Steam Yacht Cangarda 1901 by KeithAug - Scale 1:24 - 1901/2008

[Bob Cleek]

3 hours ago, KeithAug said:

Bob. The brass isn't in a great state which in my book is a crew duty.

It wasn't the brass to which i was referring, but rather the exterior varnish work. (Which may also be a crew duty, depending upon the management of the vessel and the skills of the crew.) There may be a difference between American and British English. On this side of the pond, we generically refer to brightly varnished woodwork on a vessel as "brightwork." Brass is just "brass" to us, e.g. "...polish the brass..." vs. "varnish the brightwork." That said, the brass looks like it hasn't been regularly polished, but that wouldn't be unusual if she were laid up for the winter. The varnish takes longer to show the ravages of UV and, given that she was certainly wearing a professionally applied "eight coats" when she was restored, the fact that it is wearing through to the wood on the horizontal surfaces indicates she probably was in the sun with the brightwork uncovered for a couple of years, at least. Once it gets to showing bare wood, it must be entirely stripped and a new thick coating of varnish coats must be applied to restore a uniform finish. To maintain brightwork, a light sanding and a coat or two every six or eight months depending on the UV exposure is necessary and even more is needed in the tropics.

[Bob Cleek]

3 hours ago, KeithAug said:

The one obvious anachronism in this approach is the fitting of the stabilisers. To me they look quite out of place on this style of hull.

They certainly didn't have stabilizers like that when she was first built, as far as I know, but she probably required them, particularly when she was carrying the top hamper of two masts. I wouldn't be surprised if she was quite a "roller." What surprised me in this regard was the absence of a bow thruster. These are a simple bit of kit these days, particularly since they were essentially building a whole new welded hull.  It would make a huge difference when bringing her alongside a dock or quay.

[Bob Cleek]

5 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Mr McNeil was apparently an advocate of “authentic” restorations.  In Coronet’s case, this meant no auxiliary engine or electric lighting, even though he had planned to use the vessel for long distance voyages.  This philosophy also influenced Cangarda’s restoration, and quite possibly her resale value. While he could have fitted her with modern Diesel machinery, she was instead powered with a carefully designed steam plant complete with reciprocating engine, generator and pumps.  He then went a step further by deciding that this complex collection of machinery would be run with a  unattended engine room.  This required the development of a sophisticated computer system as well as elaborate instrumentation and sensors.  Whether a new owner wants to take on the operation and maintenance of this machinery remains to be seen.

An interesting point, Roger. Of course, were she repowered with diesel and lost her steam power, the historic value of the vessel would be reduced tremendously. The steam engine is an historic thing unto itself. With respect to our questions about her hailing port and registration and McNeil's decision to "electronically automate" her steam plant, there may well be a few flies in the ointment. I know a bit about steam power and am relying on my memory here, so don't hold me to it, but, as I recall, under the USCG regulations, at least, a steam powered vessel over fifty feet in length used for any commercial purpose (which would include charter service) must operate with a USCG certified  marine steam engineer on duty in the engine room and, as might be expected, the steam plant must be thoroughly safety-inspected on a regular schedule. Then there's the issue of obtaining insurance which would add a big chunk to her annual operating budget! I doubt she's capable of anything other than coastal voyaging, as she can't possibly carry enough fuel for ocean crossings. She's not a toy for anyone on a budget, so I doubt even giving her away would be an easy task, let alone trying to sell her for anything remotely close to what McNeil put into restoring her. We all can thrill to the accomplishment of her restoration, but in the end she may turn out to be a very expensive white elephant. Then again, as "the rich get richer," maybe another billionaire just might be crazy enough to take the bait.  

[Roger Pellett]

WoodenBoat also reported that a diesel electric hybrid engine has been installed in Mystic Seaport’s previously coal fired steam passenger ship Sabrino.  If true, IMHO this is a real shame as she just becomes another diesel powered day boat.  My wife and I last visited Mystic in 2019 on the way to the New Bedford NRG Conference and I seem to remember one of the guys in the machine shop saying that the EPA was hassling them about operating a coal fired vessel.

 

I see very little market for Cangarda as most billionaires seem to favor yachts that look like mini cruise ships and are loaded with up-to-date marine toys.  Plus, except for a few die-hards like me (who falls well short of her assumed purchase price) no one will want to deal with her steam power plant.

 

Considering the latest news, her logical owner might be Mystic Seaport.  Her Estate administrators should soon realize that boats are not passive assets.  Transferring ownership to a well funded organization like Mystic might prove to be the best option.  Mystic, in return would again own a steam driven passenger vessel, just not coal fired.

 

Roger

[druxey]

Bob: I wondered about the narrowness of the deck strakes. Thanks for the explanation. I knew that an original deck would not be in such good shape.

[KeithAug]

1 hour ago, Bob Cleek said:

There may be a difference between American and British English. On this side of the pond, we generically refer to brightly varnished woodwork on a vessel as "brightwork."

Yes Bob the language barrier strikes again:

Brightwork also known historically as "bright work" refers to the exposed and varnished wood or metal work of a boat.^[1] The metal is usually brass or bronze that is kept polished, or stainless steel, which requires less maintenance.^[2] 

 

[Bob Cleek]

48 minutes ago, KeithAug said:

The metal is usually brass or bronze that is kept polished, or stainless steel, which requires less maintenance.^[2] 

Ah yes, "two peoples divided by a common language" as they say.  

 

In Cangarda's case, it's entirely proper to allow her bronze to acquire a patina. Hers seems to have turned a verdigris green. Often, the bronze weathers to a "tarnished penny brown," but i suppose the verdigris is a function of the amount of tin in the alloy. Her iron fittings require chipping and repainting. (The modern zinc paint undercoaotings would save a lot of work in this regard!) I did also note that there's a bolt missing from the steam line union on the anchor windlass. That definitely requires replacement before steam pressure is put to that union! On a "gold plater" of Cangarda's quality the original blocks on the anchor crane tackle would have been internally bronze-strapped varnished teak or lignam vitae-cheeked or all cast bronze open-web-cheeked. There wouldn't have been any stainless on her as built in 1901. It's this old sailor's "bosun's eye" that catches such details.  

 

 

 

[Roger Pellett]

Keith,

 

Cangarda’s restoration was described in three papers presented at Classic Yacht Symposiums held jointly by SNAME and the Herreshoff Marine Museum In 2006, 2008, and 2010.  I know that you have some of the papers but I thought that the following would still be of interest.

 

As Bob Cleek explains she is required to be licensed by the US Coast Guard (USCG).  Her license does not permit her to carry passengers for hire.

 

Her owner also chose for her to be classified (for an insurance rating) by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS).  ABS rules are not necessarily  the same as USCG.  Satisfying both was a major problem.  ABS was particularly difficult as no one there knew much about designing a reciprocating steam plant.

 

Neither USCG or ABS would agree to a riveted hull- corrosion concerns at the rivet hole- frame interface.  This required a new welded hull.  Some of the bulkheads from the original hull were salvaged and used.

 

Like many modern high end yachts, the as welded hull was “faired”.  The entire hull was covered with an Epoxy based fairing compound and then hand sanded with two man longboards.  A model of the restored Cangarda would, therefore, not show plating seams.

 

The deck is all wood engineered to meet ABS requirements as the upper “flange” of the hull girder.  It consists of two layers of 3/4in plywood with an inter layer of Epoxy bedded fiberglass.  The teak on top of the plywood is six quarter material; 1-1/2” thick!  As Bob points out, there are no fasteners in the teak.  The papers do not explain how the teak is bonded to the ply. There is apparently no steel deck plating beneath the plywood.

 

All of the equipment in the engine room except the boiler is original:  The main engine, two feed pumps, the circulating water pump, the air pump,  the bilge pump, various gages, and even the electric switchboard.  

 

The restoration benefited from a previous owner who removed a tremendous amount of material, including the Cuban Mahogany deck structures, and carefully stored it.  He, the previous owner, sent the main engine to England to be restored.

 

Finally, after all of this meticulous restoration, she was hauled to an ordinary boat launch ramp on a low-boy trailer.  As she entered the water she capsized but righted herself!  The only damage was to one of her stabilizer fins.

 

Roger

 

 

 

 

 

[KeithAug]

2 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Cangarda’s restoration was described in three papers presented at Classic Yacht Symposiums held jointly by SNAME and the Herreshoff Marine Museum In 2006, 2008, and 2010.

Thank you Roger. I had picked up some of the detail but not all of it. I don’t have the 2010 paper so I will look it out. I have some of the build photos from her restoration so I was aware of the welding and fairing. As I mentioned earlier I was a bit surprised to see that thicker plating had been used on strake that encompasses the portholes meaning that the hull isn’t entirely smooth, so this should add a bit of modelling interest. I think there are still a couple of riveted hull steam powered vessels operating sight seeing services in the UK.

[Roger Pellett]

Keith,  that’s the ABS & USCG “1 ft rule.”  According to the SNAME papers, any opening in the hull’s shell plating must be reinforced with a heavier plate extending 1ft past the hole.  

 

Roger

[Bob Cleek]

She was transferred to a wheeled cradle which was pushed down a large launching ramp by a large eighteen-wheeler tractor connected by a rigid push bar.  The cradle failed on the starboard side.

 

 

[KeithAug]

14 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Keith,  that’s the ABS & USCG “1 ft rule.”

Roger,

Interesting - another example of code based engineering. I once had to investigate an incident with a plane that landed at Kansai International Airport with a 2kg Heathrow landing light retaining ring embedded in its hull (but fortunately not the pressure hull). Kansai were not impressed! The retaining bolts for the ring had all sheared off allowing it to become loose and presumably it had been flipped out of its seating by the nose wheel on take off. During the investigation it became clear that the code had first been formulated some 50 years previously and the calculations within it were based on the wheel loadings of a DC-3. The wheel loadings of Boeing 747's are somewhat higher than those of a Douglas DC-3's. Some codes now allow for engineering analysis in lieu of historic precedent but I accept this isn't always the case. I wonder when the 1ft rule was first formulated and what specific geometries and loading conditions it was designed to accommodate. However "The Rules is the Rules" as they say.

 

At least I now know how wide to make Cangarda's porthole strake = porthole diameter plus 2 feet.

Edited April 24, 2023 by KeithAug

[Roger Pellett]

 My career involved working with the ASME piping code.  With the exception of the rules for the highest classification of nuclear piping, the rules for designing high pressure piping have not changed appreciably since the development of the personal computer.  Code rules for reinforcing openings continue to be based on redistributing the material removed from the hole around the opening: just like Candarga’s shell plating.

 

In the USA, materials have historically been cheap and labor expensive.  Our design codes are therefore often based on low allowable stress levels and simple fabrication techniques.  In 1980 I made a trip to Darby, UK to see if we could cooperate with a company named Aitons on a project in Australia.  British Standards were the opposite of ours- Highly stressed materials built to very careful fabrication standards.

 

The maritime classification societies- ABS, Lloyds, etc. at least must make an effort to bridge this standards gap as they are dealing with an international clientele; both the ship owners and the insurance companies.

 

Roger

[KeithAug]

 

1 hour ago, Roger Pellett said:

 My career involved working with the ASME piping code.

Roger - For a while I worked in the Chemical Plant Design Office of British Nuclear Fuels (Nuclear Reprocessing). Of necessity at times I got involved in the design of reprocessing plant pressure vessels (and pipework). Because of their often unique shapes and restricted geometries the pressure vessel code rules were frequently inapplicable. For safety assurance reasons we often had to design the vessels from scratch using finite element analysis. For the services pipework we did however use ASME codes and their British Standard equivalents.

 

My early career was spent with Rolls Royce at Derby (1969 to 1978), partly in the aero engine design offices. The nature of the materials, the design loadings and extreme environments made code based design rules inapplicable. 

 

I agree however that in many instances (including shipping) the code based design approach has a lot of merit. The watch out of course is to avoid extrapolating the code to cover circumstances beyond its intended use - as was the case with the Heathrow runway light.

[gjdale]

Just stumbled across your log here Keith. What a beautiful and interesting subject you have chosen! I’m pulling up a chair and will follow along from here.

[KeithAug]

I spent a few hours of today working out how to print the hull lines at 1:24 scale. The lines PDF file supplied by Tri Coastal Marine was drawn at 1/4" = 1' (1:48) so I needed to print them out at 200% scale. Both the standard and Safari print programmes on the Mac seem to have limitations on how they print scale copies across multiple sheets so I had a look for an alternative. A bit of research led me to Adobe Reader (free download) and this proved to be much more user friendly.

 

The lines drawing was imported into Adobe reader in PDF format. This opens up the following screen.

Clicking the print icon then pulls up the following screen:

Selecting the "Poster" option (A) enables printing across multiple sheets.

Selecting the scale (B) allows the PDF to be printed at the desired size and also defines the number of pages that the image will be printed over.

Selecting cut marks (C) instructs the printer to print alignment marks on the printed sheets. This significantly eases the assembly of the printed sheets into a composite picture.

The image at point "D" adjusts automatically to show how the image will be printed across a number of sheets. In my case i was using and A4 printer and the image was printed over 55 sheets. 

Fortunately a few months ago I invested in a "Big Tank" inkject picture so printer costs were not really a consideration.

I used the same procedure for printing out the other 2 PDF's provided by Tri Coastal Marine.

 

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by KeithAug

[gjdale]

Just a thought Keith, but rather than printing across many small sheets and having to stick them together (with inherent risks to accuracy), why not take your PDF to a local plans printing shop and ask them to print on a large format paper? I don’t think the cost would be prohibitive, particularly taking the benefit into consideration.

[KeithAug]

11 hours ago, gjdale said:

why not take your PDF to a local plans printing shop and ask them to print on a large format paper?

Grant - I had a look round the local print service companies which seemed to offer prints uf up to A0 in size (smaller than I need). They were not exactly cheap. I think I can manage the accuracy issue and at least if i print at home I can avoid a car journey. Yorkshiremen are noted for being careful with their cash and my wife says I am an extreme example. Her lifetime mission has been to compensate for my behavior and in that she has proved to be a master!

[FlyingFish]

1 hour ago, KeithAug said:

They were not exactly cheap.

Some national ones do A0 for £1.20 a sheet, folded A4 which seems ok (though I come from Devon which may explain it). I think the issue is more that they will charge more to post in a tube.

No doubt you know this, but just in case - my print settings box has the option to print 'cutting guides' for posters which I have found helps greatly with aligning the whole thing.

[KeithAug]

2 hours ago, FlyingFish said:

has the option to print 'cutting guides' for posters

Gary - Is that a Mac print programme?

[FlyingFish]

If that's for me 😊 ....

No - windows PC, and the printer is an Epson inkjet. I see now that you have 'cut marks' ticked which is probably the same thing. Happy sellotaping!

 

[KeithAug]

1 hour ago, FlyingFish said:

If that's for me 😊 ....

Sorry Andy  - memory failed. Mac's don't seem to have that capability, unless they hid it somewhere that wasn't obvious.

[KeithAug]

After a bit of a layoff I am back at it. Somehow I picked up an unusual lung bacterial infection that required 3 rounds of different antibiotics to knock it on the head. The last lot seemed to do the trick and i'm now on the mend.  

I have been doing a lot of work on the hull lines drawing. You will probably recall Mr Rutherfords comment to the effect that the original lines were not available and the lines drawing was produced from a scan of the hull.

I don't know in detail how scans are done or indeed the details of the curve fitting programme used to generate the lines. Clearly though the small number of scan points has presented a  challenge the curve fitting programme.

Having printed out the the previously mentioned drawings at 1:24 scale on A4 sheets i joined them together paying particular attention to alignment and overall dimensions.

The breakfast bar came in quite handy (despite some protests). I played the illness card which seemed to have the desired effect. Looking at the lines drawings prompted a few questions. On the transverse sections at section 4 near position "A" there is a slight curvature. On the various photos I have the hull seems quite flat at this position, much more like frame 5.

On the horizontal sections near the stern the lines at points "C" and "D" seem to have odd local curvatures and I guessed that  this was down to the curve fitting programme struggling with lack of data.

 

Rather than accept the lines I decided to check the transverse, horizontal and longitudinal sections against one another starting by plotting the transverse section on top of the horizontal sections. This revealed a number of discrepancies. Near the stern the 4'WL plot deviated quite a lot from that line on the horizontal plan. The orange line below shows the original plot line while the new line below it is the line generated from plotting out the transverse sections. Smaller deviations were also revealed on the 6",8"and 10"WL plots, here again the orange lines are the original and the black lines are the projections from the transverse plots.

There were similar (but smaller) discrepancies towards the bow.

I then plotted the longitudinal section back on to the transverse sections which revealed discrepancies at the rail. The pencil lines show the runs of the rail and deck edge.

While none of the discrepancies were major I decided the best way forward was to get the plan, side and frontal lie drawings in agreement before generating the hull sections for build purposes. This is now complete and i can start generating the hull transverse sections corresponding to the frames on Cangarda.

Edited May 13, 2023 by KeithAug

[Keith Black]

 Glad you're feeling better, Keith and it's nice to see you making progress. 

[Jim Lad]

Good to hear you beat the infection, Keith. Looks like you're making good progress on the plans.

 

John

[BANYAN]

I'm late to the party yet again Keith, but this build is intriguing - I'll holler from the nose bleeds if I have any questions   Are you shooting for that 'Rolls Royce' type paint finish?  

 

cheers

 

Pat

[FriedClams]

Good to hear you're on the mend, Keith.  It's best to feel confident about the lines before proceeding on a multiyear project. Really looking forward to following this build.

 

Gary

[mikegr]

brilliant work

[Mirabell61]

you`ve chosen a beautiful model Keith,

I`ll be following the journey ...

 

Nils

Edited May 30, 2023 by Mirabell61

[Reggiemon]

After admiring your workmanship on Germania, I'm following this one!