It began four years ago as an exercise of the imagination. Today, the rebuild of a thirty-foot steel sloop approaches completion and a group of high school students meets on a regular basis to plan a voyage between Maine and Florida. This is VIVA, the Vinalhaven Island Viking Adventure.
The project began during the 2002-2003 academic year when three students spent a semester brainstorming ideas for their ideal learning experience. They wanted to build a boat and sail around the world. During discussions of the many practical considerations surrounding such a feat, the idea morphed into rebuilding a small boat and attempting the more modest cruise of the Eastern seaboard. Encouraged to make their ideas a reality, the students located a boat project that had stalled and convinced the project’s originator that what he had begun could be completed in the Vinalhaven vocational education program. Grants and proposals were written to secure the funding necessary to transport the boat from Florida to Maine. The boat was moved into the Vinalhaven shop in January, 2004.
The boat is a 30-foot steel sloop designed by Al Mason and built by Gilbert Klingel. The design, called Intrepid, first appeared in The Rudder magazine in 1945. There were three installments in this how-to-build series. Described as “a fairly small boat that will be an able, comfortable ship, suitable for any normal cruising yet one which can make the big long cruise when the day really comes,” the Intrepid must have struck Klingel’s fancy. He first built a boat to this design for his own use in the early 1950’s. Subsequently, Klingel built as many as a half-dozen duplicates of the design throughout the 1950s. Whether these boats were built for known clients or on speculation is not clear. What is clear is that Al Mason’s design combined with Gilbert Klingel’s expertise and understanding of steel construction produced a seaworthy and long lived cruising vessel, the smallest to be built in steel up until this time.
The boat that arrived in Vinalhaven was a bare hull. The plywood deck and mahogany cabin house were in place but those, too, were removed before construction began. The eighth-inch steel hull had been sand blasted and suspect plating renewed prior to priming. With the deck and house gone, students replaced some additional steel before continuing the painting process until all the steel, inside and out, was protected by four coats of paint.
Before any interior furnishings were begun, the students installed a full ceiling of cedar in the main cabin and oak in the forepeak. Bunks, navigation station, galley, engine box and all other interior accommodations were designed by mock-up. Fuel tanks were first made of plywood that eventually became the male plugs for fiberglass tanks, providing twenty-two gallons of fuel storage. Fifty gallons of water storage fit under the two settees in the main cabin.
The woodwork below is a bright, airy combination of varnished wood and painted plywood. Ample ventilation is supplied by eight opening ports salvaged from a sister ship and a Dorade-type skylight. There is bunk space for six, using two pipe berths for shorter two- or three-day outings. For extended cruising, two berths in the main cabin, a quarter berth on the starboard side and a double berth up forward provide ample space for four.
The nearly completed boat filling the Vinalhaven shop today is barely recognizable from the empty vessel of two years ago. While the layout and construction methods appear quite traditional, there are subtleties that should not be overlooked. It was a conscious choice to minimize reliance on fossil fuel energy sources. The 20 hp, three-cylinder Beta diesel power plant is intended for bio-diesel. Electricity comes from a wind turbine and photovoltaic panel, as well as the alternator. LED lighting and digital communications highlight energy saving technologies. Propulsion should improve from the original design with the inclusion of a fully battened main sail. A dehydrating Air Head Dry Toilet was installed, instead of a conventional holding tank.
To be launched Saturday, May 20, the boat will provide students with a truly unique learning opportunity. Next fall, four revolving groups of three students will carry this project to the next level of inter-disciplinary cooperation and experiential education as they sail from Maine to Florida over the course of a school year. Each group will be on board for six weeks of a corresponding nine-week quarter. The remaining three weeks of the quarter are used for planning, reflection, compiling, presenting and transitioning in and out of the classroom. Teachers at the Vinalhaven School continue to work together to develop curriculums in English, math, science, and the social sciences that capitalize on the unique opportunity of sailing the Eastern seaboard. The relevance of these core subjects becomes more apparent as they are further integrated with seamanship and navigation. On-board experiences will be shared back home and throughout the world using an on-board computer and Internet connectivity.
This phase of the project is known as VIVA, a word used to shout enthusiastic approval. It means, “to live.” It is also the acronym for the Vinalhaven Island Viking Adventure.
Mark Jackson teaches at the Vinalhaven School.