Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Nice clean place

Saturday night I got in a panic.
I think partly because I was so tired from moving the boat and sunburned and feeling crappy from the medicine. I didn't feel very happy about having a boat in the water, particularly at Fred's Marina, a place of right wing assholes and  rotten boat docks and the spending of vast sums of money.
The straw really was they demanded I get insurance which I was like, No. Fuck you. You tea party cunts scream about the health care law and then you mandate I get liability insurance for a fucking rowboat? I don't think so. Prick.
Sunday I poked around on the Intertubes and really looked past the first Google page about marina and moorage in the Portland Area, sorting eventually by the address for the ones on Marina Way, the road under the bridge to Sauvie Island. There's a lot of docks under there.
Years ago I rowed the crab skiff, #7, down there and I found a little moorage with only 5 or 6 houseboats kind of run down and outlaw looking where they let me tie up for 15 dollars a month. 1997 I think or maybe 91 but anyway I wondered if there was some kind of similar off-the-radar scene.
The prettiest website was for a little joint called Marina Way Moorage and the prettiest thing about it was the 3.50 a month for a slip.
Those mugs at Dikeside with their 7.50 fuck them, rotten falling down no-hope piece of shit dumpyard anyway. And Fred's with the 104.50 plus insurance.
You get the picture.
Yesterday I took the 17 bus from 21st and Glisan to the turnoff for Marina Way and hiked in to the place. And I do mean hiked. A mile and a half, nice day, no cars, blackberries getting ripe and still perfect. I cut me a maple walking stick and made a good time out of it.
The place was as pretty as the pictures, clean, groomed, small but not tiny, a row of substantial but not pretentious floating houses, docks in fair condition, a dozen various outboard motorboats and a few small sailboats along the way. The maintenace guy steered me kindly to the "office"
Which was the nicest part, the lady was so kind, has been there for 44 years, not worried about very much, knows exactly what to do, found me a choice of slips and walked me over to look, so I chose a nice spot close to the ramp and wrote her a check in her wonderful homey little living room while watched intently by a gray macaw who really really misses the husband who passed away only a few weeks ago.
Exceedingly reasonable cost. $60 a month. And no bullshit.
Down at Fred's I spent a minute or two trying to do something about the pine-tar mess inside the boat. Luckily I had the latex gloves, so I took a rag soaked with thinners and I tried to wipe off the heaviest puddles of the goop. The two nice days of being right side up in the sun finally had started polymerizing the surface, and that, with the scrubba-scrubba, made the place a bit less of a disaster area for clothing and gear and kneecaps.
It was a pleasant hour rowing out into the channel and puttering about on the far side amongst the trash and flotsam and the goose poop on the island, and a pleasant pull into my new spot.
One thing it is best that I am by myself in the boat. There's just something liberating about the solitude when nobody is  looking. I cut those stupid rubber oar protectors off which makes the oars easier to adjust I will put some proper leathers on there soon.
I wasn't looking forward to hiking out to the highway. They said the kids used to just climb up the bank to the road but I couldn't find their trail when I did it, and I resolved to get in there with a shovel and a mattock and a bit of old rope and make myself a way up the bank, not really very far or very high, but I found myself thinking in a longer type term than I had expected.
But a nice clean place is very attractive to me.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Not quite

The sun did come out today and now I am tired and burnt to a crisp after my new pal Steve James and I motored up the channel to Scappoose to get the dory.
One lung deisel Penta chugga chugg pop-pop all the way just fine.
Rolled her off the edge of Rivers' deck on soft fenders, Steve's idea, leveraged the stern over the edge come to find out the transom board leaks like a bastard fortunately it is normally out of the water.
We tried towing on a string, but with no keel she sea-horsed all over the place which ceased when we brought her up on the hip. It was a long ride back to Fred's Marina.
Sun in the face the whole way.
Bandanna on my head so I might not lose any scalp, but my face feels flame-crafted like a Xmas Ham.
The other thing is that Jan V raised my sonofabitching Ribavirin dosage again just when I was getting my strength back thx to the Procrit, but not any more, that stuff is wicked. I'm sagging again.
Which is why I'm so effing tired.
I'll tell you another thing, that dory is BIG and she don't turn on a dime like the dinghy and those oars are long and heavy and it takes work to go anyplace. You get going you are better off not changing directions without a darn good reason. It's just too expensive, personally.
All the way down the channel, 2 1/2 hours, less than a quart of water came in.
Yep
Not quite watertight but plenty close

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Old Boat is gone New Old Boat Needs Work

 
I been working on this new old Grand Banks Dory and having a wonderful time all the while.

Art

So I finally got off my ass and loaded the few photographs I made during the dory project. That gave me an editorial dilemma. Could I in editorial honesty go back and add art to the appropriate posts?
Maybe it would be better, I thought, to just post the art here so that folks who didn't want to go back could see them. And so it didnt look like I was trying to pretend that the art was there all along.
I think too much.
The cotton yarn isn't even twisted it is just strands of raw cotton that you can cram down in the seams so that when it gets wet it swells up a little and jams itself in there to form a seal.  With the seaming compound on top it really does stop the water.

I made up some primer out of Miller porch and deck paint, some Petit copper bronze hard paint and a little turpentine. I put some red lead pigment powder in there as well just to be as unwelcoming as possible to marine organisms large and particularly small.

There's also a movie in the works about the work on the dory.
Later

Friday, July 20, 2012

Tight and Right

I had to keep moving both days I didn't hardly even sit down at all, but the thing is taken care of and it looks tight and right.
One of the few pleasant surprises in my entire life was the performance of that big-ass belt sander from the Devil Store a 10 amp monstrosity that weighs fifteen pounds and if you aren't careful it would take your leg off no problem. I belted up with an 80 grit aloxite and she took that old green enamel down like buttah, and all those failed spots on the bottom where the paintsick old bottom paint was cracking and chipping, where I heat-stripped the patches all smoothed right out and in 15 minutes I had her sanded ready for paint. I had figured a day, a full day. Wow.
Then I had a day with Interlux Brown30 seaming compound, amazing stuff, stinky and viscous stiff like taffy made from ground bone and dead rattlesnakes, so all that went in the seams and tough enough it would appear. Just for fun I mixed up a couple spoons of pure red lead pigment powder into the compound just for old times sake which turned the brown goo a kind of raw orange red just like the old days I remember from the Charleston shipyard called in those days Hansen's Landing.
And Pine Tar is another stiff syrupy blackish green or greenish black like jelly made with pine tree pitch anyway I mixed that up with a little boiled linseed oil and some turpentine and gave the whole insides a good sloshing stinky as hell and probably ruin any trousers that come in contact with it but hey they will at least be waterproof. This stuff is why old-time sailormen got the nickname Jack Tar.
I was mistaken about one thing, there is plenty of copper in that  bottom paint, actual flakes of the metal, heavy in the hand, not salts of metal like they used at one time to retard the growth of marine organisms,  but actual metalflake shiny metal. I mixed in a little Brick Red  Miller's porch paint and got a full coat on the bottom, two coats, actually, and now she's gonna harden up for a few days before we launch her next week.
No more cracks visible, at least from outside. I still want to run a bead of black jack roofing tar down the seams inside to cover the cotton you could see peeking through the seams before I ran the pine tar in there to waterproof and prime the seams for the blackjack.
She looks tight and right, and she might not leak very much at all.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

One More

Friday finally came and once again  I managed to get some work done on the dory. Pounded little strands of loose cotton yarn into the seams and cracks on the dory's bottom planks. It took all afternoon, I was surprised. But it is all in there now and then some more primer on top of it. In the sun. Nice day.
Next time the plan is to put some Interlux Brown30 Seam Compound on top to fill  up the seams, then guess what more primer on that, then maybe bottom paint.
Tomorrow, though, is a trip to Salem to pick cherries again with Brother Bob Bailey. Me and Charlotte went last week but the cherries we found weren't up to my amazingly high standards for size of fruit and flavor. With the cool weather this spring the cherries did not mature as fast as usually, so everything is a week or 10 days behind. Three years ago Bob took me to a great orchard that had beautiful big fat fruit very late in the4 year, last year we effed around and dint get there until too late. This orchard is on the west shore of the river down there north of town near the Wheatland Ferry we will be going back there tomorrow.
I'm going down on the Greyhound but I have to complain about the southbound schedule there's a bus at 6:30 AM and then none until after noon. Why isnt there a bus when normal humans can go and get something done during the morning?
One more would be great.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

One Fine Day

Oh it was beautiful today out at River's working on the dory. The sun came out but it wasn't too hot, and I had all the tools I needed, plus what Bob dug up from his stash. I got all the seams reefed out finally. The last guy used rubber caulking which is a total dick-ass bitch to get out of there. Finally got her brushed out and flaked out and then mixed up some special poison primer to dredge way down in the cracks.
1 part millers porch paint, and one goober-slash of copper bottom paint and a guzzle of turpentine and a couple spoons of minium Red Lead pure pigment and I sloshed her in there all jam-up with a cheap bristle brush. It was hot enough that the shit went off right away looking very nice.
Then we had a cleanup and then me and Bob Rivers laid around and watched Gunsmoke on the western rerun channel and the the bus picked me up 15 minutes early and brought me straight home.
Tired, sunburned, and happy.
It was a fine day.

Friday, July 6, 2012

I Am So Effed Up

I went out to Scappoose yesterday to work on the dory.
I had no idea.
I am very weak from the medicine and anemia I was incapable of even the smallest tasks.
Finally Dave T helped me put the dory on behind his runabout inflatable and we towed her down to Bob River's place and drug her up onto the deck where maybe I can do the caulking but that is going to be problematic. I'm sorry I ever even saw this boat I'm in no shape to deal with it try as I might.
My goal now is to get the bottom sealed and then get the dory over to Dave's storage unit at Dikeside and forget about it until I get my shit together next year.
I don't know how thats gonna happen.
I am so effed.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Shit I Bought for fixing the Dory




1qt Interlux Brown 30 seaming compound---
the modern replacement for red lead putty used to fill seams of wooden boats below the waterline.

1qt Pettit Copper Bronze hard bottom paint
there isn’t much actual copper in this shit anymore, and no tin

1 gal Pine Tar     
a very traditional treatment for anything that might rot, mixed with some linseed oil and turps it is used to soak the inside of the boat instead of paint.

1 qt Boiled Linseed Oil
Long-chain polymer made from flax seed used to waterproof stuff like oilskins or awnings also mixed with whiting and red lead as a bedding compound

1 qt Turpentine 
makes a penetrating thinner for waterproofing and fungicidal compounds

200 gms Red Lead Pigment Minium PbCO3
you can’t really buy this stuff anymore but I found some in a art supplies catalogue. I will mix it in the primer

1 lb Caulking Cotton
 spun cotton yarn to jam in the cracks about 100 x what I actually will use.

Tile chisel
substitute for caulking iron

Putty knives, 6 paint brushes, wire brush, mixing tubs, round bastard file, gloves, dust masks paint thinner

1 qt Miller porch and deck semigloss white
1 qt Miller porch and deck brick red

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Sorry No Art

Shit got complicated quickly.
How could it have been otherwise?
Me and Ross managed to spend an entire day in the cab of his beatup old Ford Ranger without becoming actively hostile. The truck kept running like a dirty little clock and the little trailer kept following along behind and the boat stayed firmly lashed to the trailer the whole time. No cops or wrecks, but Ross did remark that if he had known there wasn't any license plate on the borrowed trailer he would have been paranoid but I figured that went along with there being no place to plug in its tail lights so I didn't give a shit.
It wasn't until we got to Scappoose and backed her down the fucked up little boat ramp at Brown's Landing that shit got strange, but even that wasn't really a surprise.
You take a plank boat that is used to living in the water OUT of the water for a couple months in the summertime and she dries out quite a little bit in fairly short order. The boards shrink and pull apart a little bit, which cracks the hardened putty filling the seams over the caulking and when you bounce that shit around for two or three hours some of the putty falls out for sure every time.
I noticed it first thing when the bow hit the water, that there was a roiling well of water streaming in between the planks and the cracks IN the planks and before she was all the way afloat it was obvious it was fucked up in a unignorable way.
But I had some scissors and a rag in my purse, strips of which rag stuffed in the gapiest of the cracks slowed down the leakage a little bit enough that I got her floating and down to Dave Ts place at the MCYC, got her there, that is, rapidly filling with water I couldn't keep up with having the choice of bail or row which is a bad situation.
Shit you once knew is shit you still know, pretty much, but you have to kind of lever it out of there. Two days on the internet finding obscure goops and gadgets and on the telephone making arrangements for freight and suddenly I'm right back where I was when I had the "First Light" an old carvel cutter from the 20s on  which I learned about seams and caulking of necessity self-taught down in Charleston Oregon and brain-picked from the old timers around Kelly Bros Boatworks and Emery Hanson's shipyard out on the Joe Ney point.
Next week hopefully I will get a chance to actually cork her up and then we will see whether this big-ass rowing boat is going to fill the bill. Or not.