When I first saw Mir, she was bobbing in her mooring at Raffles Marina, still bundled up from the weeks she had spent alone while the rest of the crew made preparations back in the states. My landlubber eyes could barely tell the difference, but she was already stripped naked, empty of all of the ropes, rigging, and canvas that she would need for life. It was only when I hopped on board that I noticed the difference - the few words I had picked up from Moby Dick and Horatio Hornblower helped clue me in that things, like the sails, were missing. She was lying clean, exposed, ready for the facelift of a lifetime.
Now, six weeks later, she looks a bit different. A heart-transplant interrupted mid-procedure would seem a lot like a murder, and Mir looks to be in a similar condition, even down to the surgical gown tenting she's wrapped in to protect her innards from the monsoon rains. Her masts are off, her teak deck has been stripped, most of her second layer of wood has been sawn away, her hatches have been cut out, and a few chunks of the worst steel has been excised from her aft. We are well on our way.
The ultimate goal is to put a layer of steel underneath the original teak deck, replacing the old, soggy underlying wood with a watertight plate. The constant leaks and corrosion had been a recurring issue and steadily grown to surpass the pots and pans catchment system the crew had been improvising. With a new deck, secure from the elements, Mir should be set to continue her work for years to come.
Getting there is the tricky part. We began in Raffles Marina, the home-port for Mir and Biosphere Foundation’s projects for nearly two decades. Safe and comfortable in a secure setting and amongst many friends, we took apart the cabin interiors and emptied her of all but the barest essentials.
Under the shade of a blue umbrella, we experimented with different ways of carefully removing the plugs, screws, and rubber caulking that fastened the teak to the deck, before teaching the new tricks to our enthusiastic volunteers on a few work party Saturdays.
We couldn't start taking all of it apart yet - we still had to keep her seaworthy to get her to the next stage - but everything that wasn't needed went, (like every second nut holding down the deck)
Our next leg was my first trip on Mir, a five hour motor down the Singapore Straits, dodging tug boats, massive barges and supertanking leviathans.
Slipping into our berth at ASL Shipyard, our new home, we squeezed between the industrial steel giants of global oil and shipping companies, our neighbors for the upcoming months. Our presence is a bit of a peculiarity in ASL, and curious workers stop by every day to watch us working and look at the ship. This industrial and impressive dry-dock has generously offered to help us and provide expert care to us during the many months ahead.
Gaie quickly made friends with the nearby crane operator, who helped us take off our masts and lift our winch.
It's only been a little over a year since the masts were put in, but we'll be refitting the bases for new fittings on the steel plate and shortening our main mast (which is almost comically tall for Mir).
With all of that done, it was time to start taking off the wood. Joe, our amazing carpenter from Malta, has joined us is Singapore to show us how its done.
And once we got started, it came up quick.
But before we could get too far along, we had to get out of the water, which we accomplished with the friendly help of our neighborhood sling-lift, riding the boat up into the air and over, onto land.
Now, she rides on steel props and carefully wedged lincoln-log towers of red blocks, but sometimes she still seems to roll, just a little bit, mischievously, which you catch out of the corner of your eye before you turn and look and the whole world comes back to its heavy reality. Mir has come a long way from her active self, and has a long way before she's back to it, but we're making progress in leaps and bounds every day - stay tuned and you won't miss it.
-- My name is Michael and I've taken over Sam's blog for our time in the dockyards. I'm a recent graduate of Deep Springs College and am currently a student at Yale, taking a year off to work on Mir. I like my peanut butter chunky, my coffee black, and prefer waffles to pancakes. I joined the crew in September and will do my best to carry this blog through until Mir is back in the water and moving on to the next stop.
