flagman1776

I know the desire for wooden ships but in this age, I'm willing to have modern hull materials to have a vessel which is sustainable over time. I am turned off by the degree of modern deckhouses. Maybe I'll feel differently when completed... www.ohpri.org Ship under construction Oliver Hazard Perry...

Sloop Providence has a glass hull... hidden very well. I consider her a good replica for these modern times... I hear she has new owners.

Forgot to add, I was a certified NAUI & PADI Scuba instructor & worked light commercial contract jobs, search & recovery & such.

I seem to grounded on a beach after a broadside of health (Multiple Sclerosis) issues. I was brought up in sail boats & later daily used a heavily powered yard launch (18 footer with a 360 cid Chrysler FWC Marine Conversion) daily. Sail: Point Jude 15 (Edson Schock design), 12' Club Cat (Edson Schock design), 14' Minx class Cat (also Edson Schock), 2 different Thistle class #762, #9, a Super Sunfish, a 8 foot sailing dink, a Lightning, a 30' Pearson Coaster, a 32' Pearson Wanderer.

I was brought up in small boats... a long list from a 8' sailing dink to a 30' sloop... as well as partnering in a marina for 17 years. You have not given us a make / model to look up & give better suggestions. On the centerboard. Few centerboard trunks are open on the top to the board can be removed, cleaned & painted. Otherwise, find a way to get it up in the air. Jacks & blocks, tackle from the garage roof (outside Philly), a fork lift, a crane (S Dartmouth, Ma), a Travel lift (Wakefield RI). We routinely held a boat in the air long enough to drop the centerboard for painting. Or if you do it yourself, lift it with blocks & beams & put stands under it to stabilize it so it can be worked under. It might be the c board tackle is jammed, too. You must devolupe a system of protecting your gear from loss... replacing all cotter pins... trash bagging turnbuckles. Storing equipment together. It takes time & space to get organized. If need to keep your trailer is good safe condition. We gained some very nice customers by helping them after they lost a trailer wheel. Boat, trailer & tow vehicle separated & were spread across a highway. It arrived at out yard with tow truck dollies under the trailer! A common failure is trailer wheel bearings, despite new fangled grease fittings. One last thing to understand... sail boats are supposed to tip... within limits. If they don't tip, they don't go.

I read the articles & watched the videos... It an interesting collection of first person accounts... yet really failed to add anything to what was already known, at least by those who followed the story & the CG hearings. It is a crying shame & I do weep at the errors which caused such a tragedy.

I lost a towed dingy in crossings Buzzards Bay with a fresh wind on the quarter... the 30 foot sloop would catch a wave & ride it for a quarter of a mile at a time. When the swell would drop out from under us, the tiller would try to fling us around the cockpit for a few exciting seconds. The dingy slid off a wave crest into the trough & rolled over. Everything went in slow motion as everyone in the cockpit hit the deck. A split second later the tow line (1/2" through a 1/2" hole in the bow & a figure eight knot on the inside) stretched to the limit... pulled through the bow & came on board our sloop with considerable velocity. Who ever got our dingy, got it complete as we had the oars lashed into it & all. Hull speed was 8 1/2 knots... we later figured our speed to have been about 10 over the bottom.

I believe it was the late Col. Jeff Cooper who stated that people were only accidentally shot with unloaded guns. To paraphrase slightly, proper gun/weapons handling is a parallel safety to provide redundancy in case the other system fails. I am about ill when handling a gun in a shop when the clerk will pass in front of the muzzle while a customer is test aiming a gun. It doesn't matter to me whether the gun is modern, replica or antique... again to quote Col Cooper "Don't tell me gun is unloaded. I do not believe you. Nor should you believe me!" What is practiced every day is how you will behave when the chips are down. We might not know until later what the stakes are/were. I understand posing for pictures. Weapons can displayed in a belt or held in a hand without committing safety violations. We are smarter than that! We can figure out how to make a nice picture without violating safety protocols.

My re-enacting club never let people choose their own name... it was earned by a great deed (or misdeed). As such I have yet to claim a name. Is there a term for one who liberates a fair sized sloop without permission? Perhaps there's a name in there somewhere. Thief seems so common & vulgar. There were witnesses... but to my knowledge no one ever talked. No one walked the plank but it might just be an act of piracy.

It is quite correct that one can not anchor in water, the length of your rope. Yes it needs the angle mentioned above. An anchor with a heavy stock helps immensely but in addition a length of chain, weight dependent on the load on the line, acts as a shock absorber, requiring the line pull to lift it off the bottom before applying force to the anchor. Likewise the weight of the chain, and longer chain with more weight, changes the attack angle of the line to horizontal on the sea bed, greatly increasing holding power. Seldom seen these days is additional weights can be slid down the rode (anchor line) on a tether stopping short of the anchor, and like wise acting as a shock absorber. Modern nylon has additional give under load, again reducing shock loading. I recall a scope ratio of 7:1 but few anchorages allow such swing room. I recall a very bumpy night spent in an exposed anchorage in Buzzards Bay when we could not find adequate clearance in the harbor. Our heavy Folding Yachtsman anchor held beautifully, with it's chain & oversized 5/8 rode in a 30' Pearson Coaster. We kept an anchor watch & every hour eased the line a few inches as she snubbed short as the storm passed... to limit the chafing on the chocks in any one spot. I don't think anyone got much sleep, all wedged together in the dinette amidships. The yachtsman anchor is similar to the Admiralty Pattern folding stock but with diamond flukes to avoid fouling. http://www.anchorbuddy.co.nz/anchoring.html http://www.anchoring.com/article_info.php?articles_id=9

I own & demonstrate various swivel cannons. I've used stumps (with holes drilled in) and blocks of wood. What I have settled on is a simple box... with a hole drilled in the bottom for the yoke. Inside the box, I've installed a 4X4 glued & screwed into the sides & "top". Or is it the bottom. To transport, these boxes... packing crates... are flipped open side up, have rope handles installed & become the carrier for most of the equipage & some of the cannon. The boxes are painted in authentic period colors... some have been repurposed from earlier uses.

One "should" never need to pull a ball. I much agree, if one does, they have seriously screwed up. I would never unbreech a gun, only because it requires tools & skills I do not have available. I would call in a professional before I risked damaging a gun. A smooth bore musket of often fired with the paper cartridge as patching or possibly wadding over the undersized ball. The most often cause of a stuck ball is failure to clean often enough... every 2-3 shots typically. I have seen the grease gun used. I have used CO2 ball removers & compressor air pressure for lightly stuck balls. Most recently a flatlander lost a dummy hardwood "cannon ball" in my 1.75" bore bronze swivel gun & there is no breech plug. A friendly air nozzle removed it with surprising velocity.

I should add to the previous... you haven't lived until you've gotten your screw to bite into the ball but the ball refuses to budge. You are fairly certain there's a live charge under the ball. The ball is not seated but also can not be withdrawn. Because the ball is not fully seated & an attempt to shoot it out will likely blow the barrel, at the very least bulge it... because of the OBSTRUCTED BORE. Even if you "deactivate" the powder... you really do not want any person's body parts in front of the muzzle. It will require A whole lot of force to pull the ball... The screw may even expand it, making it more difficult to remove. The gun will surely require being secured... possibly in a gun vise. Will you take this loaded gun in doors? What will you use to pull on the ramrod. I do hope you have a metal ramrod because it's unlikely a wooden one will stand the stress. There are clamp like ramrod grippers but frankly, I've yet to see them work. Adding oil down the bore is a good idea, in the event you might get some around the ball but at least once it starts to come out. I have it in mind to never try this for real. I'll install a grease zerk & buy a case of grease cartridges first!

Smooth bored guns were normally loaded with an undersized ball so that it could be reloaded without cleaning under the heat of combat. At our club, speed shoot contests the best could hit a gong 7 times in 2 minutes with a musket... a rifle with a tight patched ball, would do very well to fire 2 shots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJMbxZ1k9NQ Originally rifling was invented as a way to create space to push the black powder fouling into allowing reloading, it was only later that it was thought to twist the rifling to give the projectile spin. Modern reenactors, without the pressure of others shooting at us, tend to use larger balls and patch tighter than would have been the practice. Cannons properly use undersize balls with a specified windage. If one has not forgotten the powder under the ball... at least once... you have not been shooting long enough. It creates a dangerous situation in that one does not know for sure if the gun has no powder, if you have a misfire, or a hang fire. Consider the possibility that the powder is in there & the vent is obstructed with burned powder. Kind of makes you wish you'd thoroughly picked the vent before loading! Even if there is a dry ball (no powder) if may be possible to work a small amount of fine powder into the vent with a pick (in a safe place away from other shooters). All you need is enough to expel the ball to allow cleaning & reloading. There are new fangled devised which use CO2 to pressurize the bore to expel the defective load such as it might be. Some shooters use air pressure the same way. If the nipple or if the gun has a vent insert, they can be removed & often a grease zerk installed and a lot of grease used to force the load from the barrel. It is surprising difficult to get a screw to bite into a soft lead ball without damaging the bore. Please remember that Treasure Island (as the OP correctly noted) is a Novel. Authors do not have to stick their body parts in front of the muzzle of a gun which has already been attempted to fire.

That is one Mother of a Crane!