[cgoodwin]

I am more interested in the names, hull numbers and locations of the vessels, it seems odd that the information is so difficult to come by. If my vessel is so clearly marked "No.7" I wonder where 1 through 6 are and what they were or are??? I am not solely relying on this forum by any means, I would be very interested in the "Feadship Publication" you refer to.

[AMG]

I have a couple of brochures with similar content. Olga II from Van Lent Shipyard is on the larger picture.

[cgoodwin]

How about this beauty, any idea what her original name was?

Bleu
1953
21m
Steel hull
Twin Diesel

She is listed as a Feadship but is shown as being desinged and built by Akerboom and I have found some references to Akerboom Yacht and Equipment as being Feadship???

She is for sale here

[cgoodwin]

Does anyone here know of a site with the history of Scheepswerven Nicolaas Witsen & Vis, they seem to have totally disappeared.

Honestly I am amazed that so little information is archived on the early Feadship yachts considering that they are and have been the cutting edge of yacht building for better than half a century. I have yet to find a good archive of any kind and have spent some time adding to the Wikipedia page which appears to be a press release from Feaship some time ago. I have been adding details to the list there of Feadships as I come across it.

[AMG]

Originally Posted by cgoodwin

She is listed as a Feadship but is shown as being desinged and built by Akerboom and I have found some references to Akerboom Yacht and Equipment as being Feadship???

Akerboom has been close connected with Feadship all the time:

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/62241-post22.html

Today as part of the De Vries group they are building aluminium superstructures and many other things for both Feadship and yards like Royal Huisman:

http://www.ayeholland.nl/geschiedeni...s-scheepsbouw/

[AMG]

Originally Posted by cgoodwin

Does anyone here know of a site with the history of Scheepswerven Nicolaas Witsen & Vis, they seem to have totally disappeared.

Here they are: http://www.nicolaaswitsen.nl

[K1W1]

Hi,

Good Posts there Lars.

I never knew how close I had been to that Witsen yard till I did a Michelin Map search and found that I pass within about 1km of it when driving to Amsterdam from Maakum.

[cgoodwin]

OK, I am looking for information on the following feadships:

1950 Rotterdam
1951 Pampus
1952 Jo-ed
1955 Goodwin

I can find no images of any of these.

[cgoodwin]

I have been in touch with Feadship and they have been kind enough to provide me with some history and images on some of the early vessels. I have posted them at www.frybrid.com/feadshiphistory.htm

[cgoodwin]

I am continuing the restoration of the Brigand. I am now 99% certain that she is the oldest Feadship afloat. I have spent months searching records and conversing via email with the Feadship archivist and have been unable to locate any earlier vessels built by Feadship.

SHe has been out of the water for 3 months and during that time I have replaced about 32 sqft of steel below the water line and another 32 on the side decks.

All rust was cut out, the metal treated and sealed and new steel welded in place.

The entire vessel from keel to railings as been sanded, prepped and repainted.

Both sliding doors have been removed, repaired and rehung.

The master stateroom was torn down to bare metal and rebuilt with a queen bed, bench and storage. About one large trash can of dysfunctional wire was removed and the bilge below the floor cleaned and painted - The shower and sink will no longer use this bilge as a holding tank as a pump has been installed.

The midship tank has been completely cleaned and repaired, the hull and bulkheads in that tank area repaired and painted.

The transom was sanded, sanded and sanded some more, 6 coats of CPES, sanded, 4 more coats of cpes, sanded and now has another 6 coats of Captain's Varnish on top. I made new swim step brackets from .25 mild steel, lazer cut a skeleton pattern and welded them together then had them powdercoated and installed them with 3M 4200 and stainless fasteners.

Most of this can be seen at http://www.frybrid.com/feadshiprepair.htm it has been 3 long months working every second I could find while still maintaining a business and family. I went through 2 carpenters, 5 painters and 2 welders and ended up being helped by a 54 year old painter and a 52 year old welder becasue not one of the younger people I hired would work or even show up consistently for that matter. Strange world where you drive to work past a half dozen young able bodied men sitting on milk crates begging with cardboard signs, yet can't find people to come to work...

I have paint in places I can't reach to wash, so much grinding dust in my skin that when the rains came I turned orange, I have a permenant blue dot in my view from my helmet not darkening in time, and get confused if I do not smell like bilge water, burning steel, diesel fuel and paint....

I will be moving her to moorage today and tenting the foredeck, the teak will come up and the rusted steel around the front of the house will be replaced. It appears that about 12" of deck all the way around the house is gone and every rain the galley fills with water.

On the foredeck is a windlass made by the Albina Motor Company of Portland Oregon, it is toast and needs a new clutch and motor but the company is out of business. After exhaustive research I discovered that another company, RC Plath bought up all the tooling when Albina closed. So if you have one of these huge WWII windlasses, you can get any part you like as they still make them all, they just don't advertise or tell anyone about it.

The project goes on.

[cgoodwin]

Still at it as time allows.

I have up-dated the list of older Feadships maintained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feadship

I got an interesting email from the daughter of a feadship designer:

Hello,

I was reviewing your Feadship history website and noticed the inclusion of "Dutch Treat" in your listing of boats built by Feadship. "Dutch Treat" was designed my late father, Naval Architect Al Mason. Her design was commissioned by Arnold Moyer, then of Buffalo, N.Y.

There is a famous story about the sturdiness of the steel construction of "Dutch Treat." Her owner was sailing her back from the Bermuda area when they ran into a severe gale off the Carolinas. Not being very seasoned sailors, they locked down the boat and called for the Coast Guard to rescue them. "Dutch Treat" washed ashore at Cape Hatteras with minimal damage. It cost the owner almost as much to buy her back from the salvagers as it did to have her built in the first place. The owner commented afterward that in the future, he would simply lock himself below deck and let "Dutch Treat" deal with the weather on her own.

Seattle boat designer Bob Perry was one of "Dutch Treat's" subsequent owners. The last I heard of her she was in the Annapolis area in terrible condition -- no one loved her anymore.

Sincerely,
Anita C. Mason
[Al Mason's daughter]

I have been in contact with Huib de Vries several times, he has been very helpful and eventually located quite a bit of data about "Brigand" including notes regarding its delivery, sea trials and sent me high res scans of several original brochures containing her which can be seen at http://www.frybrid.com/feadshiphistory.htm

To date I have repalced 64 sq ft of steel below the waterline, removed the teak on the gangways and foredeck to find rusty tissue paper where the steel had been. Cut it out and replaced it, prepped the original teak decking by hand to go back in place, taken apart and complately rebuilt the windlass, stripped the entire house and refinished the teak with 15 coats of varnish, converted the electrical system from 32vdc to 24vdc, rebuilt the genset, replaced all the injectors, starters and alternators on both motors, replaced the ceiling in the gally and staterooms, repaired and repainted the coach roof, gutted the bilge system and replaced it with individual bilge pumps, painted the hull to the rails, refinished and rebuilt the transom, made reproductions of the railing hinges and latches in stainless, built a swim step....

The project goes on.

[K1W1]

Originally Posted by cgoodwin

The project goes on.

Hi,

Thanks for the update.

If you have time would you mind posting some pictures of the restoration process?

[cgoodwin]

For the past year I have been working on the Brigand and have learned a great deal about her. Built in 1952 she was Hull #7 build by Feadship and is apparently the oldest Feadship afloat. I have gotten several emails from both Henk DeVries and Huib DeVries the family archivist, the have been kind enough to send me build and delivery notes and a brochure with photos of the sea trials and information about her construction.
I had her hauled and spent 4 months replacing steel below the water line, 64 sq ft in all, which involved cutting out thin metal by referring to the radio ultrasound, then cutting metal out until I reached metal of the original thickness, making panels and fitting them, then carefully and slowly stitch welding them in to avoid distortion. I removed the teak from the gangways and found the steel below to be a complete loss. The original design called for all deck drains to drain into pipes which exit the hull at the waterline, this was to prevent streaks on the sides but created several issues. While sitting mussels blocked the drains at the bottom, rain then filled the pipes and flooded the side decks, the teak expanded pushing the caulk from the joints and water sat on the steel under the teak, even when the drains were cleared there still would have been water trapped in this area as the drains were at the level of the surface of the deck, not the steel deck below. I replaced all the steel under the gangways with ¼” plate and treated both sides with rust preventative coating, then cleaned and restored the teak and bedded it in 4200, caulked with modern caulk and changed the original design so that the level of the drain was at the deck not the teak surface.

She went back into the water and upon reaching her slip I built a huge shrink wrap tent over a PVC framework and began working again. The foredeck was removed, actually it came up like a zipper. Originally the steel deck was coated and faired with coal tar, over this two layers of Irish felt were laid, over this the teak (1 ¼” Burmese, probably carried from the forest on elephants), the teak was then back fastened from below. Over the years of neglect the calking gave up and was spot repaired with everything from black silicone sealer and tub and tile calk to JB Weld. This of course leaked and allowed water to sit on the steel. Steel will expand 20 times its size as it decays, forms oxides and acids and disintegrates, the pressure can reach 18,000 psi and in the case of the Brigand deck, this force pushed the teak upward off the fasteners. Each board had a row of carrot shaped cavities in the back and the deck below had a corresponding cone of iron oxide which had been a fastener, this worked to my advantage as the deck planks pulled up easily and were salvageable. When I pulled the deck up I found black scale (Rust in low oxygen is black) which I picked up with a dustpan revealing a deck of tissue paper thick steel.

The following morning I arrived to find the black lace deck bright red. I cut all the steel back to the gutters where it was original thickness, the joists (16” on center) below were in perfect condition, coated with rust preventative and I installed new deck in 32” strips from 3/16” steel plate, stitch welded in place. The teak deck planks are currently going back down bedded in 4200 beginning with the king plank.

During the past winter I removed all the varnish from the house with a Bosch heat gun (great tool) and a Pro-prep scraper, sanded endlessly and repaired seams and edges. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find good teak of the same color as the original teak used on the Brigand and I have become familiar with every vendor in the area and have several sample pieces I take with me to select the correct color. For what teak now commands I could have laminated $5 bills with epoxy and built the house more cost effectively, teak is currently better than $26 per board foot and 6/4 is difficult to find without heartwood. I have applied 15 coats of Epifanes varnish and when the painting is done several final coats will be applied.


Here you can see the original lines of the back of the wheel house.

Here you can see the modified enclosed wheel house - photo taken during ultrasounding before purchase.

The Brigand had large windows in the salon which could be rolled up or down with cranks, these had long since deteriorated and the windows sealed in place with varnish and sealer. I removed the mechanisms and freed the glass, removed the window felt and varnished the track. I found new window felt through an automotive supplier and had a friend in the Hot Rod business make custom power window regulators to fit the glass, in place of the original crank, now missing, I will install a simple vintage style toggle switch, momentary two position with a neutral central position which will raise and lower the windows.

At some point the beautiful original lines of the Brigand were changed, the rear of the wheel house was boxed in and large sliding glass windows installed and the change was far from flattering. She had sweeping classic lines front to back and at the back of the wheelhouse she became a large cracker box. Using drawings and photos supplied by Feadship I decided to restore her lines to original. I sent the original line drawing from Feadship to a friend John Barnett of JQB Ltd. http://www.jqbltd.com/ who used measurments from the Brigand to scale the drawing to life size, he then printed a full size drawing of the rear of the wheel house and from this I was able to pattern pieces to restore the original lines. I cut out the added material while the wheel house roof was supported and installed replacement teak rear window frames, made patterns and ordered tempered glass.

The master stateroom was originally fitted with two single beds, this was modified to fit a queen bed and a bench, storage and book shelves. I replaced the injectors and reset the racks on the 671 Detroit’s, removed the single bilge pump and installed 5 separate pumps, replaced the ceramic and Bakelite fuse panel with a Blue Seas unit, switched the systems from 32vdc to 24vdc, replaced the solid core cotton insulated, lead sheathed wire with modern boat cable and removed the acoustic ceiling tiles in the stateroom, salon and galley with hardboard and teak.

The windlass posed an entire set of issues, the motor has long since become a mass of corrosion and the first time I had tried to use it, the fuse immediately blew, when I tried to free the wildcat by loosening the wheel, the wildcat would not move until I hit it with a wrench, gobs of broken clutch material fell on the deck and the wildcat screamed until the anchor hit bottom. At 140lbs and with 26’ of 3/8” chain pulling the anchor by hand meant that I could not tie my shoes for a week. The Windlass was an Albina #4 and research showed that Albina had closed its doors in 1980, I found references to many vessels fitted with Albina’s but little information. I pulled the unit and found that one of the cast iron mounting ears was broken, the motor needed replacement but other than that she was in great shape. I stripped it into component parts and sand blasted the chassis, brazed the broken ear back on and had everything powder coated white except the chain and line wildcats which I found had been galvanized under the paint and the wheel which turned out to be bronze. I replaced all the stainless and bronze fasteners, reassembled the chassis to the point where I needed to replace the clutch. Searching for weeks through the internet I found a post on a sailing newsgroup from a man in Norway about Albina, it seems that his Albina needed work and after years of asking around he discovered that a small company in Portland, Oregon named RC Plath had bought all the tooling when Albina closed and still produces these beautiful units today. A call or two and I was in touch with the owner “Ron” who turned out to be the nicest guy, I sent him my clutch parts and they came back good as new. The motors are no longer available in 24vdc but he directed me to an inexpensive 120vac unit which will run perfectly off the Mastervolt 5500 watt inverter I installed.

The coach roof is of canvas over felt and in several places the canvas had cracked, in others water had gotten in and rotted the felt and in two small areas rot had created small and isolated soft spots. I treated all of these areas by cutting away a small eye of canvas, flooding the area with CPES, then filling with epoxy and wood flour by injecting it under the canvas with syringes until level, sanding fairing, sanding, sanding, priming and more sanding… The result has been worth it, the canvas roofs are fair but still look like canvas, much more attractive to my eye for a vintage vessel than simply fiber glassing the whole thing.

I am heading back to the tent today to continue whittling away at the project, laying deck planks, sanding the coach roof, painting, pulling wires, etc, etc. If all goes well I will take her to the San Juan Islands for Christmas although it is more likely that it will be spring before the tent (one of the painters I hired for a week dubbed the tent the “House of Pain” above the door in sharpie) comes off. I will post again as progress continues.

[david_japp]

Hi
I think I’ve been through more or less the same process as you - when I bought the boat she was advertised at over $250,000 and was looking very nice with topsides freshly painted and her brightwork glistening in the Spanish spring sunshine. We went on sea trials and figured there was some work to do and some money to be spent so put in what I thought was very low offer of $80K which was accepted. I thought I had done a very good deal but how little did I know…..

It was obvious that some works would be needed on the 1961 V8 MAN engines and Renk gearboxes but it was only after I had spent over $15,000 on parts that the engineer told me one engine was past being fixed and that the Renk box on the other engine was totally seized. The estimate for rebuilding the engines and boxes was at least another $60K. Needless to say I decided to replace both engines and settled on rebuilt Gardners…a snip at $18,000 each! Although they more or less dropped in place, because of alignment problems, we had to fit flexible drives - basically a massivley heavy constant velocity flexible output shaft with a CV joint at either end. One end connected to the gearbox and the other connected to a thrust assembly block - this meant major surgery and new s/s shafts! . While we were about it we stripped out all the engine room plumbing and wiring.

We then started on the hull which had a number of “doublers” - we left them in situ but replaced a large section of rusted bow in the way of the chain locker.

I was then informed that the so so-called "new " teak deck had in fact been laid on the "old" original teak deck without attending to the rusted structure beneath, and was separating from the old teak, so up it all came to reveal a totally rusted-through steel sub deck. Once that was replaced we laid marine ply on the steel substructure and then reused most of the “new “ teak deck.

we then fitted new stabilizers, bowthruster and some basic engine wiring. We stripped out literally dozens of old rusted pumps, heaters and aircon plants together with miles of old wiring and steel piping.

I then took a deep breath and ordered the hideous 1980s fitted chicken-coop of a wheel house to be removed. (Tiky would look lovely with the original open helm but I'm not sure that is the best/most practical solution for a 61ft displacement yacht to be used as a family boat in the Med, or even if it is the most aesthetically pleasing, so I am currently trying to figure out what type of PH to fit)

All of this was a very slow, frustrating and expensive process. After 3 years I finally realised that completing the work by remote control in Majorca was going to be uneconomic and an impossibly long process. Accordingly, as soon as she could move under her power we took her a yard at La Ciotat in France, which I was told was sympathetic to classic yacht restoration. Sympathetic they may be but doing work there proved to be eye wateringly expensive (ie minimum charge of around $50/hr for an unskilled labourer with nearer $100/hr for a skilled person …all subject to management fees, storage charges and 18% TVA on top…

This was impossible for me to continue there so we took a deep breath, loaded about a ton of lead as ballast to compensate for all the crap wed taken off, and took her through the French canals back to the East Coast of England . she is now entirely stripped out and waiting for work to begin at “Landamores”, a well-known family owned & operated boatyard, known for the quality of its workmanship and at a price that will be approx 50% of the rates quoted in France & Spain.


work remaining to be done:

rebuild entire interior in light oak
rewire & re-plumbing throughout
build new Pilot-house
sort out rusted fuel and water tanks – not sure how yet!
more hull plating
much else.....!

If it makes you feel any better, you and I are not alone in sinking huge amounts of time, money and tears of frustration into these old beauties - there are many like us. In any event, I know they are worth doing properly and will eventually reward us ( even if its in in Feadship heaven!)

Lets keep in touch and swop horror stories!
Best
David

[cgoodwin]

Unfortunately for time but fortunately for my wallet, I can not afford to pay to have the work done and am doing it myself. It is making the project much longer but I am an anus and good help is hard to find. I made the decision to do the work when I went to 3 yards to get a quote on pulling the teak from the gangways (22" x 13') along each side of the house. The lowest quote was $13,000.00 to remove the teak and put it back in place, this would not include replacement of the metal below the teak. It took me 3 hours to remove the teak, I replaced the deck plate, treated the steel and it took an hour poer side to put the teak back down, another hour per side to calk it. Call me crazy but $1,800.00 an hour seems a little dear to me.

In all honesty I can not imaging what a restoration like this would cost were one to pay to have it done, just the lay days in the yard were killing me at $56 a day, I was there until midnight cutting and welding to get her back in the water. When I finished the work in the aft stateroom I went through 2 "marine" painters before it was finished. The first guy spent 16 hours "working" and the walls were not yet primed or fair, the second guy made it a day before i told him that I needed to see progress or see him leaving, he left 30 minutes later. I called a contractor friend and asked for a contact with a good painter, he gave me the number of a Bosnian fellow who had done several jobs for him. I called and explained that I had a 12' x 12' room with less wall space than a small bathroom and wanted it fair and glossy. When we met I explained that the "Bathroom" was in fact the stateroom on a boat, that I had painted cars for nearly 30 years and worked as a painter while in school and did not wish to pay extra simply becasue the room was floating. He quoted me $600 including materials and was done in 2 days leaving walls as smooth as glass.

I have found this to be true of almost every aspect of marine projects. Personally I see little difference between a home project, an automotive project or a boat project. I use tinned wire when I make wiring harnesses for vintage bikes but somehow it is less than half the cost of "Marine wire" even though it conmes from the same vendor and is in fact the same wire!