Lillian S, a 100-year-old wooden boat moored to the end of “N” float in Port Angeles Boat Haven for as long as casual observers of the waterfront can recall, was hauled out last week and is now on the “hard” of Platypus Marine’s yard.
Robert Montgomery, who has owned the 90-footer for the past couple of years, is doing some minor repairs as well as a little painting around the boot stripe.
However, the primary reason the Lillian S is out of the water is to have her hull documented for the Historic American Engineering Record, or HAER, for inclusion in the Library of Congress.
HAER is a program administered by the National Park Service and maintained by the Library of Congress that documents, among other things, engineering achievements, buildings, ships and small-craft design in the United States and its territories.
HAER and its counterparts, the Historic Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic Landscape Survey (HALS), are among the largest and most heavily used collections in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
These three archives alone include more than 556,900 measured drawings, large-format photographs and written histories for more than 38,600 classic structures, vessels and sites.
Numerous sites on the Olympic Peninsula have been documented via the HABS database.
The material in these extensive databases is free and available to the public online via http://tinyurl.com/habs-haer.
Pete Leenhouts, who works on special projects for the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock, is a member of the boat school’s documentation team and was the point person for the daylong project on Lillian S.
Using a laser transit, Adam Prescott-Bratton and Bill Treese, employees of Northwestern Territories Inc., a Port Angeles land survey company also known by the initials NTI, took readings on the range, bearing and elevation of the boat’s hull and relayed the readings to Pete, who spent much of the day recording these data points.
At one point, Adam and Pete got into an esoteric discussion about the application of xyz coordinates that got so technical that it caused my eyelids to become very heavy.
When my chin bounced off my chest and my eyes snapped open, Pete explained that the coordinates are used by a computer-assisted drawing program, or CAD, to develop the shape and contour of the vessel into what is called a point cloud.
From the mist of this cloud, the CAD program is able to create a two-dimensional drawing from which lofting plans will be developed and ultimately a three dimensional wire frame drawing of Lillian S.
Pete said it will take about two years to create and assemble all of the required drawings and to record and document the vessel’s history to the exacting standards that are set out by the secretary of the interior and the National Park Service.
A table of offsets will have to be created and all interior spaces, including its machinery and equipment, will be documented from the wheelhouse to the bilges.
A currently unknown number of large-format photographs will be taken and developed on archival paper using archival ink to assure that the pictures will last 500 years.
Pete said once all the documentation is compiled, the package will be reviewed by a naval architect at the Library of Congress, then digitized and sent to the Internet.
The boat documentation team at the Port Hadlock-based school has documented a number of small boats.
Among them is Alderbrook, a Whitehall rowing boat built in San Francisco in 1905 that had been owned by the same family in the Pacific Northwest for more than 100 years.
The rare find was donated to the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle and after the documentation was completed, the Center for Wooden Boats donated the vessel to the San Francisco National Maritime Museum.
The technical support for the documentation of Lillian S was donated to the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding by Tom Roorda of NTI, who provided the use of the laser transit and a day’s worth of Adam and Bill’s time.
Had the task been done by hand, it would have taken nearly two weeks.
Anyone with information about older boats, barges, tugs or commercial fishing vessels is encouraged to phone Pete Leenhouts at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding at 360-385-4948. Or send him an email through the school’s website at www.nwboatschool.org.
Where’d she go?
Driving into the parking lot on the east side of the Port Angeles Boat Haven, waterfront denizens take immediate note of the void created by the absence of Northern Legacy, the turquoise blue and white Metalcraft boat owned by Pete and Joan Hanson of Port Angeles.
The 85-foot aluminum boat, which serves as the mother-ship for the Hansons’ flotilla of boats they take to Alaska each year, left Port Angeles for the Land of the Midnight Sun.
For 18 years, the Hansons have been operating Alaska Far West Fish Camp in the shadow of Kaigani Point on Dall Island.
Guests fly into the camp’s sheltered location on a float plane for three- and four-day fishing excursions from early June until the small fleet of boats returns to Port Angeles in late August or early September.
The journey will take Pete and his group of volunteer boat drivers about six long days to transit the Inside Passage to Ketchikan, Alaska.
Once there, they will probably spend two or possibly three days stretching their legs, refueling the boats and replenishing stores aboard Northern Legacy before making the one-day run in the open ocean around Cape Chacon to Dall Island.
Yacht hauled out
Platypus Marine hauled out Maximus II and stowed her in the Commander Building on Marine Drive in Port Angeles. She is a 105-foot Horizon yacht that hails from Incline Village, Nev.
Capt. Charlie Crane, director of sales and marketing for Platypus Marine Inc., said she will be on the hard for a couple of weeks to allow personnel to inspect the bow thruster, rudders, shaft seals and all of the through-hull fittings.
Seals in the stabilizers will be replaced, the SATCOM will be raised to the top of the mast, and the yacht will receive a fresh coat of bottom paint.
The captain of Maximus II took the opportunity to get as far away from salt water as was practical. He rented a house on Lake Sutherland, put the yacht’s tender aboard a trailer, towed it to the lake and will spend his down time fishing and otherwise enjoying and exploring the North Olympic Peninsula.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats, ships and strolling the waterfront.
Items involving boating, port activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome. Email dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202.