Mystic Seaport Orders Yards from the Spar Shop

Mystic Seaport – The Museum of America and the Sea, the nation’s leading maritime museum, has contracted with the Historical Seaport to turn two large yards for the tall ship Joseph Conrad, now undergoing maintenance at Mystic Seaport’s facilities in Mystic, Conn. Mystic Seaport has ordered a fore yard, which will be 49 feet long and 11 and three-quarter inches in diameter. The museum also requested a mizzen topsail yard, which will be 35 feet, ten inches long and eight and one-half inches in diameter.

The Spar Shop, a unit of the Historical Seaport, will perform the work using logs harvested from a western Washington forest. The logs will be turned on the Spar Shop’s tracer lathe, which can handle logs up to 122-feet long. The project is expected to take four to six weeks. A purchase price was not disclosed.

Launched in 1882, the Joseph Conrad is an iron-hulled sailing ship originally used as a training vessel for Danish sailors. The vessel was acquired in 1934 by Mystic Seaport, which displays the vessel as a museum ship. Mystic Seaport’s education programs also use the vessel as an overnight facility. Mystic Seaport regularly contracts with the Historical Seaport to turn masts and spars. In 2006, the Historical Seaport supplied spars for the schooner Amistad, which was undergoing a restoration at Mystic Seaport.

The Historical Seaport is planning to ship the Joseph Conrad's yards to Mystic, Conn., via flatbed semi. If you are a west coast member of the American Sail Training Association, GHHSA can offer you space on the semi-trailer for materials you need to ship to New England. For more information, please contact Les Bolton, 800-200-5239, les@historicalseaport.org.