I just got home from spending one of the nicest Saturdays we had this spring (partly cloudy & mid 70's) touring the three yards in Sturgeon Bay WI. Each spring the Rotary Club of Sturgeon Bay arranges with Great Lakes Yacht Services, Palmer Johnson Yachts, and Bay Shipbuilding to open their facilities to the public as a fund raiser. They fund civic projects, scholarships, youth programs etc. The cost is $10 for the tour which is very reasonable. My brothers David and Pete accompanied me. Below I will make separate posts for each stop. Here is a scan of the brochure covers and the map.

Great Lakes Yacht Services provides maintenance, storage, and repair services. They have a fully equipped facility as you will see from the photos. The tour started in their main building. The space was dominated by a huge catamaran called the Double Nickel. The first stop was the riggers loft where the rigger can make up lines and stays and does all the rope & wire work. The next stop was the machine shop. Our guide told us that often they work on yachts from builders who are no longer in business. May times GLYS has to fabricate new parts themselves. we then moved across the yard to the shed where they store masts and spars for the sailboats. From there we entered the heated storage building where they also do some repair work. One cruiser had found a submerged rock as tore up his props. A new pair was made in New Zealand and shipped here for installation. They also were doing hull work on a sweet old sailboat. The hull was steel below the waterline and wood above. The stem had some serious rot which was being addressed. the next department we visited was the woodworking shop. Parts for railings, decks and cabinetry are fabbed there. The last stop at GLYS was the Dorsal sail loft. The boss himself was giving the tour talk about the loft. He also demonstrated the CNC material cutter they use to cut sail panels.

This was the shortest part of the tour. PJ had two vessels under construction in their building. They are both standard PJ designs. Hull and propulsion, and electronic systems are standard. The customer can decorate the interior any way they like.

So did they need your building services for constructing models for the owners?

Looks like a super tour!

Great to see that we are still building big yachts here in the U.S.!!!

Bay Shipbuilding was the longest tour of the three. They took through groups as the yard was working and safety was the number one concern. Earlier in the day the Joseph Block left the big graving dock after having a 500ft strip of hull plating replaced. She found the bottom in upper Lake Michigan.

Across the graving dock from us were sections of a new floating drydock BSC built for the yard. This one will replace the 100 year old drydock they currently use. Also on that side were sections of the last two if 16 barges for USACE. A Japanese vessel is due in the graving dock next week to have the bulbous bow replaced. She hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic. They will put in a partition in the graving dock once the Japanese ship is in then assemble the barges behind her. They will float them all out once the work is complete.

Moored across from the graving dock is the Walter J McCarthy Jr. She is in to have some bulkheads repaired in the cargo hold.

Past the McCarthy is the small graving dock. The yard maintenance manager gave the talk on this dock. It is a salvaged ship hull they buried in the ground, stripped, then fitted doors to. He said he loves this dock as it is the most cost effective and bullet proof piece of infrastructure in the yard.

Down a ways is the old drydock. She has a McMullen & Pitz barge in her. The guide said he was told they put it in there for display. Not unreasonable as the McMullen & Pitz tug is in the BSC shop for repairs after sinking at the dock in Egg Harbor.

Past the floating drydock is the laker Saginaw. She had a gear failure in her self unloader and it came crashing down onto the deck. The unit need major repairs which are underway.

Finally we ended up at the steel fabricating shop. Fincantieri has been upgrading the yards since they took over and they built a new welding school onsite. Welders need to re-certify at regular intervals and the new school will make that easier. The fabrication building houses the plasma cutters and module assembly. Modules are welded up and a transporter hauls them to the graving dock.


Nope Umi, they don't need me. There are pros up there for that too.

Slightly OT, but it boggles the mind that all that is on fresh water...

Neat pics, Prins!

Most bigger towns on the Lakes had shipyards. Cleveland, Detroit, Sturgeon Bay, Marinette, Manitowoc, Sheboygan, Milwaukee, Chicago, Superior, not even mentioning many Canadian yards. They started building small boats, moved up to Lake schooners, then some transitioned into iron & steel ships. 26 Gato/Balao class subs were built at Manitowoc. US Army FP class vessels were built in Kewaunee during the war (USS Pueblo). Sub chasers & minesweepers in Sturgeon Bay. Peterson Builders was the premier builder of wood hulled minesweepers until they closed in the 1990s The last minesweepers they built are the MCM Avenger class.

Shipbuilding and repair is still big business in Wisconsin. Take a look at the links on WSBA's general link page. Near the bottom are marine company links with the ones in or connected to Wisconsin highlighted in green.

http://wimodelboats.org/general_interest_links.htm

In my job we get that "I don't believe this goes on here" reaction quite a bit. People wouldn't think this far inland would be important in the history of deep sea diving. In 1937 Max Nohl set a world record off Milwaukee of 420ft. Dr. Edgar End, a Milwaukee physician was a pioneer in hyperbaric medicine. The Milwaukee County hospital had a recompression chamber and Dr. End worked with Max Nohl on helium/oxygen mixtures and decompression tables. During WWII DESCO Corp was the largest diving equipment mfg in the world. We manufactured over 3000 USN Mark V diving helmets. http://www.descocorp.com/index.html

PW- curious how could a failing "sea chest" cause a boat to sink?

Misc parts in racks along the building. No more hassle about modelers using store bought parts since even the big boys do it.

Perfect! Thanks!

Originally Posted by Habanero

PW- curious how could a failing "sea chest" cause a boat to sink?

Having a hole open up in a sea chest is like having a hole in your hull.... Not a good day.

Scott
(who is on vacation from being out on the lakes)

PW,

Are they totally removing the Saginaw's boom and replacing it with a new one or are they going to rebuild that old angle iron monster.

Scott,

Our guide was from the maritime museum so he didn't have all the answers as far as BSC went. From the pieces I saw they are cutting up the boom. Most of the parts were behind the Saginaw so we couldn't see very well. My impression is they want to reuse as much as possible. The Saginaw is only moving salt now and I don't think her owners want to put too much $ into her.

Bill

Originally Posted by Habanero

PW- curious how could a failing "sea chest" cause a boat to sink?

http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/zebra/...ting_plant.htm

The sea chest is a rectangular recess in the hull of a vessel that provides an intake reservoir from which piping systems draw raw water. Most sea chests are protected by removable gratings and contain baffle plates to dampen the effects of vessel speed or sea state. The intake size of sea chests vary from less than 10 cm2 to several square meters.

Originally Posted by Prins Willem

Scott,

Our guide was from the maritime museum so he didn't have all the answers as far as BSC went. From the pieces I saw they are cutting up the boom. Most of the parts were behind the Saginaw so we couldn't see very well. My impression is they want to reuse as much as possible. The Saginaw is only moving salt now and I don't think her owners want to put too much $ into her.

Bill

Well, I know she hauls more than salt. When her boom crashed she had just finished a coal unload and the Canadian Soo. But regardless, you haul salt once their is no turning back. She was repowered a couple years ago, so they've already put some dollars into her. Replacing the boom with one of the newer hydrolic ones would be good, the old cable types like that are a pain.