HMS Fly Build (Amati) 1:64 by Nomad

[DomCee]

A tall ship, a mast, and a birthday gift that couldn't go to waste was all it took to get me up the shrouds and ratlines of the three-masted Southern Swan to the top of the world! The climb was trickier than I expected and the less said about the swaying mast the better, and as a seaman not yet rated able I was quite happy to have my feet back on deck again. Here are some of the pictures from the excursion...

The Southern Swan is a three-masted barquentine built from oak in Denmark in 1922, now operating out of Sydney Harbour...

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Sailing beneath Harbour Bridge...

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Turns out I was the only one mad enough to sign up for the 'mast climb'

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But luckily for me the top mast had been carried away in an earlier incident and my climb was restricted to just the height of the mizzen mast

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The ascent became trickier as the shrouds narrowed towards the top and holding on tightly soon became a white-knuckle affair...

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Heading back to the Campbell Cove wharf with a new-found respect for all those sailors of old who scurried up and down shrouds and ratlines in all sorts of weather conditions

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Now, back to my HMS Fly ...

Thanks for visiting
- Mark

What a great experience - I'm also jealous! All the best, looking forward to seeing progress on HMS fly.

Dom

 

[TexBilly]

Gorgeous work! I can only hope my skills develop to half of yours and so many other talented craftsmen on SOS!

 

[GrantTyler]

Yep- us SAf’ers have the crazy in our blood Marc. Looks like a load of fun. Cheers Grant

 

[Borton]

The bowsprit is installed at this point in anticipation of the rigging to come. All the bowsprit hardware was prepared earlier, so it remained only to house the bowsprit at the stem and apply gammoning to lash it securely into place.

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It took several attempts to learn a gammoning technique that hid the knots from the naked eye. I also read somewhere that the number of vertical lashings over the spar should match the number of horizontal wraps around the middle. Mine were 7 and 8 respectively, so close enough

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Thanks for checking in
Mark

Nice job, where can I learn that technic for gammoning? any suggestions?

 

[RDN1954]

You're a lot braver than I am....

 

[Nomad]

Nice job, where can I learn that technic for gammoning? any suggestions?

I would love to be able to direct you to a published technique on gammoning, but I'm afraid my own effort was simply the result of a lot of trial and error. Other than the 'number of vertical lashings over the spar should match the number of horizontal wraps around the middle' advice I picked up somewhere, it was mostly a case of winding the rope around the spar as evenly as possible, and tying it off in a way that didn't reveal the knots!