My apologies for not posting lately... I know it gets old checking a blog and finding no new posts.
I'm back to working on a boat built circa 1956 that set a world speed record in 1963. It's a 51 foot Garwood sportfisher. It was the last boat he built and has high collectible value.
I'm the last guy in the line of people in this restoration. The hull's been reglassed and I'm doing the finish work. Currently I'm installing the rub-rails and will move to the decks and then the cabin when we splash her.
If anyone's curious, her name is Frankly Scarlett.
I'll post more pictures as soon as I use up the rest of this roll of film I'm working on.
Yes, I still use snail pics.
Back soon!
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Friday, January 20, 2006
Pit Bull Attack
Those of you who know my dog, Chester, are aware of what a great dog he is. He's one of the most docile dogs I've met, and he's so well behaved most people like him more than me. When I'm working around town and will be in and out, I generally leave him at home for the day to "guard the house" (that's his job).
About a month ago, I left poor Chester in the house as I do sometimes, and my landlord (the very ingenuitive captain of the grouper boat 'Offshore') came over to retrieve something out of the back bedroom. That room is his storage unit. Anyway, the front door to the cracker box that I live in is kind of quirky, and you have to jiggle the handle or it won't latch. Unfortunately for Chester, the landlord forgot this and didn't latch the door properly. Chester decided to go for a walk. While doing this, he ran into some neighbor dogs who are allowed to run freely. They're pit bull terriers. Two of them. Fortunately for Chester they're still young. I'm guessing them to be a year or a year and a half of age. They tore my dog's right ham up pretty bad; nothing to see but a dozen or so puncture wounds, but they mangled his muscle horribly. There were a few puncture wounds on his face and shoulders, and they nipped off the end of his, well, let's just suffice it to say it hurt him to urinate. He couldn't walk at all; the landlord saw him crawling by his house to go home. When he first saw Chester he didn't recognize him through the blood and the mud, but when he realized what he was seeing he took him to the vet. After a ten day course of antibiotics and pain medication the exterior wounds were closed and healing nicely. Still, after a month, he favors the leg tremendously.
Now that he's healing up it's kind of funny to watch him walk. His name came from Chester on "Gunsmoke" because he was found as an eight or so month old puppy limping around town on a mostly healed left front broken leg and as a result it's considerably shorter than his right one. So now with his permanent front limp and the newly acquired back right limp it's actually kind of comical to watch him romp and play. (he told me it's ok to laugh, now) Bless his heart! And for the record, he's going to be fine.
By the way, in case anyone's wondering, he's a chow mix. I think he's chow, shepherd and heyena.
About a month ago, I left poor Chester in the house as I do sometimes, and my landlord (the very ingenuitive captain of the grouper boat 'Offshore') came over to retrieve something out of the back bedroom. That room is his storage unit. Anyway, the front door to the cracker box that I live in is kind of quirky, and you have to jiggle the handle or it won't latch. Unfortunately for Chester, the landlord forgot this and didn't latch the door properly. Chester decided to go for a walk. While doing this, he ran into some neighbor dogs who are allowed to run freely. They're pit bull terriers. Two of them. Fortunately for Chester they're still young. I'm guessing them to be a year or a year and a half of age. They tore my dog's right ham up pretty bad; nothing to see but a dozen or so puncture wounds, but they mangled his muscle horribly. There were a few puncture wounds on his face and shoulders, and they nipped off the end of his, well, let's just suffice it to say it hurt him to urinate. He couldn't walk at all; the landlord saw him crawling by his house to go home. When he first saw Chester he didn't recognize him through the blood and the mud, but when he realized what he was seeing he took him to the vet. After a ten day course of antibiotics and pain medication the exterior wounds were closed and healing nicely. Still, after a month, he favors the leg tremendously.
Now that he's healing up it's kind of funny to watch him walk. His name came from Chester on "Gunsmoke" because he was found as an eight or so month old puppy limping around town on a mostly healed left front broken leg and as a result it's considerably shorter than his right one. So now with his permanent front limp and the newly acquired back right limp it's actually kind of comical to watch him romp and play. (he told me it's ok to laugh, now) Bless his heart! And for the record, he's going to be fine.
By the way, in case anyone's wondering, he's a chow mix. I think he's chow, shepherd and heyena.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Change of Pace
After the last fishing trip I'm happy to report I'll be a carpenter for a while again. I'm building a pump house for my friend "Mike with the kids". Rosemoon knows who he is. (By the way, rm, he's been married twice since y'all saw him last and has six, count 'em, SIX kids now) That will be guaranteed $, and that helps pay bills.
It's a beautiful drive up hwy. 65 to Sumatra, and the road has been freshly paved. Nice 30 mile commute. The piece of property I'm working on is right on the Apalachicola river just north of Fort Gadsden. It's really peaceful until the fighter jets from Tyndall AFB decide to dog-fight over the forest. I'm always amazed at the wildlife I see in that neck of the woods. Today I saw a rather large russian boar (they're solid black) visiting my friend's hogs, and several white tail does.
Needless to say, the next couple of posts should be rather safe and mundane (unless while preparing the boat for the next trip something out of the ordinary happens).
The weather is really awesome right now; gusts up to 35 mph and thunderstormy. Not exactly winter weather. I'm hoping for long johns soon.
C-Y'all later
It's a beautiful drive up hwy. 65 to Sumatra, and the road has been freshly paved. Nice 30 mile commute. The piece of property I'm working on is right on the Apalachicola river just north of Fort Gadsden. It's really peaceful until the fighter jets from Tyndall AFB decide to dog-fight over the forest. I'm always amazed at the wildlife I see in that neck of the woods. Today I saw a rather large russian boar (they're solid black) visiting my friend's hogs, and several white tail does.
Needless to say, the next couple of posts should be rather safe and mundane (unless while preparing the boat for the next trip something out of the ordinary happens).
The weather is really awesome right now; gusts up to 35 mph and thunderstormy. Not exactly winter weather. I'm hoping for long johns soon.
C-Y'all later
Friday, January 13, 2006
Testament to murphy's law
Well, last Saturday my illustrious captain and I left for what was to be the first of my serious training excercises. It was a beautiful day and left no indication as to the fiasco that was about to ensue.
The capt. said we didn't need fuel; he topped off the tanks when we came back in the last time. I should probably as a preface say that this boat is not a foul weather boat. She has low freeboard (distance from the water to the rail) and a wet exhaust (the exhaust pipe is at water level). This is a particularly fast boat as far as offshore commercial grouper boats go; she'll do 20mph+ and cruises comfortably at 18, burning a minimal amount of fuel as 18mph only requires 2000 rpm's. So with this cauldron of energy between us and the water we made it to the bait hole in a remarkable 2 and a half hours. That's normally a 6 hour ride or so. We fished for bait 'till dark and went hunting for grouper. The first wreck we hit was a decent rally of nice sized grouper. We had 10 on deck for me to process on the way to the next bottom feature. On the next stop we caught nothing. On the next stop we caught nothing. (I would continue like this, but y'all probably get the idea) Finally about 10 pm the captain cooked supper and we quit fishing. The next morning was a series of stops similar to the night before. Skipper decided we should head in shore and fish shallow (30 fathoms) , as the other boats in the fleet had already pounded what we were trying to fish. We did go in and began to catch white snapper, scamp, trigger fish and beeliners. Not real high dollar fish, but quantity will pay, too. Now the fun starts.
Wednesday morning we woke up and the bilge was full of water. Guess who had to climb down into the bilge and replace the bilge pump while wading in two feet of oily, diesel fuely fish gutty water? I'll give you two guesses (and it wasn't the captain). NICE. So I got the bilge pumped out (don't worry all you greenpeace people; The oil and fuel float on top of water and the float switch shuts down before the oil gets to the pump) and we're running along to the first hole of the day. The motor quit. Just like that. The captain said "Wow, usually they'll sputter first!" I was thrilled. Turned out not to be such a bad thing after all; the water level in the racor filter (filters water out of the fuel) was up and when the filter gets clogged the motor stops. we had two extra filters on board, so we replaced it and started running again. At this point I'm kind of relieved; there's always a couple of things that go wrong on a boat and I was glad to get them out of the way. I was just thinking this when the temperature alarm started shrieking. Sigh. I figured it was something plugging the raw water intake under the boat and all you have to do is turn off the valve, remove the hose, open the valve and poke a stick or something through to dislodge whatever is clogging the hole. Not the case. The hole wasn't clogged. The only other cause for the overheating would be a bad impeller. That was the case. So we pulled the cover, pulled the impeller and it looked fine. Not a problem; this means the key that holds the impeller to the shaft has sheared. We looked and looked, but there wasn't a key on that boat. We tried to make one out of several different materials, but none would hold. On to plan L. I was guessing we were dead in the water, but the captain had other ideas. As I was preparing lunch he bypassed the raw water impeller entirely, put a 2800 gallon per hour lift pump in line on the hose and jammed it straight into the motor. It actually worked. I was elated. I figured since we were limping along with an improvised and compromised cooling system that the capt. would just count our losses and head back to the dock. Not the case. He wanted to keep fishing. So we did. More small trash fish that bring about $1.50/ lb. Those small buggers really tear up your hands. Ouch. We hit probably 5 or six wrecks and made a fairly decent haul before the racor filter got too full again. Not good. Usually It takes 3 or 4 days before it fills up that full. It's just habit to bleed off the water at the bottom of the filter once a day. 'Tis not good at all. I install our LAST racor filter, prime it up and we go. 10 minutes later it happened again. We're out of racor filters and I think we're really dead in the water this time. Close to 50 miles out. That's not far by commercial fishing standards, but too far for me to swim. We sit and read, eat, I have a couple of beers and then the captain tries it again. The motor started for just a second, where it wouldn't do that a while ago. This gave me my one good idea of the trip. On the premise that the fuel tanks are full of water (which they are) I suggest that we pump all of the fuel from the starboard tank over into the port tank. We dry and blow out the fouled racor filter the best we can and leave it to dry overnight wrapped in newspaper, and we'll let the tank settle out overnight. I guess I didn't mention the fact that we were in five and six foot seas for the past four days and that's why the water got in the tanks. Part of the reason it's not a foul weather boat. Thursday morning we wake up and the motor started. The capt. wanted to keep fishing!!! I said "You must WANT me to try and mutiny!" I told the captain that I was going home. When he asked how I was going to do that, I informed him that he was taking me. He got the idea. That was a good thing, as we rode all the way north to the cut between St. George Island and Little St. George, and died right in the middle of the channel. None of our fleet was coming in 'till friday, so we were resigned to drop anchor in the middle of Sike's cut. Not a particularly good place to camp out, but we were within sight of people, buildings, land and trees. Besides, If we were blocking the main entrance to Apalachicola bay, no one could slip by us and say they didn't see us. (dang, that captain's smart!) So, we spent the night camped out in the middle of the cut (I don't think very many people have done that lately) and woke up refreshed and out of beer. Next morning, the first boat we saw were good friends that towed us back to the dock. We unloaded our fish, pumped the fouled fuel out, refilled the tanks with fresh and now here I am, telling all you young men to GO TO COLLEGE!!!
The capt. said we didn't need fuel; he topped off the tanks when we came back in the last time. I should probably as a preface say that this boat is not a foul weather boat. She has low freeboard (distance from the water to the rail) and a wet exhaust (the exhaust pipe is at water level). This is a particularly fast boat as far as offshore commercial grouper boats go; she'll do 20mph+ and cruises comfortably at 18, burning a minimal amount of fuel as 18mph only requires 2000 rpm's. So with this cauldron of energy between us and the water we made it to the bait hole in a remarkable 2 and a half hours. That's normally a 6 hour ride or so. We fished for bait 'till dark and went hunting for grouper. The first wreck we hit was a decent rally of nice sized grouper. We had 10 on deck for me to process on the way to the next bottom feature. On the next stop we caught nothing. On the next stop we caught nothing. (I would continue like this, but y'all probably get the idea) Finally about 10 pm the captain cooked supper and we quit fishing. The next morning was a series of stops similar to the night before. Skipper decided we should head in shore and fish shallow (30 fathoms) , as the other boats in the fleet had already pounded what we were trying to fish. We did go in and began to catch white snapper, scamp, trigger fish and beeliners. Not real high dollar fish, but quantity will pay, too. Now the fun starts.
Wednesday morning we woke up and the bilge was full of water. Guess who had to climb down into the bilge and replace the bilge pump while wading in two feet of oily, diesel fuely fish gutty water? I'll give you two guesses (and it wasn't the captain). NICE. So I got the bilge pumped out (don't worry all you greenpeace people; The oil and fuel float on top of water and the float switch shuts down before the oil gets to the pump) and we're running along to the first hole of the day. The motor quit. Just like that. The captain said "Wow, usually they'll sputter first!" I was thrilled. Turned out not to be such a bad thing after all; the water level in the racor filter (filters water out of the fuel) was up and when the filter gets clogged the motor stops. we had two extra filters on board, so we replaced it and started running again. At this point I'm kind of relieved; there's always a couple of things that go wrong on a boat and I was glad to get them out of the way. I was just thinking this when the temperature alarm started shrieking. Sigh. I figured it was something plugging the raw water intake under the boat and all you have to do is turn off the valve, remove the hose, open the valve and poke a stick or something through to dislodge whatever is clogging the hole. Not the case. The hole wasn't clogged. The only other cause for the overheating would be a bad impeller. That was the case. So we pulled the cover, pulled the impeller and it looked fine. Not a problem; this means the key that holds the impeller to the shaft has sheared. We looked and looked, but there wasn't a key on that boat. We tried to make one out of several different materials, but none would hold. On to plan L. I was guessing we were dead in the water, but the captain had other ideas. As I was preparing lunch he bypassed the raw water impeller entirely, put a 2800 gallon per hour lift pump in line on the hose and jammed it straight into the motor. It actually worked. I was elated. I figured since we were limping along with an improvised and compromised cooling system that the capt. would just count our losses and head back to the dock. Not the case. He wanted to keep fishing. So we did. More small trash fish that bring about $1.50/ lb. Those small buggers really tear up your hands. Ouch. We hit probably 5 or six wrecks and made a fairly decent haul before the racor filter got too full again. Not good. Usually It takes 3 or 4 days before it fills up that full. It's just habit to bleed off the water at the bottom of the filter once a day. 'Tis not good at all. I install our LAST racor filter, prime it up and we go. 10 minutes later it happened again. We're out of racor filters and I think we're really dead in the water this time. Close to 50 miles out. That's not far by commercial fishing standards, but too far for me to swim. We sit and read, eat, I have a couple of beers and then the captain tries it again. The motor started for just a second, where it wouldn't do that a while ago. This gave me my one good idea of the trip. On the premise that the fuel tanks are full of water (which they are) I suggest that we pump all of the fuel from the starboard tank over into the port tank. We dry and blow out the fouled racor filter the best we can and leave it to dry overnight wrapped in newspaper, and we'll let the tank settle out overnight. I guess I didn't mention the fact that we were in five and six foot seas for the past four days and that's why the water got in the tanks. Part of the reason it's not a foul weather boat. Thursday morning we wake up and the motor started. The capt. wanted to keep fishing!!! I said "You must WANT me to try and mutiny!" I told the captain that I was going home. When he asked how I was going to do that, I informed him that he was taking me. He got the idea. That was a good thing, as we rode all the way north to the cut between St. George Island and Little St. George, and died right in the middle of the channel. None of our fleet was coming in 'till friday, so we were resigned to drop anchor in the middle of Sike's cut. Not a particularly good place to camp out, but we were within sight of people, buildings, land and trees. Besides, If we were blocking the main entrance to Apalachicola bay, no one could slip by us and say they didn't see us. (dang, that captain's smart!) So, we spent the night camped out in the middle of the cut (I don't think very many people have done that lately) and woke up refreshed and out of beer. Next morning, the first boat we saw were good friends that towed us back to the dock. We unloaded our fish, pumped the fouled fuel out, refilled the tanks with fresh and now here I am, telling all you young men to GO TO COLLEGE!!!
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Sunsets like summer
Wow, this unusually warm weather is facillitating some beautiful sunsets. We normally only see this in the summer.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Night Fishing
Night fishing is the way to go lately... the grouper are really chewing after dark. We get very little sleep (2 to 4 hours) and just keep on fishing. This is a 36 pound gag grouper that brought somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. Ka-ching!
Monday, January 02, 2006
foggy new year
Well, this has been interesting weather; It's 70 degrees and we have a pea-soup fog. Grouper season opened yesterday, and the breezy, foggy conditions have prevented us from leaving the dock. The guys that got out will make the big bucks and after about 4 or 5 boats unload the price will plummet from $3.50 to about $2.75. We missed it. Oh, well.
The holidays were relatively uneventful this year. For Christmas I feasted with friends on a big deer ham. The new year came in quietly for me. Friends wanted to go to the big bars on the Island, but I couldn't think of a worse Idea. The Franklin county cops LOVE new year's eve. Instead I spent a quiet evening over at my friend Sandra's house and we watched the new year roll in with a really heavy fog. The temperature at midnight was around 72 degrees. Very strange for January 1.
Hope everyone had the best holiday season ever!!
Ciao!
The holidays were relatively uneventful this year. For Christmas I feasted with friends on a big deer ham. The new year came in quietly for me. Friends wanted to go to the big bars on the Island, but I couldn't think of a worse Idea. The Franklin county cops LOVE new year's eve. Instead I spent a quiet evening over at my friend Sandra's house and we watched the new year roll in with a really heavy fog. The temperature at midnight was around 72 degrees. Very strange for January 1.
Hope everyone had the best holiday season ever!!
Ciao!
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