The glint of polished stainless steel and the smell of fresh cut teak pervade the schooner and shipyard around this tall ship refit.
Three men spent a week perfecting the polished stainless steel fittings, shackles and standing rigging. 
Carefully and painstakingly every piece of hardware was polished to bring each swage, turnbuckle or shackle a brilliant luster, then individual pieces were wrapped and placed in storage until it could be fitted aboard.
My favorite area has been the carpenters shop, where anything that needs to be created is first imagined, then fashioned into being. It begins by an initial discussion of what task needs to be done in the long list of ‘nexts’. The shipwrights will scratch out an idea for a teak grating or how they think the margin boards of the decking should be fashioned, then a simple drawing is made on a scrap piece of cardboard. The process continues with a small team of men lead by the head carpenter who will first mock-up a template of whatever is to be created. This is then fit into place to make sure it’s exactly correct – to the millimetre.
More recently, I have been fascinated by the constructs fashioned by the metal workers in the machine shop. Occasionally a piece of hardware is missing or needs to be modified or outright made from scratch.
Again, the task is imagined into being by talented shipwrights then conveyed to the metal workers what needs to be done. Slowly but surely, the desired shape comes to form. Three tasks have been completed this week. The shroud pins, (cleats) that will be one of the main lashing points for halyards and other running rigging adjacent to the masts, needed replacing. A shipment of solid 316 stainless steel bars arrived and was promptly chopped into shorter lengths. There was a brief discussion about how deep the glue-groves should be in the center of each bar. Within days, a beautiful row of buffed and polished solid steel cleats was ready for mounting. Each being placed in a protected box and wrapped in paper like a delicate piece of fine chocolate. The life raft mounts, radar and instruments mounts on the mainmast spreaders were shaped in similar fashion and are now awaiting mounting.
Lastly, the teak decks are nearly complete. Routers whiz and chisels tap-tap away. The strong smell of epoxy and sikaflex indicates that the warm-grained homey comfort of solid teak decks are nearly complete. Every day we are a little closer getting salt-water on them and the polished stainless steel!
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