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Starting a New Project:
Friends and strangers, feminists, queers, radicals, and punks: It started with a 12.5 meter, junk-rigged steel schooner called Drummer. Over the years we learned to sail her pretty well and had the opportunity no not only cruise the Caribbean, but to share the space, experience, adventures, and projects with more than 60 friends. Drummer often felt more like a community project than any one person’s home or dream. In the Winter of 2020, just as drummer made her first foray into the Pacific, an interesting offer came from an old friend in the Dominican Republic.
We were offered a 17 meter, 25-ton, gaff-rigged, steel schooner. The schooner is sitting in the Dominican Republic where it has been for 10 years without any maintenance. 14 years ago when we were first salvaging Drummer in south Florida, an ambitious family was outfitting this schooner in the same boatyard for a world voyage that never happened. The boat is large, with 8+ full size berths, and good potential for shop and common spaces. She still has her spars, sails, and engine, the hull is in alright condition above and below the waterline. However, the steel deck was full of holes and there was water damage in the interior.
In September 2020 we spent 2 weeks in the Dominican Republic isolating on the schooner, assessing her condition and eventually accepting the offer to take over her salvage. The Big Schooner is now ours to start a new community project with. We named her Skua.
The prospective plan is to use Skua as a community-driven ecologically appropriate safe-space for radical women, queers, and non-traditional sailors to learn, to adventure, and practice sailing skills on a traditionally rigged vessel. We are not setting out to exclude cis men, but we are hoping to bring women, trans, and queer folk to the bridge in a cruising and tall-ship scene where they have been historically under represented.
Projects and pandemic permitting, we’re hoping to have Skua and crew ready to leave the Dominican Republic in late 2022, and to host an initial, week-long, for-profit sail training workshop somewhere pretty in 2023.
As crazy of a project as this seems and the madness of our current world, I am still hearing that folks are interested and motivated to throw in their labor and time. With focus (and a little funding) I think we can do this.
If your interested in the project let us know by reaching out to us at info@schoonerskua.org OR subscribe to the ol ‘fashioned email newsletter by sending a blank email to schoonerskua-subscribe@lists.riseup.net and confirming the email you receive from SYMPA .
Or, (new for 2022!) follow us on the insty-gamm @schoonerskua
- December Workparty 2021
In late November 2021 the first wave of available friends came down to help work on projects. Throughout the month of December we worked on lots of welding grinding and painting projects, rebedding and installing portholes and insulating the replaced parts of the deck overhead. We learned about space and time management with different facets of the project going on at the same time in different parts of the boat. Mostly we got a lot done, and had a really good time.
- Fall Projects 2021
Once returning from another summer season working in Alaska our first priority on Skua this September was to move forward with the welding projects on deck that would make the boat stop leaking from above and structurally safe for its rigging. As we did not yet have our own power plant running we worked with the generous help of friends in the local fishing fleet until we got a generator working that could run the welder.
- Spring welding project.
March 2021.
Once We were in Luperon with both boats and all the tools in one place, there was nothing to do but get started. One of our highest priorities was to stop rainwater from coming in, and to stop the boat from filling with water. For the first wave of welding we worked with Luperon’s most famous welder- Felo, who can be found most days at his shop a block up from the municipal dock. Because we still did not have electricity sufficient to run welders on the boat or on the dock, Felo was able to bring over a generator welder and he, his crew, and we, cut out half the cabin roof and most of the back deck to replace them with new material. We canceled two of the hatches on the cabin roof and replaced the two on the back deck with more moderately sized ones, farther from the high-traffic cockpit area. We prepped the new steel with an anodic primer, and four coats of high-build epoxy barrier-coat. We used drops of pigment in each coat of epoxy paint to help keep track of how many complete coats there were, and I must say, the effect is pretty.
- The Great Unloading.
February 2021.
In the early years of Skua’s semi-abandonment she was variously used as a place for people to stay while in Luperon and a place to store hoarded boat things. In the last five years, the incoming rainwater and rats had taken a toll on the interior such that she was no longer really suitable for sleeping in, and most of the hoarded treasures were moldy or ruined. The result was that everyone’s first impression of the boat was of the dripping putrid interior and the heaps of trash rather than of the well-found hull still lurking beneath. As soon as we were settled in Luperon we dragged her over to the dock at Marina Tropical and began the enormous project of hauling out the mountains of trash and stripping out the rotten interior. We rented a container on land to save what wood and materials we could and, hauled loads of junk to the municipal dock and the dumpster.
Schooner Skua 