Commander #155 'Mephisto Cat'

[Rico]

I've finally installed my little chart table!
One of the simpler projects on the boat, but one that took its time...

I knew I wanted a little 'salty' looking chart (multi-use) table, but could not find the right 'chart' to use. I got one of the channel islands and then one of San Francisco bay, but none really looked right. I finally saw this one and I knew this was the one!

It is also the chart I used to navigate my way north...

(I do not know why people look at me funny when I tell them this!)

It is a very interesting little chart I got somewhere on the web... Unfortunately, I do not have a date or author. Interestingly, the chart includes 3 scales; Dutch 'Mijl'*, Spanish 'Leguas' and English 'Miles' .

It is quite accurately labeled as far as the best known & well traveled areas (settlement ports & Islands) of the North westernmost part of what was known as 'New Spain'. Cities/towns from Colima to Cabo San lucas in the South to San Diego, Santa Barbara, & Monterey in the North ...

The islands of Catalina, San Clemente, San Martin, & the channel Islands are all well labeled, as well as some of the major landmarks: Magdalena Bay, San Quintin, Todos Santos Bay, Pt. Conception, Point Reyes, Drake's Bay (San Francisco Draco) and the Northernmost Point Blanco. But as you go North, the accuracy is lost and the 'imagined' takes over...

I guess that at that point no one had made it all the way North in the sea of Cortez to the mouth of the Colorado River, and no one had sailed North past point Blanco (Oregon) hence the assumption was that California must be an Island...

Conspicuously, San Francisco Bay is missing altogether from the chart as it must not have been discovered at the time this chart was drawn! The approximate location is shown as the mouth of an ambiguos river mouth... This would date the chart from about the early to mid 1700s.

- A bit of Wiki history: San Francisco Bay was First discovered by the Europeans on November 4, 1769 when Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolà, unable to find the port of Monterey, California, continued north close to what is now the town of Pacifica and reached the summit of the 1,200-foot (370 m) high Sweeney Ridge, where he sighted San Francisco Bay across the peninsula.

Portola and his party did not realize this was a whole un-discovered bay thinking they had arrived at an inlet of Drake's Bay. At the time, Drake's Bay went by the name Bahia de San Francisco and thus both bodies of water became associated with the name. Eventually, the larger, more important body of water fully appropriated the name San Francisco Bay.

The first European to enter the bay is believed to have been the Spanish explorer Juan de Ayala, who passed through the Golden Gate on August 5, 1775 in his ship the San Carlos, and moored in a bay of Angel Island now known as Ayala Cove. (See Angel Island map in post #80 above).

Sorry for the digression onto history - but it is all pretty amazing that we are still visiting the same virtually unchanged (fortunately) places -by sail- that these guys visited hundreds of years ago...



Anyway, Back to the table... I disassembled the table, cleaned it up, sanded the teak and applied several coats of varnish.

I also sanded the original formica table top to remove some stains and roughen up. I have to say that had I wanted to keep the interior totally original, I could have just polished the formica and it would have been as good as new. It really cleaned up well... Instead, I roughened the surface up a bit for best adhesion and proceeded to epoxy the chart onto it!

I wanted about 1/8" of clear epoxy cover over the whole table (This meant I needed about 1/2 liter of CLEAR epoxy).

I tested the chart print for color-fastness and fortunately the ink on the print was not affected by the epoxy. I stuck the whole table in the oven to warm -up & accelerate the curing while I carefully mixed the clear hardener & resin.

As it turns out, I did not need accelerating the cure... Due to the large volume of epoxy, it went off quite fast. I used a bit of epoxy to set the print on the table and then I poured the rest on top. I poured and almost immediately after spreading the epoxy and achieving a level surface - it set. Had I taken 15 seconds longer I would have had a complete mess on my hands. Instead, it came out very nicely.

Due to an inexplicable late start to this little epoxying project, I ended-up going to bed at about 2 am...

The results are pictured below:
Picture 1: Photo of the chart.

Picture 2: The table installed and in stowed away position.

Picture 3: The table deployed.
Note the nice glow of my warm-light LED bulb under the little lamp shade.


In addition to providing a flat surface for all purposes; I am convinced that this table is good for at least one knot over the water!



*A bit more on the Dutch 'Mijl':
mijl = about 5 km

The mijl was the equivalent of one hour of walking. It was a variable measurement that differed from region to region. One commonly used measurement was the "Holland mile" (Hollandse mijl). The mijl is usually assumed to be the equivalent of the English league, which was also variable but was about three English miles or about five kilometres.

Other equivalents of the various miles in use were the French lieu marine (5,555 m), 20,000 Amsterdam feet (5,660 m) or 20,000 Rijnland feet (6,280 m). Between the introduction of the "Dutch metric system" (Nederlands metriek stelsel) in 1816 and the reforms in 1869, the word "mijl" was used to refer to a kilometre.