A Boat's Heart
Mar 11, 2007
"The ship was the pride of the American side coming back from some mill in Wisconsin. As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most with a crew and good captain well seasoned, concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms when they left fully loaded for Cleveland.
And later that night when the ship's bell rang, could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?"
Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
I grew up near San Francisco bay and it seemed that the local top-40 AM radio station (KFRC) constantly played "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot, perhaps because my home town was the hub of so much maritime activity. I liked the tune but didn't learn until much later in life that the Edmund Fitzgerald was a real ship, an ore bulk carrier which went down with 29 souls in a terrible storm on Lake Michigan in 1975. I really didn't understand the significance of this song until I saw a program about a dive on the ship some twenty years after she went down. The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was quite a mystery and a dive team dove on her in 1995 to discover the nature of her demise. On July 4, 1995 the divers raised her bell while many of the crew's family members looked on. When a ship goes down at sea, in the rare cases that she is found, the bell is often the one artifact recovered. For you see the ships bell is usually inscribed with her name and home port and thus carries the memory of the ship and those who were lost.
When sailors speak of their boats, they never refer to them as inanimate objects but as living female creatures with emotions, moods and a soul. Boats are given voice through their unique sounds; the rumble of a diesel engine, the echo of water against their hulls, and the song they sing as the wind blows through their rigging. The heartbeat of a boat is it's bell whose dulcet sound marks the passage of the hours, protects her from collision in fog, and when a ships life is over marks her end with eight final strikes of the clapper.
Warning Technical Content
Despite the obvious aesthetic of a bell, oddly enough in this high-tech age, a bell is legally required for boats the length of Makara. The Federal regulations (called the COLREGS or Collision Regulations) excerpted below are unbelievably specific:
§ 86.23 Construction
Bells and gongs shall be made of corrosion-resistant material and designed to give a clear tone. The diameter of the mouth of the bell shall be not less than 300 mm for vessels of more than 20 meters in length, and shall be not less than 200 mm for vessels of 12 to 20 meters in length. The mass of the striker shall be not less than 3 per cent of the mass of the bell. The striker shall be capable of manual operation.
Makara is 14.3 meters in length so she requires a 200mm or 8 inch bell. In addition to the tolling of the bell in olden times to mark the passage of time (a bell was tolled once every 30 minutes during a 4 hour watch), the practical purpose of a bell is as a sound making device to be used when anchored in fog.
Bells can be relatively simple. A bell which meets the federal requirements can be had at the local boating store for about $50. But, as is clear from our logs, Makara is no ordinary boat and it didn't seem right to me that her heart be something quite so pedestrian. Thus Bill Morong from Bellingham Bell Company in Rockport Maine enters the picture.
Bellingham Bell (www.bellinghambell.com) has been making bells for the US Navy, Coast Guard and Marines for the last 26 years. Bellingham uses something called the "Lost Wax Process". You will notice from the picture above a craftsman carefully sculpts the bell out of wax, including things such as the boats name or logo and port of call. The wax is then dipped over and over again into a ceramic slurry which is used to create a unique investment casting (see left). The Wax is then melted away leaving behind a finely detailed ceramic mold. This ceramic mold is then fired to insure it doesn't break during the casting process. The smaller bell shape on the bottom is inserted into the inverted portion to form the complete mold for the bell. Molten brass is then poured into the mold forming the bell. The last step requires that the ceramic investment casting be shattered leaving behind a unique one-of-a-kind brass bell.
When I first spoke to Bill he wasn't quite sure they were going to be able to cast the bell with the star field portion of Makara's logo, but I gasped today when he sent me these photos of the bell's construction in progress. The entire process of making Makara's bell will still require at least another month or so. The bell still has to be cast, cool, and then the polishing process begins. However, as it works out, Makara's bell, her heartbeat, should be completed just about the time she arrives in the United States.
Half way around the world Makara got her first taste of salt water when she was launched on February 1st. The composite photo below of her at a dock in Xiamen bay begins to give us a sense of the scale of this yacht that blueprints and construction photos never could.
The picture to below was taken after her in-water testing with one of the workers from Han Sheng Yacht Building proudly smiling with Makara in the background. This photo makes me think that the craftsmen in Xiamen China have built an exceptional boat.
The work on to be done in Xiamen is now complete and Mr. Tan of Han Sheng believes that Makara will be loaded on a ship bound for the United States on the 14th or 15th of March.
With a little luck and a following sea Makara should arrive at the Port of Baltimore in mid to late April. We are obviously getting very excited about the prospect of her arrival and have started to prepare for the next phase in the construction process - rigging and equipping her.
Soon after this process is complete, sometime in early June, with witnesses and appropriate pomp and circumstance, we will place the bell aboard, christen her Makara, and begin her heart beating with the first ring of her bell. Should be quite a party.