My model of “Astrolabe”, an 1800’s frigate is finally finished after only 33 years!

I have always liked to build things beginning in my early childhood. It started somewhere around my eight birthday with rubber band powered balsa airplanes and quickly escalated to larger gliders and control line gas powered “flyers”. Usually, my models were good for a single suicide “mission”, as they would crash into splintered pieces shortly after launching. This, of course, was followed by intense screaming, swearing, and a short lived vow to never build another.

After more crashes than I can remember, my attention shifted from model airplanes to downhill coasters. I located a set of official soap box derby wheels, and began to build my version, paying little attention to the official derby rules and instructions. My “car” was wide enough for two kids to sit side by side, with extra space behind for my dog to ride along. I “designed” it with a swing front axle connected with ropes to a steering wheel, no suspension, and very marginal brakes (dragged a hinged board on the ground to slow down). The first run down the hill behind my house put me in the bushes on the side of the road when the steering broke. Replacing the rope steering line with wire cable, solved that problem, and I felt we were ready for the open road. I was gliding down hills everywhere in my neighborhood, dog in the back, my buddy alongside, with only minor incidents. No major crashes- just an occasional close call when the brakes didn’t work.

When I got tired of gliding down hills, and pushing the car up hills, I added a lawn mower engine to my coaster. Figuring out how to do this involved many fruitless attempts and lot’s of screaming, and cursing before the proper drive train and gear ratios where finally stumbled on. But, it could finally run up as well as down the roads in my neighborhood. After several warnings to “get off the road, are you crazy?”, I shifted my attention to building two wheel scooters. The thinking was that I could pull off the road onto the grass any time a police car was in sight. This, of course, didn’t work, and I was once again told to stay off the roads several times that summer.

I went on to build a sunfish that keep sinking, a small hydroplane that would nose dive into any wave over 4” high, to rebuilding my 1952 Ford convertible into a “hot rod”. Never ran quite right after “rebuilding” the engine, but the bright red paint, and the load noise from the dual exhausts covered all minor faults.

In short, I have always loved building things. It was the main reason that I initially loved sailmaking so much. It was the perfect combination of hands on building, and the use of my engineering education. I couldn’t wait to hang up the finished sail in the loft, and try it on the boat. I loved my part time job at Hard Sails while I was in graduate school, as I had lots of opportunity to learn, and correct my many mistakes with the ever present seam ripper. (a tool that made quick work of cutting the stitching and taking apart the sail for recutting). In fact, one of my co-workers knick named me “Steve the ripper”, and made a seam ripper holster for me, so I would always have several close at hand.

I’m not sure how I got the bug to build a large plank on frame model of an eighteen century sailing frigate, but I bought the “Astrolabe” ship model kit in 1974. I figured I'd finish it in a year or so, as it only took a few months to plank the hull. As I started to work on the deck gear, I decided none of the blocks that came with the kit were good enough, so I threw them out. Big mistake, as 90% of all the blocks on this model were made from scratch, one at a time. Very time consuming!

After my son Chris was born, until he was about 10 yrs old, I put the model away, as I moved twice in Ithaca , twice more in Rochester , and setting it up, and figuring where, how to start was a major project. I also hid it, as Chris could have smashed it in a temper tantrum- as he did on numerous occasions with lesser models that he (I) built. During this time I got distracted as I bought Chris a small HO train set for Christmas when he was about 5 years old. This small train set rapidly got out of control, as I turned it into a massive HO train layout that filled one of the bedrooms in Ithaca . It had tunnels, mountains, bridges, and crossovers. Multiple trains could be run at one time. When it was finished, Chris only enjoyed running the hand built locomotives into one another.

When I moved permanently to Rochester and bought my current house, I set the model back up in the dining room after Chris' college graduation in 2001. It took me the last five years to finish the masts and rigging, as making the blocks, and rigging them was so tedious that I could only work in spurts. Finally, this fall I finished! Thanks to Reed Stava who built a beautiful case for me, the “Astrolabe” is now safely displayed by the dining room window. To see the model, click on this link:

As a prologue, I went to England in the spring of 1974, and visited the model ship display at Greenwich, and saw the Victory model, over six feet long, (a famous English “1^st rater with over 100 cannon that fought at the battle of Trafalgar), as well as over 300+ other models of English sailing warships. These models were orriginally made for the Admiralty to inspect, and approve the construction of the full size ship. The model museum at Greenwich is a must see trip. The craftsmanship and detail of these models is unbelievable! Every detail of the proposed full sized ship, from the framing details, to all the deck gear, and rigging was so realistic, it would be next to impossible to tell the model from the full size ship in a photo. Looking at these incredibly beautiful models, I got all excited, and when I got home, I ran out and bought a large scale model kit of the Victory. It is still in its box, untouched to this day. The original Victory model in Greenwich took 12,000 hours to build the hull before WWII, and another 12,000 hours to finish the masts and rigging. I'm thinking I should get started on my Victory model some day soon.

Mike Ingham, a local sailor and friend, is down in Mexico at the J/24 Worlds. Long time Haarstick Sailmaker Jon Faudree is trimming sails for him. Today is the last day of racing and they are currently in 4^th out of 70 boats. Even though we have no sails on Mike's boat, it isn’t often that you are able to read reports from a leader of a regatta as it is going on, so we thought we would pass these along. Here is Mike's report on the first 6 of 10 races:

70 boats from 14 countries have qualified and are gathered here on the West coast of Mexico for the J24 Worlds. The J24 class the strongest keel boat in both the US , and in the world. The fleet still gets the full attention of many sailmakers and other professionals. We have been training for the last few days and the conditions here are fantastic, this is a great place to sail. On top of that, Dolphins have come and played with our boat, we checked out some whales, and there are sea turtles all over the place.
Today we are scheduled for races 1 and 2, starting at 2:00pm Central time. This event is heavily sponsored, and Globalstar has added tracking devices to each of our boats so you can watch the races almost real time. They say they track each of our positions every minute and then batch the positions to post on the web every 10 minutes. So tune in every day this week at 14:00 EST. Here is the link.
http://j24.waypointinfo.com/# (FYI – this has not been working right all week??)
Click on "Launch Map"

The Worlds site has been down a lot, but this is a different sever and seems to work fine. Very cool!

I’m busy keeping up with my job in the AM then racing in the afternoon, but I hope to get you all a quick update every day. Stay
tuned, and in the mean time, check out the tracking.

For those tracking on the website, we are bow #32.
http://j24.waypointinfo.com/#
Supposedly it’s updated every 10 minutes with positions tracked every minute then batched.
Here is the team:
Bobby Bryant, Curt Barnes, Jon Faudre, Ernie Ferullo, and myself. Yesterday the Race Committee had a hard time getting off the first start. Everybody is so hyped up that they just could not hold back. So they resorted to scoring penalties called Z flags, then to throwing people out –Black Flag! When all this was sorted out, there were 10 Black Flags and over 30 Z flag penalties. Fortunately we we did not get any of those penalties. Unfortunately only one of the teams that we feel is a serious competitor got one –that was the “Geiko” team from Japan .

Race 1 was a little bit light, and the left side seemed to pay. We were left of most of the fleet, so we hung in there getting around the top mark in around 10th –which is about where we hope to be first time around. Things were spread out, so there were not major losses or gains from there, but we were able to pass a few boats and finished 7th

Race 2 was blowing about 14 Kts, and the fleet was much better behaved after receiving all the penalties in the first start. We were just a little too conservative (not wanting to get penalties) and did not quite get on the course as well as we would have liked to. But we saw one small opening out and bobbed and weaved our way on port tack through the fleet –which was hard since we were on port with no rights. It could not have worked out better and we were going very fast. The right came in just enough that we were able to get around the top mark in first place. The Dolphins must like the leaders because they darted around our boat for most of the downwind. Mark Hillman capitalized on one mistake and were going very well and ended up nosing us out at the finish to take the win with us 2nd. The defending world champion Brazilian team had 3rd in both races and although we have not seen the official scores, they should be in the lead with 6 points. We have 9 and should be in 2nd, followed closely by the team that won the Mexican Nationals, Ryan Cox. I hope the link works as well as they say it should

RACES 3&4:

The locals call the large mountain range to the south the Jungle. The small valley before it was packed with low clouds and we had not seen that before. We are not sure why, but that made for very unstable winds today. After about an hour and a half of the Race Committee chasing the wind through 30 degree shifts, they finally got a race off. But it had shifted significantly again and we found ourselves in big trouble. We were going fast and Bobby made some good calls and we were able to claw back to 16th. The 2nd race steadied out a little and picked up to about 12kts with big chop. This was tricky, but we were going well anyway. We had
another mediocre start and had to claw our way back again, which we did well and by the end of the 2nd lap we were in 8th. But we went the wrong way and lost 3 boats on the last beat. It's tricky sailing here! All in all not a terrible day, most of our competitors were inconsistent and had some bad races too. But the Brazilian team continues to do well with a 1st and an 8th. Chris Snow from North Sails had a 4 and a 2 to take our 2nd overall from us, and Ryan Cox who was only one point behind is now a few points ahead. We are in 4th tied with the team from Argentina . The sponsorship at this worlds is over the top, they say they raised $600,000. The hospitality shows, but after spending 7 hours on the water yesterday we had to skip the party on the beach and we came back to our place and I slept before my face hit the pillow. The event web site seem to be working again:
http://www.j24mex.com/worlds2007.asp
I hear the on the water tracking does not work as well as advertised, but they just sent me an email that they think they have solved the problem:
http://j24.waypointinfo.com/#

RACES 5&6:

There are 10 races scheduled, and we crossed over the midpoint of the regatta today. This is a regatta of attrition, as the top teams try not to take themselves out of the event with a poor score. It’s not as much about winning as it is about not doing poorly.
They tell me that the http://j24.waypointinfo.com/# website to track us is working well now. Race 5 we got a good start, but the race was recalled, and they went right to the black flag. We got off cleanly on the left half of the line and were sailing fast. It was fairly light, maybe 5kts, and we managed to outpace the boats around us. We tacked over to port and were looking really good. But unfortunately the right filled in and although we looked like we were winning the race, the right came in so hard that we found ourselves in around 20th place. We had won our side, and if not it would have been much worse. But we picked up boats on the run, then the same on the next beat, then a few more on the next run. We worked our way back up to 8th. Race 6 we wanted the right, so we started near the boat. Now it was blowing about 15kts. After one minor maneuver to get away from the team from Vancouver , we headed out toward the right and it paid off. Once again we were going well, and we rounded the top mark in first.
One error cost us the lead to the Canadians, and we found ourselves in a battle with the blue Japanese boat. After swapping positions with them a few times, they got ahead of us right before the finish, and both of us had closed in to just a few boat lengths from the Canadians. Right at the finish, the Canadian team tacked onto the Japanese to protect their narrowing lead and it gave us just enough of an advantage to get 2nd in a nail biter. A day of 8 and 2 is good in this fleet. We beat the nearest boats in
the standings for the day, but the Brazilian leaders have a 7 and 7 for the day which still comfortably keeps them in the lead.
The standings show us regaining 2nd, but we now get to discard a race. Our discard is a 16, but many of our competitors (except the Brazilians) have a worse discard. This is good, but I don’t think we will be in 2nd anymore.

The winter production schedule is fast approaching maximum capacity. If you are thinking that you want a sail for the start of the season (2 months away) don’t delay.

This winter got off to a great start for us and may be the start of another record year for Haarstick. We are easily packed through April right now. With 45 new Ensign sails being built for customers around the country, 36 Pram Sails going to Duxbury Bay Maritime School , 35 Ideal 18 Sails and our regular backlog of dinghy to 45 footers, we are keeping busy. So busy that if you are thinking about sails for 2007 you shouldn’t wait any longer to get a quote.

For those of you down south that are still sailing, we can still have a few open slots in our production schedule over the next two months that we can squeeze you in before launching begins in earnest in Upstate New York.

Thanks to all of our customers for your continued support of Haarstick Sailmakers.

Spring is right around the corner, so if you have not brought in your sails for their annual winter check over now is the time before the spring rush. Even if your sails seemed “ok” when you put them away in the fall, it’s never a bad idea to have the trained eye of the Haarstick service department check them over to prevent costly and time consuming repairs during the height of the sailing season.

This advice applies to both racers and cruisers. Racing sailors who are always seeking that extra tenth of a knot of boat speed can benefit from our experience in assessing sail shape and making sure that your racing inventory is fully optimized and ready for the new season. For the cruising sailor, it’s a good idea to have the stitching checked over on your furling headsail’s so that it continues to stay attached to your sail when you get caught in less than ideal conditions.

That’s all for now and we look forward to seeing you all in the spring when you come in to pick up your new and repair sails.

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