Wednesday, April 28, 2010

X-treme Boat Makeover




Well, spring is here, and in our part of Alaska, that means time to get the ol' fishing boat fixed up and ready for another season of chasing fish around which we trade for money to fix our boat...some people refer to this as 'The Circle Of Life'. We left early on a beautiful, brisk morning, the dock looking fresh and clean under a new coat of snow.
The sun came out in force and by the time we'd been underway a few hours everything had melted off and it was T-shirt weather on the back deck. Ahh yessss...the back deck. This was the main reason we were making the 8 hour run to the big city, to tear out and rebuild the back deck, haul the whole works out of water and bottom paint 'er. It's much easier to get a job done quickly when you have access to a hardware store and plenty of ice cream. Besides, we hadn't had fresh groceries since the first week of February...over two months...as I said ICE CREAM!!! We arrived in civilization with our two dogs, boatful of tools and a rubbermaid full of freezer stuff from the house. When we leave we have to clean out everything because there will be no power until we get back and crank over 'Genny' again. The Southeast Alaska Folkfest was in full swing when we rolled into town...muskeg-grown bands from all over the state were there to jam until the wee hours of the morning. We got cleaned up and went out on the town, while visions of steak dinners danced in our heads. Just outside the restaurant we ran into a friend who was looking for a gillnetter about like ours...one thing led to another and pretty soon we realized we were selling our boat and may not be fishing this season after all! This would be the first time in many years, for both of us, not to be on the water for the summer...but we prayed about it and went ahead with the process. This however didn't let us out of the intended boat-work nosirrreee! The good ship Brunette was hauled out of the water on what is called a travel-lift, it lifts the boat in big straps and then drives you through the boatyard to your rented spot. You're then blocked up and unstrapped and there you sit. She was looking pretty unloved and quite the 'bearded lady' when we started the project...after the seaweed and barnacles which had collected on her over the winter were pressure washed off the work began. We cut the old deck out with a sawzall, the fiberglass and plywood filling the back of our little toyota truck. Then came the rebuild. Here Adam cuts the crown on the deck beams he's fashioning from treated 2x8's while my standard poodle Shadowynn, (yes, she fetches ducks) oversees. These were placed on top of a rim he left of the old structure so we could raise the deck a few inches...more freeboard is always good.
First off Adam fiberglassed over the old scuppers and any little patches that needed some TLC. Next up came a new blue dress for the old girl and a touch-up on the here-to-for unreadable name... this coat of copper bottom paint will inhibit growth of the barnacles, mussels and seaweed that would like to build apartment complexes and impede the speed...can't have that.

Here we are kneeling on the new back deck structure and getting ready apply the highly toxic dooky-shmutz. This the only picture we really have of our back deck project, taken by my Mom...no time for fooling around, when fiberglass resin kicks off it really goes and you'd better not have your mat in a wrinkle or you'll be grinding it off and starting over again. Gotta love grinding fiberglass.

And here she is all prettied up and ready to fish again...tis the season!

Speaking of pretty boats here's the one I grew up on...the Lindy, named after Charles Lindbergh because she was launched the year after he made his transatlantic flight 1927. My Dad has owned her for the last 30 years or so, nothing like an old wood halibut schooner for beautiful lines.





Saturday, April 3, 2010

Power To The People!

It all started with a free generator...yeah FREE!!


This is a big deal since we live off grid...and since we don't have the luxury of power coming out of a hole in the wall (unless we put it there) we spend a good bit of time harassing it out of a steel machine that roars in our yard....and this one's a beaut...3.5k Lister, good old fashioned hand crank starter, very dreamy...








We'd bundled up and made the one hour boat trip to the nearest town, Gustavus. Adam needed to mail off a knife to a client in Switzerland and we had to figure some way to bring the 400lb diesel home with us.




It required some ancient Egyptian technology (makeshift rollers) to move it out from under the pile of old treasures our benefactress had in her shop. Lucky for us our sometimes, summer neighbor Johnny (of Johnny's Seasonings) was running his landing craft over to our shores the next morning and was generous enough to transport it for us. Then it was only a dock crane away from the back of the truck. It took Adam and our local Gen-set Guru about an hour to fire the beast up after it having sat for 25 years...gotta love those Listers!















It took another day to clear the trees and stumps for the new shed site. We shoveled gravel from the beach about 3 miles away into our ATV cart and then drove it back up the trail to resurface the chosen spot.












Having rummage through our ever dwindling lumber supply we decided the abandoned shed at the old harbor looked like a fabulous generator shed...just needed a relocation. After the usual trailer woes of swapping ball sizes to match bent hitches... anyone who puts a ball hitch on without Never-Seize is a sadistic fiend AHEM...we got it all set with the forklift...





...and off we went at a crawl speed up the rocky trail. Since the road to our house has never accomodated anything of this size before we had to chainsaw and knifehack the trailside trees into submission. Our shed roof did a little pruning of it's own as we drug it through the overhanging branches.





It was all going swimmingly until a stubborn stump caught a tire and snapped the trailer tongue in half, sideways. By now it was getting dark out and we had completely clogged off the trail with our 'clampet-mobile' sans granny and her rocker.

So we hightailed it home for our headlamps and welder...




...handily we already had a diesel generator in the back of our truck (who knew?) and with a genuine 'GIT-ER-DONE' wiring job to match the two together we were back at the scene of the carnage with the proper weapons in hand. I cranked over the beast while Adam donned his welding hood...the dogs, unimpressed by our midnight adventures went home and fell asleep on the porch.


We mended the tongue and towed the contraption to a wide spot in the road. The shed was beginning to fall off the stern of our trailer and it was black dark so we gave it up for the night, waiting to wend our way through the shed shredding woods in the daylight. Come morn, with the help of a good friend Chuck, and his chainsaw, we got it through the last half mile of rocky, muddy jeep trail. Once in the driveway it was a matter of a couple bottle jacks, a few more hours of brute force and ingorance and we had it settled nicely on blocks in our shop yard. With a bit of salvage and some remodeling we cobbled together a bench to mount 'Genny' on.



Now then...how do you move a 400lb diesel from the back of a truck, into a shed and up onto a bench? With lot's of grit, spit, 2 bladesmiths, a P-vee, a come-along, and plenty of properly applied peer pressure she slid in as easy as a hailbut slides off the hatch.



So there she rests. We're on our way to Juneau town in the big boat as I write this and there we'll find the electrical panels we need to have a fust rate diesel generatuh and powah comp'ny yussir.