Patience a C&N Bucket of Rot Restored.

by Peter Radclyffe
(Italy)

<i>Patience</i>

Patience

Clikc here to see the original of the above photo of Patience

Patience, A Shipwright Yesterday, Peter Radclyffe, copyright 2009.

The yacht had been converted into a ketch in the sixties, stainless steel honeymoon years, just before they all got into bed with fibreglass, which along with aluminium have to be some of the most ugly & dangerous post war products.

But I'm bound to be distressed by these things as my modus operandi is beauty & strength rather than speed & ugly design, all this junk hardware had to be replaced with new bronze hull, deck& mast fittings.

After supervising the masting & rigging & Modifying 80% of the rigging fittings on a 1930s, 30 metre De Fries Lentsch steel schooner built of lomoor iron , I started building another tender for the big class.
Restoring Patience

Click to see original

But I let that go when the C&N came in, it was just too exhausting doing the work of 2 or 3 men, costing all boats, chief boatbuilder & shipwright, foreman yacht joiner, masts & spars, rigger, designing, surveying, woman & man management, referee, peacemaker, for 3 big vintage yachts.

On top of being in charge of up to 65 people on the big class, I had to teach 35 people on Patience.

The core team were 6 Polish joiners, I didn't know what their trades were, because when I asked them they said they'd done it all, planking, framing, centreline structure, caulking, interior joinery, spars, tanks, blah-blah.

So, I gave them some tests, I asked them to pattern the fore deadwood & a plank.

I could see straight away they were lying to me because they were afraid of losing their jobs ,but no matter, they were hard workers & over 4 years I taught them how to be shipwrights.

Crew working on Patience
Click to see original


None spoke Italian & only one spoke a little English.

They knew no marine vocabulary in Italian or English, 2 spoke german which I continued to learn.

I bought a polish dictionary & translated tools, fastenings, parts of the boat, etc& put up these lists in Polish, Italian & English around the boats , the dart board & the vodka barrel.

The latter fell under Yanns' control, it didn't matter to me if they were half cut till half ten some mornings, if that was part of the equation of immaculate joinery, so be it.

On top of the big class my work load doubled, one headache was joiner Yann on one end of the tender & a fairer with applied filler on the other end.

I had to separate them before they punched each other out.

Also Mr Lacksadaisical on the tender figured his working week started on Friday night when he went snowboarding, another cute clown, there's one on every crowded scaffolding corner, shooting the breeze what wiv der fag butts an all.

Patience's hull was distorted on the stbd.

Comments for Patience a C&N Bucket of Rot Restored.

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Jan 31, 2015
 A ship called Patience
by: Wurmle

Is this the same ship with 8 cannons?


http://www.genfiles.com/traughber/history-of-the-ship-patience/
May 23, 2010
 ok
by: pr

Yann planing.

I set up Lulworths interior on scaffolding to find out how it went together, as it had arrived in a container, stored for 12 years, i patterned what was missing & with another gang i made the parts.

May 12, 2010
 Working too seriously?
by: PR

Some of the guys I?ve worked with over the years reckon I take my work too seriously, is that so?

Well if they took their work seriously, their caulking wouldn?t leak, their masts & spars would be round & symmetrical & yacht varnish finished, their designs would just for one day have the right placing, spacing, tracing, carving, diameters, welding, braising, timber, metal, fastenings, etc.

Their cockpits, scuppers & limber holes would drain water, their doors, lockers& drawers would open & shut properly & not jam.

Their skylights & hatches likewise & they?d be watertight, their re-fastened boats wouldn?t need re-fastening a week later, their sailtracks would glide, their rigging would hum, their sheaves would roll like Charlie Watts& Pino Paladino, there would be no scratches on their varnished grain, they?d know how to build, fit & fasten without epoxy, their sheers & seams would be fair .

They would fashion curves less brutally than Elizabeth Frink, & I wouldn?t need to re-make their work.

Cant take it too seriously, eh Fellas.

One day Poland beat Italy at football, when your in charge it pays to know the fixtures even if you don?t follow football.

Next day one of the poles dropped a steel frame on his foot with a vodka hangover.

So for a month part of his work, hobbling on a broom was gluing up old hull planks.

He was wearing leather sandals, I told him to get some steel toe capped working boots.

I didn?t want to send him off the job because the team was welding tight, we could only use 10 old planks.

If the Reckonyourbleedingnow yard on the Riviera had put a tilt on the hull 20 years ago we could have used 160 old teak planks.

What?s the difference in cost between that & a tilt, that yard reckoned they were the restoration yard in the med.

But tarpaulins obviously weren?t the only things they were pig ignorant about, that yard worked out their policy many years ago: to attach immediately at any cost a vacuum cleaner to the wallet of any owner who entered their gates, this was to be kept working at all costs, the emergency generator to be switched on in the event of a powercut, just like that Hamble marina, the extractor only to be turned off when the yacht owner was on his knees..

Apart from these planks we used 2 old steamed counter frames, the washstrakes ,the bronze rudder gland, the wheel & the lead keel.

Everything else we made new, a 90 % restoration.

The poles were on the case, but I wouldn?t find out what they were really good at until the deck joinery & interior started, that?s when I learnt they were modern boat joiners.

So I taught them to be traditional yacht joiners & to frame , plank & deck.
Apr 25, 2010
 ok
by: pr

Slowly the new frames went in.

The poles drilled 17mm for half inch bronze carriage bolts with plastic top hat washers to help insulate the bronze to steel battery.

They help, but the current will still track thru? condensation.

We got the bolts from Jamestown Distributors, also 5/16? bolts for the steamed 60mm oak frames.

I numbered the steel frames from the bow, as I?d done as foreman on Jeanie Johnston & the big class,

I numbered all frames & planks inside & out, in this way everybody learns they are working in a grid.
So if I tell you to put a water inlet midway between i.e. frames ( F )18-19,& planks ( P ) 6-7,you know exactly where to work & hopefully what to do.
The 2 steamed frames between the steel frames I marked A & B respectively.

A few days spent numbering will save hundreds of hours later on, in lost time & wrong placement of fittings, bulkheads, etc, the list goes on.

So its best to take your time & do it properly.
Apr 18, 2010
 c a
by: pr

Well Mike, I have to start lofting, but it will be years part time construction.
Apr 15, 2010
 patience
by: pr

Patience Under Sail
Apr 15, 2010
 patience
by: pr

Incapable of doing things simply & directly, if it's not complicated they don?t want to know.

Better the chaos they know than the clarity they don't, afraid as they are to develop into fully formed efficient, responsible logical adults.

You suddenly realize having seen operas only on television that you are now in one, all the constant shouting about nothing all the time, it's the way they are, pig-ignorant juveniles, like their fathers whose personal development stopped at 14 at the school gates.

Thesaurus digested has no better word to describe them.

Also it's hard to maintain your clarity & vigilance when some people in the yard are trouble
making & intent on sabotaging all the good works done by so many.

I can elaborate later, suffice for now to state that the work is already busting your gut without having to cope with hotshot tosspot inadequate egos shooting their mouths off all day long.

Certain jerks in the yard were hell bent on drowning you in their sewer, their jealousy & paranoia in free fall.

It amused the big class's owner to hire some people for their ability to play practical jokes at our severe expense rather than for their non existent technical abilities.

But like Keith Richards says, everything has its price & this is the price we paid for working here.
Apr 12, 2010
 Colin Archer type design.
by: Mike

Hi Peter,
I love your Colin Archer type design.

That looks to be quite a powerful rig.

Yet with the low C of E and the hull shape she should be stiff and sea kindly.

Any chance of her being built?
Apr 10, 2010
 patience
by: PR

Where the frames were weak or distorted I made a wooden template, & as I'd done on 75 new patterns, frames & floors for the big class I marked all the buttocks, waterlines, centrelines & planks ,& at every 2nd, 3rd or 4th plank I marked the bevels.

You only need to mark the bevel whenever it changes, no more & no less.

I couldn't work out why every thing had to be so complicated ,why the owner couldn't just choose one fabricator, then I realized that?s the way some people are in Stuccoville.
Apr 02, 2010
 patience
by: PR

Patience Fore Deck
Apr 02, 2010
 patience
by: pr

Patience Engine Bay
Apr 02, 2010
 patience
by: pr

on Patience’s framing only the mast step, intercostals, floors, every 3rd frame, extra frame at mast partners, hanging & lodging knees, engine beds & 3 web frames were steel, minimal weld distortion, after I marked all plank positions on the edge of the steel frames with a grinderette nick, we pulled out every 2nd or 3rd steel frame & sent the port frame to a fabricators in Stuccoville ,( so called because half the town relied on stucco to fair it’s brutally welded hulls, even a kicked bucket is fairer, the other half of the town being beach towels at dawn, until Portofino), a simple bevelled angle iron, the stbd frame stayed in our yard, the floors went to the owners blacksmith near Torino, he wanted to renew these with false rivets, some hanging knees & web frame plates & patterns went to Manyana Marine where they might make them this year if were lucky,


Mar 21, 2010
 patience
by: pete

& lodging knees, engine on Patience's framing only the mast step, intercostals, floors, every 3rd frame, extra frame at mast partners, hanging beds & 3 web frames were steel, minimal weld distortion.

After I marked all plank positions on the edge of the steel frames with a grinderette nick, we pulled out every 2nd or 3rd steel frame & sent the port frame to a fabricators in Stuccoville ,( so called because half the town relied on stucco to fair it?s brutally welded hulls, even a kicked bucket is fairer, the other half of the town being beach towels at dawn, until Portofino).

A simple bevelled angle iron, the stbd frame stayed in our yard.

The floors went to the owners blacksmith near Torino, he wanted to renew these with false rivets.

Some hanging knees & web frame plates & patterns went to Manyana Marine where they might make them this year if were lucky,


Mar 21, 2010
 Interior Joinery
by: p r

Photos of the interior of Patience's Interior Joinery
Mar 13, 2010
 patience
by: Anonymous

Patience's hull was distorted on the stbd side & the elm keel was hogged 103 mm.

I got every ship cramp, G-cramp, boiler cramp, heavy joinery sash cramp & steel cramp that I owned, about a hundred & 8 RS J's & straightened the keel.

The lead keel arrived separately, her half composite construction thankfully meant no steel curtain or margin plates, no steel : keel , keelson, centreline structure ,deckbeams , diagonal strapping or pillars, or the daily battle I had with the big class platers & shipwrights to get her hull fair.

And teaching Italian as fast as I could learn it.
Mar 13, 2010
 STEAMING OAK FRAMES
by: Anonymous

Photo of Steaming Frames
Mar 12, 2010
 Mathilde
by: Mike

See Peter’s Mathilde here.

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