keenahan01

Ken Keenahan's Horne 33

As I have stated elsewhere on the site, 'Falcon' is based on a hull designed by one Hans Otto Horne, somewhere in Florida
and sometime around 1953. A somewhat eccentric man from North Kingstown, Rhode Island, acquired the mold and began
selling fiberglass hulls from it. I bought one of those hulls in 1986 and have never seen or heard of another . . . . . . . until now.

A short time ago I received a letter through this sites Contact page from another builder of the boat. His name is Kenneth
Keenahan and we have been exchanging Email's. We have agreed that I can post his account of building a Horne 33 here,
and that's what I'm doing. We will start with what I have now and add or edit as necessary. I will begin with his first letter.

I was Googling Hale Pauley yesterday as I have done from time to time, since it's been a long time since I have last seen him,
when I came across your web site detailing the construction of Falcon. I have to tell you, I was absolutely floored! It was as
though I was looking back in time at your pictures starting with the bare hull and working through your construction process.
You see, I met Hale around 1980 after he returned from the USVI aboard his two Creekmore's I believe "Barefoot" and
"Sunrise".

One of my friends had met him and struck an arrangement to crew for him. Anyways, at that time in my life I was a freshly
minted mechanical engineer just starting out at Kodak in Rochester New York when I heard about this guy in Rhode Island
who built sailboats and who sort of taught prospective builders how it was done. My goal at the time was to obtain some sort
of sailboat and work my way as a live-aboard down to the Virgin Islands. I knew that the current boat that I owned, a Cal 28
was not the boat to live on and sail the ocean, but the boats that Hale had built certainly had the potential. So, one weekend
my friend who had crewed with Hale, and I drove down to Wickford and met Hale who much as you described, showed us the
mold and hulls for the Creekmore 47 which would have been much too expensive for me at the time, and he also showed me
the hull for the 33 which at the time was going to cost $7000 to purchase. Sounded about right to me and affordable, and he
was willing to work with me along the way during the construction.

So in October of 1980 I borrowed a double axle trailer and borrowed a Chevy Impala with heavy duty towing package and
drove to Rhode Island from Rochester to pick up my hull. If my memory holds, we got there and he had a crane ready to
unload the hull from the mold and onto my trailer which needed to be braced for the trip back. We also loaded on the mast
which I purchased from Hale, a 55 gallon drum of resin strapped onto the tongue of the trailer, and I believe I bought an old
single cylinder diesel motor from him at the same time which turned out to be way, way undersized for this boat and was
eventually replaced.

The drive back from Rhode Island was just unbelievable. I had arranged for permits as this was a wide load being over 12
foot beam and had the entire route mapped out. However as soon as I started driving, the whole rig swayed so badly that I
couldn't go any faster than 30 miles per hour. This meant that I'd be driving for about 12 hours and I never did make it back
the first day, ending up staying overnight around Syracuse rather than drive into the night. Once I got the hull back to
Rochester I had made arrangements to build on some land a farmer had let me use for free, so I backed the trailer into a
plastic framed shed that looked almost exactly like what you had originally constructed. I jacked the hull off the trailer and
started my boat building project. I would travel down to see Hale anytime I had a question or needed advice about
constructing a particular part of the boat. I eventually made about a dozen trips over the 4 years that I spent building the boat.

The first problem that I ran into reminded me about your problem that you mentioned with too few layers of laminate on one
side of the hull. My problem was a little more complicated and I wasn't sure how to handle it with Hale since I was young -
about 23 at the time and not very good at confrontations. Anyways, he had installed the bulkheads previous to selling me the
hull, and I had taken measurements from a sister hull he had on site so that I would know the location of the floorboards
relative to the bulkheads. When I copied these measurements onto my bulkheads and then laid out the floorboard positions,
the floor was seriously off level, I mean way off level and not even close to being perpendicular to the bulkheads. At that
point, the bulkheads were the only reference that I had regarding the position of the hull, everything should have been
perpendicular to the bulkheads, floor, waterline, etc. Now I'm worried that I have no idea how the thing will float and where
any reference lines actually are. So I called Hale and told him that I thought the bulkheads had been installed with the boat in
the mold but not with the boat level which would have created the problem that I was having. He didn't say much and I don't
think he thought I knew what I was talking about since I was a kid, and there was nothing that I was going to do about it since
I was relying on him to help me through the building process so I just went on. I jacked the boat up until the floor was level
and with the bulkheads tilted slightly towards the stern a bit and built the rest of the boat relative to the floorboards.

Eventually, the boat floated close to the waterline I'd painted and with the floor level and the bulkheads tilted which has
bugged me to this day, although I just remembered all of this so I guess it didn't bother me all that much! I worked for 4 years
or so and eventually launched it in the fall of 1984. It was rigged as a cutter per Hale with the mast fittings, spreaders, etc all
purchased from Metalmast on one of my trips to Rhode Island. I had the interior finished in mahogany, with bulkheads
painted white, had installed a head, diesel stove, had dinette and settee cushions made and had by then installed a new 4
cylinder diesel. I think I've got about as many stories as you do, I just can't remember them all. My wife (then girlfriend)
helped me hoist the old engine out and haul up the new diesel using a gantry type rig that I had made up that was supported
from the deck. Worked out great and the new motor was in while the boat was hauled for one winter. She tells me that I
married her because she agreed to help with these kinds of jobs! As with life, we got married and bought an old house that
became another project, then had some kids and decided the cruising plans would have to wait, so I donated the boat to the
local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America and took a tax write off which I had to eventually defend during a future IRS
audit.

Well, I could go on for days. I had never met another builder of one of these boats and was just amazed to not only come
across your website but to see so many pictures and similar tales regarding the boat. You mentioned installing a longer hose
to the stuffing box. I'd completely forgotten that little detail but then remembered doing something similar since the hull was
so narrow way back there. I've got a ton of old film pictures (I work at Kodak in film manufacturing so I took lots of pictures)
that I wish were scanned so that I can forward them to you. I think I'll go down to the basement tonight and at least sort
through the bag that they're in, maybe I'll scan some so that they can be emailed to you.

Good luck with your project and please send me your email address so that I can send you pictures. I don't get down to
Florida much but would like for a chance to meet you at some point if at all possible.

Ken

********** To contact Ken, use this email address: ken_keenahan@yahoo.com **********

I wrote back:

I would love to see pictures and hear more of your boat, and even discover if it is still around. You might consider putting it
together on one of the free blogs available on line. That way, I could put a link to it on my site, and who knows, you might
actually have a pretty good time doing it. Someday down the road, when I'm up in New England, which I definitely will be,
because my whole family lives around the Boston area, we might get together for a sail.

Great to hear from you, Ken, and keep in touch.

And then got this:

Ben,

I’ve pasted a few of my pics into a word document so I can add comments easier. I’ve got quite a few pictures and spent
about two hours last night scanning them. You’ll notice that a lot are old Kodak Instant photos that are no longer made. You
might remember your friendly Polaroid Inc. in Boston won a lawsuit in the 80’s for patent infringement which forced Kodak out
of the Instant print business along with a half billion dollars. Oh well, digital photography has taken over for it all now anyway

Here’s a shot of the mold taken in October of 1981.

Hale had sent me this Christmas card the first
year. Do you know if he’s still around?

My brother Brian’s in this picture. He came down for the
weekend when we picked up the hull and helped me load
and drive it back to Rochester.

This picture was taken on Monday Oct 6th, 1981. I
remember because it was my brother’s birthday. The
trailer was probably slightly overloaded!

Here is a shot of my construction shed, version 1. I used scrap polyester film base because I was too cheap to buy plastic.
The film base is used to make motion picture film, the print film that the theaters project. It’s super strong stuff and caused
the whole thing to collapse when some snow and wind built up on the roof.

Taken just after I backed the trailer inside and unloaded the hull and cradle. You can see the mast and the barrel of resin
that I had bought from Hale.

Nice and cozy tight for a little while anyway.

Here, I’m just beginning some floor construction using Hem-fir per Hale’s plans. This is where I discovered the bulkheads
weren’t plumb. Just like you, I took lots of measurements and just couldn’t quite figure it out for awhile. I eventually just had
to accept that the bulkheads and floorboards would never be perpendicular to each other.

I think I actually took another trip to Rhode Island at this point, just to verify the measurements that I’d taken the last time
there, before I went ahead with the installation of the rest of the floor. I remember losing a lot of sleep at this point.

Here’s what happened during one of Rochester’s snow storms of 1982. The whole shed collapsed one night. This is just
after I ripped the whole thing down and decided to build something a little stronger.

1-23-82

This was constructed with posts sunk into holes and concrete
poured around them and never did move again. I went with more

conventional plastic and a tarp for the roof which worked out fine. I also had an old oil furnace that I used for awhile for heat.
It didn’t last long and I eventually used a kerosene heater.

Here’s a stringer splice going in. I remember agonizing
over this and not knowing if I was quite doing it right.

Plywood deck installed once the stringer was completed. I
actually like the look of what you did much better than this
simple plywood construction.

Here’s a shot of more stringers. You can see that I cut
the bulkhead down and later added a section back in to
accommodate the design of the cabin top. I goofed up
quite a bit along the way but definitely learned a lot.

I couldn’t quite get the bend right on this cap piece and
eventually split it into two pieces and glued it up in place. I
should have made a pattern and glued it separately, but I
wasn’t that smart back then.

Looking forward from below with the
foredeck installed.

I remember enjoying building the Settee. I copied the
design of Hale’s and found some old drawers that were
about the right size. Later I replaced the faces with
some nice mahogany pieces.

The finished Settee. I had some nice cushions made
later on but might not have taken any pictures. I’ll have
to keep looking.

The nav station was also a copy of what Hale had
built using measurement and pictures that I had taken
of either Barefoot or Sunrise.

Here’s how it looked almost finished. It wasn’t
perfect but I was really proud of it.

Here’s the beginning of the forward V-Berth

And a little further along.

Cabin top looking aft.

The rudder was constructed of two pieces of ¾ inch marine plywood glued and screwed together per Hale’s suggestions.
The rudder shaft was something like a used 1.25 inch bronze propeller shaft, bent and glassed into the rudder. I really like
the method that you used. I never did like the look of this rudder. Yours had much nicer lines. This thing also weighed a
ton. I don’t have a picture of the gudgeon that I had cast at Rochester Bronze Works which was bolted to the keel in exactly
the same way as yours.

I never really knew what to do with the bowsprit and Hale didn’t have any real suggestions. It wasn’t going to be rigged for a
long Bowsprit so I bought a section of 4 inch stainless steel pipe and made up this piece which was all glassed into the hull.
The aft section was bolted to the first bulkhead through a big stainless pipe flange. I might have had some help from my
Kodak friends with this piece. I also built some stainless steel tanks that I definitely had help from Kodak on.