The "Boatyard"

A view of where construction will occur, taken from near the future position of the bow. The stern will be located somewhere near the plastic shed. Two lean-tos are complete in this image; the third is under construction. 

No other problem has delayed the implementation of this project more than finding a suitable place in which to build the boat. When I first got the idea that this was something I wanted to do (over four years ago!) I initially had thought that construction would take place at my Dad's house in Maryland. At the time, that made sense to some degree, as there was plenty of space up there, as well as easy access to lots of tools, plus expertise from the family's resident boatbuilder extraordinare (for those of you who don't know him, Dad has done this before). Furthermore, I had little choice, as at the time I was renting a house whose topography, even in the extremely unlikely event that the landlord signed off on the project, would have turned the boat into an enormous 8-1/2 ton lawn ornament immediately upon completion. The place had a fully-fenced back yard immediately abutting a short and extremely steep hill in the front, with absolutely no hope of vehicular access whatsoever. That didn't stop it from serving as a boatyard of sorts -both my dinghy and kayak were finished there- but moving them into and out of the place was difficult at the best of times.

Dad's place had some disadvantages, however, particularly distance. It takes about an hour to get there if there's no traffic (a rarity on the DC beltway), which makes weeknight visits impractical. The distance also manifests itself in the cost of fuel to get there and back, and by making it more difficult to change plans on a whim. One finds oneself spending entire weekends there in the interest of getting the most work out of the fewest number of trips, at the expense of friends, other activities, etc. I tried to tell myself that that would be no big deal - that I could easily work on smaller sections of the project at my place, then trailer them up to the farm for final assembly, but the fact remained that a very large amount of time would have had to have been spent up there - particularly in the later stages of the project. In hindsight, I'm surprised that I held onto that notion as long as I did. Even after purchasing my current house in the fall of 2011, I spent six months designing a garage to fit at the end of the driveway, wherein, I was certain, patterns could be picked up and pieces shaped for eventual assembly elsewhere.

Concept drawing of one of three lean-to sheds under which tools and timber will be stored.

I don't remember there being any single moment when it "clicked" that this was not the best way to proceed; it was more of a gradual realization that took place throughout the summer of 2012. As I continued to work on lofting the boat's lines on my back deck, I came to appreciate the amount of progress that could be completed on weekday evenings, as long as the work site was located yards -instead of tens of miles- from my kitchen. Once I'd had that epiphany, however, I sprung into action. First, I inquired with the neighbors, who were all just fine with the idea. Next I called the county, asking whether there were any regulations pertaining to backyard boatbuilding. I could tell right away that this was not the kind of question they were used to fielding. After being put on hold for a while, and having my request escalated through what felt like several levels of supervisory responsibility, I finally was able to speak with someone who let me know that while there were no specific regulations prohibiting such a project, there were ordinances pertaining to the outdoor storage of construction materials that I should bear in mind. Given the amount of effort I intended to put into the project, I asked if I could have that in writing. To my surprise, they said that that would be no problem, as long as I e-mailed them with a formal request.

"Oh and by the way," my kindly local government official asked me over the phone, "about how big is this boat going to be?"

I gulped silently.

"Picture it like a big RV." I replied, sure I'd completely screwed myself. Two weeks later, however, I had a letter from the Zoning department granting my project explicit permission to go ahead. In its final sentence, the letter emphasized that while the county has no problem with boatbuilding, my HOA would probably have something to say about it. I smiled gleefully at this: I don't have one.

Following my positive encounter with the county, I built three small lean-tos (concept and construction pictured above) under which I intend to store timber and tools during the build. I'm also considering knocking together a couple of large rectangular wooden boxes in which to plant some bamboo, to screen the project so that it can't be seen from the sidewalk. Finally, I've contacted a professional boat-moving company, and asked them to assess the suitability of the site from a transport perspective. In hindsight, I probably should have done that before I built the lean-tos, but...well...I didn't. I haven't heard back from them yet, but I'll post about it when I do. In the meantime, here's a sample of the type of terrain they'll have to deal with:

The slight hill that the finished boat will have to climb in order to access the driveway and the street, taken from near the future location of the bow. Surely this will be no problem for a professional crew, right?

Appellations

So I've decided to create a blog. This is relevant because not long ago, I made the similar but rather more ambitious decision to build a boat. That project, the course of which this blog will document, is going to take a long time to finish, and I hope that by committing myself to some semblance of regular updates here, I can maintain the self-discipline necessary to see it through to completion. Once that happens - a day which seems vanishingly distant to me right now- maybe this will then transform into a cruising blog. For now and the foreseeable future, though, it's going to be a blog about boat construction, and an explanation of its title is in order. Before that, however, I ought to briefly introduce the boat that I'm attempting to build.

The thirty-foot falmouth cutter designed by Lyle Hess is a rugged offshore sailboat based on the ones that were used to deliver harbor pilots to waiting merchant vessels off the west coast of England during the age of sail. They needed to be able to operate year-round and in all weather conditions, and to lead the big ships into the harbor safely every time. Inspired by this design, Hess adapted it into a robust, heavy displacement ocean cruising yacht with ample beam and low freeboard. When famous circumnavigators Lin and Larry Pardey returned to California in search of a bigger boat, Hess knew just what hull to draw for them. Since then, the Pardeys have taken their Falmouth 30 across the world and around Cape Horn. Rolland Trowbridge sailed the Northwest Passage in one, along with his family of four. Randy Hanford, a shipwright from Baltimore, sailed his to French Polynesia. If ever there was a gorgeous boat fit to do some serious exploring, this is it.

Lin and Larry Pardey's Taleisin, class leader. (Image Credit: Nauticalmind.com)

Picking a name for something as significant and enduring as a yacht can be a long and time-consuming process, with names coming into and falling out of favor as their meanings and connotations are deliberated ad infinitum. As a space scientist and amateur astronomer, I wanted a name that brought to mind a celestial connection, but also one that simultaneously held a connection to ships and the sea. And of course, it had to sound pretty. 

Happily, I had just the one already picked out. I'd fallen in love with the name ever since middle school, when I'd first read about it as the constellation in which the homeworld of the Overlord race was located in Arthur C. Clarke's classic 1953 science fiction novel Childhood's End. Depicting the keel of Jason's ship Argo, the constellation Carina stretches across the southern hemisphere's skies between -50º and -75º declination. It is dominated by Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky, and by Eta Carinae, a cataclysmic variable four million times brighter than the sun, whose 1843 outburst briefly made it the brightest star of all. Sailing ships, awesome space stuff, and absolutely beautiful-sounding, Carina had it all. There was only one problem: there's another one out there.

Once I decided, after much deliberation, that this was the boat I wanted to spend tens of thousands of dollars and several years of my life realizing, I enthusiastically purchased the plans from Lyle's daughter. In between laying down the lines and sourcing materials for the project, I spent my evenings googling for anyone who'd built one before, so that I might find inspiration in their own interpretations of the Falmouth 30.

And then I saw it.

Jim Donovan was the same age as myself. Unlike me, however, by the summer of 2004 he'd already spent four years and 6,000 hours building a Falmouth 30 in a barn on Cape Cod. When he launched her, he embarked on a solo sail around the world, first to the Caribbean, then eventually making his way to Hawai'i on his trusty and capable…Carina. 

My heart sank. 

I re-checked the statistics on the boat. Was it possible that maybe he built the 32-foot version? Alas, it was true. This kid was my age, and was already out there living the same dream on the same boat -the exact same boat- with the same name. He and I even shared the same initials. If it had been a production fiberglass boat, this would've been OK; there are thousands of those. These beauties, however, are all hand-made, and according to Lin, only forty or so exist in the world. I had to face the facts; Carina was taken.

Jim Donovan's Carina, foreground, racing against a substantially larger schooner in the British Virgin Islands. How could this happen? (Image Credit: Swiftwing)

Despondent, I forged ahead. I made lists of every sea nymph and water sprite in the Greco-Roman pantheon. I pored over the names of every spacecraft and unmanned probe from Mercury through the Mars Rover. In recognition of my ancestral connection to the Royal Navy (which I may discuss in a later post), I laboriously scrolled through the names of every frigate and fourth-rate to ever slide down the Devonport slipway. I scanned the constellations for any other that possessed that rare combination of the celestial, maritime, and linguistic as Carina. 

Some came close. Vela, Carina's counterpart in the sky and the sails of the Argo made the shortlist, but it didn't quite sound right when spoken aloud. Aquarius, too, had a lot going for it, both as a constellation and the name of Apollo 13's life-saving lunar module, but as a zodiac constellation, it's become rather overused, and due to a certain musical, also has an unfortunate association with new-age astrological schlock.

And then I found Astraea. In classical mythology, Astraea presided over the Golden Age - the first, and most idyllic of the old Greek religion's deteriorating Ages of Man, during which, according to Aratus, she "dwelt on earth and met men face to face, nor ever disdained in olden time the tribes of men and women, but mingling with them took her seat, immortal though she was…Not yet in that age had men knowledge of hateful strife, or carping contention, or din of battle, but a simple life they lived." 

This age was followed by the silver and bronze ages, throughout which Astraea remained on Earth, but grew increasingly despondent over the increasing greed and violence of mankind. Finally, according to Ovid, the iron age arrived, and with it: 

The land that was once common to all, as the light of the sun is, and the air, was marked out, to its furthest boundaries, by wary surveyors. Not only did they demand the crops and the food the rich soil owed them, but they entered the bowels of the earth, and excavating brought up the wealth it had concealed in Stygian shade, wealth that incites men to crime. And now harmful iron appeared, and gold more harmful than iron. War came, whose struggles employ both, waving clashing arms with bloodstained hands…Piety was dead, and virgin Astraea, last of all the immortals to depart, herself abandoned the blood-drenched earth.

Fittingly for one whose name means "star maiden", upon fleeing to the heavens, she became the constellation Virgo, where she is visible to this day. According to Virgil's fourth eclogue, she will one day return to the Earth, bringing with her the rebirth of the golden age of her youth. 

Astronomically, the name is perfect; Virgo is a major constellation, and also contains the sky's largest Galaxy Cluster. Asteroid 5 Astraea is also a large main belt asteroid - and was historically significant in that with its discovery, asteroids were first recognized as a new class of objects, distinct from planets. Linguistically, Astraea's aesthetics compare favorably with Carina. I also like the motif of leaving behind the corruption and decadence of the Earth for a simpler, more virtuous existence elsewhere, which seems a fitting theme for a cruising boat. At first, the maritime connection did seem a bit lacking. Aside from being the name of a genus of star-shaped marine gastropods, she didn't seem to have much going for her. As I read more, however, I learned that due to her association with truth and justice, there have been a number of ships named HMS Astraea over the years, several of which began or ended their careers at Devonport, where my ancestors lived. 

HMS Astraea engaging the French warship Gloire off the Western Approaches, April 10th 1795

Also, the emblem of Asteroid 5 Astraea somewhat resembles an anchor:

So tentatively, Astraea is what I've decided to call her. It sounds good, it's astronomical, historical, and ship-related. As for this blog, Astraea Ascending refers to the fact that the boat itself will ascend (at least, a few feet) as its form takes shape, to the ascent of Astraea's celestial form in the spring, and to the hope that in the future my Astraea may, like her namesake, leave behind the crowded lands of men for a time, heralding peace and happiness whenever she once again makes land.