This blog is the story of our major
Spring maintenance and upgrade project for Magus. This work is a combination of the regular
Spring commissioning work like bottom paint, catching up on some deferred
maintenance like the topsides paint, and my favorite project: build and install a
new bowsprit. The bowsprit will allow
for a larger jib on a roller furler, in addition to having the working jib (on
hanks,) essentially where it has always been.
The location for this work is Falls Point Marine at the Dunning Boatyard property in Freeport. Falls Point Marine is owned by Carter Becker, and his company does marine
contracting work like wharf floats and ramps, as well as mooring work
throughout Casco Bay. He does a great job of stepping and
un-stepping masts right from a boat on a mooring, and he can do pretty much
anything related to boats and marine construction.
So, Falls Point Marine and Dunning Boatyard are located at
the old Porter’s Landing on the upper reaches of the Harraseeket River. At low tide there is a shallow trickle of
water through the mud flats for almost a mile before reaching the upper end of
the harbor/ channel in South Freeport. Carter takes his work boats and barges up to
the yard at high tide on a regular basis (and lets them ground out when the
tide drops,) but not many pleasure boats with a 5 foot draft go up there. There is a boat ramp that can be used from
mid-tide or higher, and a boat hauling truck and hydraulic trailer can pick up
a sailboat and put her up on the hard.
The unmarked channel is not easy to find at high tide, so I
studied the channel at low water, and got some good advice from Carter before
making the trip. The trip from Dimillo’s was made on Saturday,
April 27 with Jenny and Travis, and Sophi drove up to meet us and bring us back
to Portland. The winter boat cover had just been removed,
so we stopped on Peaks to drop off the frame and a few things. The night before we had snow flurries, and we
ran the gas heater on the trip to Freeport. All went well, and we got Magus set up at the
yard by about 2 pm. Then Jenny and I
borrowed Carter’s pressure washer and got real dirty cleaning the bottom. We left before dark.
That was the beginning of all the cleaning, sanding, and
painting that continued steadily for weeks, while planning for all of the other
projects. All this work made me realize
that the bottom work we had paid for in Ponce,
PR was well worth the money.
The other projects included replacing the through-hull
fitting for the engine cooling water and replacing the valve on one of the
cockpit scupper through-hulls. I was
planning to install some high-tech material on the prop shaft packing box, but
Carter recommended that the cutlass bearing should really be replaced also. He was absolutely correct, but I hadn’t been
planning on that project, so I persuaded him to help get that bugger off, which
took a combination of several tools (that I didn’t own) and a lot of experience
and skill that I also don’t have. Then
we discovered that the bearing was a metric size which is OK, but that it did
not match the sizes that are typically used (and sold) in the US. The short story on this is that we got one
procured from Europe through Jerry at Nautilus Marine in Ellsworth, Maine.
On one of the nice Sundays that Jenny and I were sanding and
painting, a guy with his wife and dog on their motorcycle stopped by to look at
the boat. He asked if it might possibly
be a Banjer 37, maybe hull #50, once named Magus (the name was removed for our
painting work.) When we asked how he
could possibly know any of this, he said he was a previous owner of Magus in
the 80’s, and he sold her to Vern and Patricia who we bought the boat from. His name is Jim Horowitz (www.oxfordaviation.com)
and we’re looking forward to seeing him and Louise over the summer to share stories.
This is being posted just before the tentative launch window
over the Memorial Day weekend that is forecast to be all rain, so that’s not
going to help with getting the other boats painted so they can go in at the
same time. We’ll see how all that turns
out…
Again, many thanks to Carter for helping to get the cutlass
bearing out and back in, and the super great job with the bowsprit and mast and
rigging modifications. Here’s a photo
Carter took while re-stepping the mast.
