Roseway Senior Project

    This week was a short one comparative to the previous one. I only ended up working two days, but I was very productive in both of them. It made me sad to leave the Roseway, I'm not sure when I might see it again. I think my time on the boat was very valuable.     Something I struggled with this week, and throughout my time has been balancing between being quick with my work versus being meticulous. On one hand, the boat needs to get repaired quickly so it can begin its summer programs, but at the same time, it can't be done sloppily so the work goes to waste.     I struggled to find this balance when painting and priming. At first, I was extremely careful and meticulous, making sure to paint with as near perfection as I could. Once I got into the groove though, I found myself going too fast and making careless mistakes like dripping paint in places that it shouldn't have gone. By the end of it, I think I found a good balance between speed...

May 18, 2017 Today was my final day of working aboard Roseway for my senior project. It's a bittersweet day. On one hand it makes me sad to leave the ship, but on the other hand I'm excited to graduate soon. We started painting the bulwarks and waterways today which was very exciting. I'd been working on sanding and prepping them for a while now, so it's nice to see them getting done. The paint is a very bright red, and I'm not sure how I feel about it as the previous paint was more of a burgundy. Nonetheless, it is exciting to finally finish up painting the project I've worked on for so long.

May 17, 2017 I got back on the boat for the last time. I'm only down here for two days 😟 Today was all hands on deck and we were hand sanding the places that the orbital sanders could get at. After finishing sanding the deck we got to priming it. When I started priming, I noticed I was blinking a lot and my eyes were watering, so I decided it was probably best to wear some eye protection. We put two coats of primer on today, and we should be able to paint tomorrow!

This week was another challenging week of working aboard the Roseway. I learned a lot from working with all of the smart hard working crew on board. One of my favorite things I’ve found while working on the Roseway is how quick and smart everyone is at fixing things. For example, Captain Tom was using a planer to take up some of the paint off of the deck. Unfortunately, he caught the cord in the planer, and got it stuck, so he had to cut it. Not even five minutes after the cord was caught, Captain Tom already had it spliced and back in action. Another time, I was working on sanding the bulwarks of the boat, and was using a combination of a five inch orbital sander, and a mini triangle sander. The triangle sander allowed me to get at the corners and edges a bit better. Unfortunately there were very few 60 grit pads for the triangle sander, so I told Captain that we needed more. Another crew member named Richie chimed in saying “You don’t need to get more pads, just cut the fi...

May 12, 2017 Today was a shorter day of working on the Roseway. It was my Mom’s birthday, so I wanted to be home for it. Of course, I still had a job that needed to get done though, so I spent the morning finishing sanding up the king plank as well as the break of the deck. This took a fair bit of time, but luckily I was able to leave in time to get back home in the afternoon. Finishing the sanding of the king plank and break, means that everything forward of the deck is now sanded. Because of this, Captain Tom wants to get it repainted with a new oil based paint. Work Log 4.5 Hours 7am-12pm Total Hours – Total Hours: 79

May 11, 2017 Today was yet another busy day at yard aboard the Roseway. I started off the day by helping “horse” cotton to fill seams that I had pulled up yesterday. To “horse” is essentially just a fancy way of saying whacking the heck out of it with a huge hammer (called a beetle) to push it into the seams. After the seams were horsed, I helped put the calking back in the seams (the calking is the same rubber seams I mentioned I pulled up in earlier blogs). This was a very messy process, and if I got any of the calking on my shoes, then I had to take them off or clean them so I didn’t track it all over the deck. It was somewhat unavoidable though, and I ended up with both of my shoes off at one point. After finishing up calking, I continued away at my ongoing mission to sand everything forward of the break in the deck. I quickly finished up the waterways and bulwarks as I had finished most of them in the previous days. Today I really started getting after the king plank, wh...

May 10, 2017 “Why are you so dirty?” asked one of the many kids visiting the Roseway today. A crew member Ava toured some kids around a museum and also took them to the Roseway. I’m not sure if they will be sailing on it later or not, but it was cool to meet some young local kids. I was quite dirty from sanding all morning today, the latex paint built up around my nose and cheeks where the mask didn’t quite cover. It was nice to get a small break from the sanding and help kids aboard and answer questions they had. After lunch, (and the kids visiting the boat) I began pulling up caulking between the seams of the pine deck boards. It was quite similar to pulling it out from the break of the deck, but the seams are a bit tighter. After I had pulled up the cotton, a contractor named Richie followed along and filled them back in with fresh cotton, and used a huge hammer called a “beetle” and pounded it back in. After the new cotton was put in, new seams were made by putting rubbe...

May 9, 2017 Arms, hair, face, neck, and ankles: all these parts of me were completely covered in paint dust after sanding all day today. It was my first day not spent entirely at the break of the deck which was exciting. Instead of pulling cotton, picking out bungs, or pulling off trim, I spent today sanding the bulwarks and waterways of the boat. These surfaces are coated in a thick burgundy latex paint which I had to sand off to allow the new oil paint to adhere to the surfaces. This was the equipment that I started out wearing. I ended up switching to this setup as it covered the side of my eyes better, and I was told that the respirator I was using wasn’t as effective at blocking the particles as the mask, so I switched over to that. I only got a bit less than half of the bulwarks and waterways done today, but I should be able to finish them up tomorrow as I now know what I’m doing a bit better. I found today to be a bit easier than the previous days, perhaps...

May 7, 2017 This week was incredibly challenging, exciting, and surprising all at the same time. I headed down to Gloucester with no idea of what I would be doing all week with the Roseway Crew, or who the Roseway Crew even were. After this week I feel welcomed to the team, and have put in a lot of work in a very short amount of time. I didn’t realize that I would be spending so much time at only the break in the deck. Who know there were such intricacies to such a small part of the boat. It was incredible to be back on the Roseway, a boat I love dearly. While the work was hard and not fun at times, I kept on trucking through it because I know all the work I’m putting in is helping to maintain something that I love. I benefited from this week’s work in a few ways. First of all, I learned to work hard and persistently at something. It first seemed that my job was unimportant, but after I learned how it fit into the overall maintenance of the boat, I realized quickly that each part ...

May 5th, 2017 Despite my best efforts yesterday to clean out all the cotton beneath the break of the deck, there was still more for me to clean out today. I used a multitude of tools to try and get every last bit of cotton under the deck. I used two sawzall blades and a plethora of reefing hooks to meticulously get all of the cotton out. While this may seem a bit ridiculous, it's important, because in order to get the deck tightened, all of the cotton must be removed. Today was quite rainy, but luckily the boat is covered by plastic, so I didn't have to get soaking wet. This is the hammer and reefing iron that I used primarily Work Log 9.5 Hours 7am-4:30pm 30min Lunch break Total Hours: 41.5 Hours

May 4, 2017 Would you rather smell disgusting rotting cotton that has been soaking for the past few years, or breathe your own stale air over and over? This was the question I was faced with this morning when pulling out the cotton wadding behind the rubber seal where the trim once was. I opted to breathe my own stale air over and over because the stench of the rotting wadding was awful. This was a good choice because shortly after I put on my mask Nate started sanding away at the deck, which flung wood particulate matter all over the place. It was an all day affair getting the cotton wadding out from under the break of the deck, but I got it done with. Captain Tom left the boat this afternoon so I’ll be working with Nate tomorrow . There is a lot of work to get done in the next few weeks and not a lot of time. Work Log 10.5 Hours 7am-6:00pm 30min Lunch break

May 3, 2017 Today certainly felt longer than yesterday. For nearly the entire day I was at the smart end of an “oscillating multi-tool”; a very fancy name for something that shakes back and forth with a blade at the end. I used this tool to scrape up the rubber that had sealed the trim at the break of the deck. To get all of this out I scraped behind and underneath the trim for hours, trying to catch as much of the rubber sealant as I could. While I was grateful to have the multitool to help me, it vibrated violently whenever I dug in which was not so awesome. At the end of today, I have one half of the trim removed, and the other have nearly ready to remove. I’m not sure what I’ll do after I remove it, but I’ll just have to wait and see. Work Log 11 Hours 7am-6:30pm 30min LB Total Hours: 21.5

May 2, 2017 Last night I headed down from Andover to Gloucester and got aboard the Roseway. It’s currently docked at the Gloucester Marine Railway. It was great getting reacquainted with the boat, and meeting all the crew. In fact, one of the crew members that was on my Ocean Classroom voyage, Cavo, is on the yard team. I had no idea he would be working on the ship and it was so nice to see him again. Today I worked hard cleaning out bungs in the wood on the break of the deck. They proved incredibly hard to find, but with a mixture of intense sanding and scraping with a putty knife, I got them uncovered. I then used an awl to dig out the bungs to expose the screws, and then unscrewed them. I did all of this so we can take the wood at the break out so we can repair the caulking if necessary. Unfortunately, when unscrewing the screws, some of them got stripped, so I had to drill them out. I spent the rest of the day scraping up paint on the deck which proved to be rather diffic...