built from laminated foam board. The core structure is made with a standard foam (used to make fridges, surfboards, boats) with a manufactured Polyethylene Terephthalate fabric glued and vacuum bagged to it. The voids in the structure are filled with high quality PET bottles...that's it.

Take a look at this picture:

Does that main look like it's made from plastic bottles? Or how 'bout the one below? The spars, rigging and equipment are regular sailing yacht stuff -- I suppose it can all be "recycled" at a swap meet...

Furthermore, the comparison to Kon-Tiki expedition is false. I don't know if Thor Heyderdahl really proved anything either, but it really was an expedition into the void. Kon-Tiki was a sodden, balsa raft that drifted miserably to leeward, carrying 200 coconuts for food and their water in bamboo containers. With aluminum spars, kevlar sails, aramid rigging, GPS, radar, sat-phones and an engineered watertight hull, Plastiki is a modern (although structurally inefficient) sailing yacht.

De Rothschild is a tall, handsome, self promoting rich guy...I've got nothing against him. But did they actually prove anything? Will their endeavor prevent people from buying soda in plastic bottles? Did they use less energy, or is it more recyclable than a homemade plywood catamaran? Is the "expedition" worth wasting the electrons it takes to publish this comment? (answer -- no).

I'm not dissing anyone who sails across an ocean, but hero? I don't think so. In contrast, here's the Junk Raft:

I think they actually did something...not sure what, but I'm pretty sure it's more than what De Rothschild did with Plastiki. Check out the junk raft:

http://junkraft.com/home.html

Cangarda makes it to Ellay

Cangarda got its COI on Friday and left SF Bay early in the am on the 24th. I'm happy to report that the vessel and all souls made it safely to LA. Here's a report, in its entirety, I just got from the owner:

" The first voyage of the restored Cangarda.
The restoration of Cangarda, the last American Edwardian steam yacht, 1901, has been ongoing for five years. At 126 feet on deck but only a seventeen foot she is a long and skinny boat. Built as a cruising yacht she was expected to be fast for her day and with a flashy look. It has been great to undertake this restoration. The team led by Jeff Rutherford have done a great jog on the construction. Tony Guild was the master of getting a Certificate of Inspection from the Coast Guard. Now it was time for the first open ocean voyage of Cangarda. The plan was to sail from San Francisco to Los Angeles, only four hundred mile voyage but enough to test Cangarda.

Friday at 8:00 am I arrived at the Coast Guard Headquarters in Alameda California. Presence was requested to be present at the signing of the Certificate Of Inspection by the Commander of the operation for the Sector. Quite an event. A full presentation before probably a hundred CG personal, pictures et al.! For three days previous to this the Coast Guard had been completing the inspection of Cangarda. This included the inspection of the CO2 fire suppression system for the engine room, indeed a great thing to have for this vessel, as well as all the other safety equipment. The detail to safety elements was immense. The next day was a test and verification of the system that controls the boiler and burner management. In essence this was like taking your laptop and testing each module on the backplane of the PC to ensure that it communicated accurately to the next. This was a full days effort and highly intense. The third day was sea trials which included the normal testing of the different steering systems (including the tiller) but also demonstrating the use of each of the dinghies and launch. The end included a testing of the pressure relief valves and other items. All along the way you never know if the inspectors will come up with something else they want or if they will ever be satisfied. Finally it was done. After two years of effort to clear our system with the Coast Guard (which was built so well that we did not have to change any systems except one component of the Ethernet equipment) we were to be granted the COI just as they would issue to a thousand foot ship.

Friday evening the crew assembled for a dinner. We were to depart for Los Angeles. One never sails on Friday and we intended to sail with a favorable flood tide at 2:00 am. I went into my cabin to sleep asking to be awakened when we crossed under the Golden Gate. At 4:00 the electrician came in to pick up his tools and leave. Last minute work. The first delay. Steam came up and we left the dock at 6:00 and on our way.

Outside the seas were running a nine foot swell with two to three foot wind waves. A north westerly was to blow of some ten to twenty knots by prediction. Not too bad. We planned to go right out into the sea and sail in the middle of all this to test Cangarda in the sea with consideration of roll on the boiler. The tide was flooding hard with the beginning of the ebb on the south shore so we stayed to the right. Out on the horizon one could see the seas rolling. When we were out into the seas the boat performed very well. She slides down the waves. The stabilizers make it all tolerable and while we had alarms on the drum level we had no trips (the water in the steam drum of a boiler is critical to be at a minimum level or the fire is terminated).

We sailed along through the morning until about one in the afternoon when suddenly the burners both tripped. For obscure reasons we had air in the oil lines making a foam. The burners would not stay lit. Cangarda was dead in the water, no steam. wallering beam to the nine foot seas. Finally, after rolling in the beam seas, we decided to quit the automated system and light the burners in manual and force the air out of the system so we could relight in the automated state later. We performed the task needed to achieve this and indeed we were able to light the system off and run for several hours. However finally the air/fuel mixtures made operation of the burners impossible and we decided to go back to automated firing where the mixture of air and oil are worked carefully by the computers.

But the light off did not go smoothly. We were off Santa Cruse about twenty miles, again wallering in the seas that were building as the afternoon wind was building. A series of misseps kept us from getting a good light off until we realized that a specific trip switch that we had opened when we did the manual firing had not been released. With that misstep rectified we were able to relight and again the burners operated smoothly and we stared again about six in the evening. The only item is that we had been blown all the way past Monterey.

The boat did well in the beam seas. There were a few seas that did come aboard but in a minor way. There were a couple of seas (probably doubles of some eighteen feet) that some of the crew said could have put green water on the deck but did not. In the engine room the roll was not too severe but we are near the pivot line there. The wind had built to thirty five to forty knots. Finally we were glad to be back steaming and again riding down these swells, dipping the bowsprit into the waves and then surfing down. Nothing broken, all safe but a few seasick. The team did a great job sticking to the task until we had worked the last kink out of out problem. It is good to know that the element was not the fundamental control system. Just saltheads not having full command of the highly complex automation system of Cangarda.

We have had no events since this one problem. We are not off Santa Cruse Island (Ventura) and will be in Los Angeles tonight. All is well. It is nice and quiet sailing on a steam vessel. None of the roar of a internal combustion engine. Just like sailing. Cangarda performed well in difficult conditions. Nothing broke. We understand the complications that made for our five hour delay. This vessel deserves the respect of a good sea going boat.

Next challenge is getting to Maine.
Bob"