At the Headwaters

My Boat Blog has moved; please check out:  http://theheadwaters.net/ 

The idea for this project came about with a couple goals in mind: a) for the challenge of rebuilding a boat, b) taking an amazing trip down the Mississippi River, a national treasure that is right out my back door and c) spending time with my father.  But there also have been positive experiences that I hadn’t anticipated, the biggest being the opportunity to spend time with my grandmother at the farm she lives on, where the boat is stored. 

Those are two distinct entities – the farm and my grandmother – but really there is no separating the two.  She’s lived on the spot since 1952, when she married my grandfather, who inherited the farm from his father, and he from his father as well.  My grandfather and grandmother are (or “was” in the case of my grandpa) amazing people that, in the German tradition of their ancestry, humbly worked their whole lives on the family farm, putting everything into it.   When I was younger I had no appreciation for what this meant, but I still grew up admiring and respecting them very much. 

My grandmother is 86 now, and lives alone on the 60 acres, managing the property.  She doesn’t have the cattle anymore; she stopped raising them when she was 81, but there’s still plenty to do — mowing, painting, cleaning gutters on fifteen foot ladders, shoveling sixty feet of sidewalk – and she does it mostly by herself using her 5’2”, 90 pound frame.

It’s not that no one tries to help her, it’s just that she won’t let anyone help.  Tenacious and determined are two of the nicer words that come to mind.  Some prefer stubborn and obstinate.  But I tend to agree with her:  she’s been doing in all her life, why stop now?  With that said, I greatly look forward to times when I get to help her with a project around the farm.  Not because she can’t do it, but because we get to spend time doing it together, learning from each other. 

The other day I was down in the barn working on the boat and I heard a couple blasts from up by the house.  It didn’t phase me for a second, and I didn’t even think about stopping to check it out.  I knew it was my grandmother blasting away with the shotgun at the ill-behaved red squirrel again.  When I went up for lunch later, she told me she’d missed completely.  Then she handed me the gun, an ancient .410, and asked me to help her unload it because she was having trouble.  I was one of those moments that I will cherish forever:  as I showed her the spring mechanism that she hadn’t engaged correctly, she chatted absentmindedly about the history of the gun, and I thought to myself, “how many grandsons get the opportunity to discuss with their grandmothers the finer points of shotguns over the smell of fresh gunpowder?”

The extension of her – the farm – is a family treasure.  Many of the existing buildings are on their original structures, including the original farmhouse, which was built in the 1870’s.  The place has changed since then, but not nearly as much as the lands around it:  I can remember as a child row after row of corn and soybeans on rolling hills that are now dotted with replica monstrosities of split-level houses with three car garages.

Walking among the outbuildings and in the fields on the farm, there is a certain solitude that makes it easy to appreciate the history of the place as well as understand what a true sanctuary it is today.  It was because of this solace of the place that my best friend in the world and I decided to get married here, among family and friends — in the field that my grandparents, great grandparents and great-great grandparents toiled their whole lives in for their families.  It was one of the greatest moments of my life.   

It was 60 degrees today, November 11th — unbelievable.  And I had the day off.  Ah, yes, gotta love the banker’s hours. 

I went to town on the back deck, working seven hours straight; stopping only to change the CD music.  The decking was all ready to go from last spring (see "Chapter 7:  In Which Old Man Winter . . .").  The only prep I had to do was buy a new air stapler because the last one I bought and used three times was already broken.  Cheap tools suck.  But alas, I bought another cheap one.  At least it made it through the day.

I constructed it so the pieces can still be taken out.  I am going to put a pull latch on the middle one for easy access to the gas tank and other engine stuff.  I’m also going to put a drain in this piece so water can get down to the bilge pump instead of standing on the deck.

It turned out decently, not great.  I’ll wait until this spring to stain and varnish it — then it will look real nice.   

Here’s some before-and-afters; I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

and my personal favorite:

leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Now this is progress! It’s excellent to do a job that you can see results on.  We had a very sunny October weekend and really went to town. 

I began with the bottom first — a coat of thick silvery Interlux Primocon, an anti-corrosive primer for under-the-waterline metal.  The stuff is thick, and was even thicker with 50 degree weather, but it went on very nicely with brushes and rollers.  The directions recommended three to four coats; we put on two solid coats.  In the last picture, you can see the unfinished spot where the support block was; we lifted up the boat with a 12 ton hydraulic jack, moved the block(s) and painted away. 

Matt came out again, as well as my dad, and we spent most a very nice fall Saturday putting on a coat of West Marine Sea Gloss Pro primer on the metal topsides.  By the end of the day, we had the entire hull primed, and it looked extremely different. 

The next day, dad and I primed most of the fiberglass cabin, and did the first coat of the underside finish with West Marine Bottom Shield Anti-Fouling Paint.  I know there are those that are against mixing paint brands, but they work together fine, and I’ve got no allegiance to one brand or the other. 

The one thing I did notice, however, is that the West Marine website says "drying max before launch:  60 days" which I didn’t see until after I put the paint on . . . oops.  I contacted West Marine, who passed me on to Pettit, who apparently makes the paint.  The rep told me to either 1) put the second coat on it now and sand it before launch to reactivate the compounds or 2) put the second coat on just before launching the boat.  I’m opting for the second as it seems most logical — and easiest. 

Today (Wednesday) I finished priming the cabin, and then continued with the fun part:  painting the topsides of the hull an excellent navy blue with West Marine Sea Gloss Pro.  The paint is very nice; it bleeds together nicely and soaks up any lines, but doesn’t run too much.  The paint is glossy — notice the picture of me below which shows my reflection in the boat; pretty cool!  It is very sticky but not heavy.  My main disappointment was the $12 brush and $6 roller that I bought directly from West Marine for boat painting — they both sucked.  The brush kept losing bristles and the pieces of the roller came off in the paint! 

I tried a few different methods, but what (surprisingly) worked best for me was using a foam roller, and then going directly over it with a foam brush — these didn’t hold a lot of excess paint and made very few lines (and also didn’t come apart in the paint).  Then one to two minutes later I would go back over it and check for runs.  I was painting in 55-65 degree weather.   

The first coat, and part of a second is done.  If the weather holds up, we can complete the second and put a finish coat on the fiberglass.  It may be pushing it to get the trim lines done . . .

The last two weekends were spent scraping, brushing and sandblasting the steel hull of the boat, an unbelievably nasty job.  Up to this point, the dirtiest job had been removing the rust and scale from the bottom of the inside of the hull.  This was basically the same work, except it was done on the underside of the boat, while we sat or laid below it.  Rust, paint, scale and sand rained down, while, to top it off, we worked in unseasonably warm and humid 85 degree weather.  I hated every second of it.

I did finally get my air compressor back from the shop though, so I actually had the tools to do the job.  Even though it’s a small tank, it worked fairly well; I just attached a gun with a hose on the end that goes in a bag of sandblasting material.  I should have used a filter to remove the water from the hose, as well as a coarser grit sand material, but I could find neither.

About 26 man-hours were spend on this task, and during this time I learned the importance of covering up, as the sand material goes everywhere and anywhere.  Even with goggles on it got in my eyes.  In addition, besides the protective quality of a facemask, I also learned that:

1) it is very hard to sing along to favorite songs with this device on and

2) it is important to consider what you eat before you wear the mask; pancakes with syrup is generally okay while beef stroganoff with pickles is a potential killer.

*****

I had to call my buddy Matt out to change the light bulb up on the inside of the roof of the barn — I don’t do too well with heights; anything over twenty feet and my legs turn to jelly.  Mr. Matt doesn’t seem to have any issue with this (he did it the first time as well), so last Wednesday I lured him out with Doritos and Fleet Farm raspberry gummies. 

After that we blew off, vacuumed, swept and generally cleaned all the excess sand and paint chips off and out of the barn. 

The interior wood work is complete – all but a couple pieces I left open for access to the wiring.  As I’ve written in other posts, I used scrap birch from my friend Peter’s cabinet-making work, and fitted the parts together, making a puzzle piece effect.  It’s not what most folks would do to restore the cabin of a boat, but it is in the spirit of reusing materials, and overall I like how it turned out.  Not to mention I saved a bunch of money. 

For the trim, I used standard quarter inch pine trim from the local big-box hardware store.  Since there are a lot of angles – straight and curved – the trim didn’t go on perfectly or fit like it would have in a normal house, but overall, it really finished it up nicely. 

I used two coats of exterior oil based varnish, figuring that moisture and other elements would be prevalent enough in the cabin that interior varnish wasn’t good enough.  The varnish went on very easily; the only real consideration was making sure we were going with the grain on all the different pieces. 

I broke up with the boat.  It was too needy and high maintenance.  We were together at least two days week after week, and increasingly, I’d been going out on a week night, making it three times a week.  And this still wasn’t enough.

It seems we have made amends, however, after our little break.  I think the problem was time constraints.  Originally, I told myself this was a laid-back affair, and I could work on it whenever, but I think I was a bit too slow on getting things going, and now, after three years, I’m getting a bit antsy.  By nature, I like to get things done in a timely and orderly fashion — maybe it’s the German in me. 

This spring we decided we would get it in the water by fall, so I worked my butt off this summer with that in mind.  We got a lot done, but there were set backs, such as a newly-purchased air compressor that blew an engine after three uses (I still haven’t gotten the replacement from the company — the machines are on an everlasting backorder).  More and more this time-line was looking unattainable, and it definitely looks that way now.  So, I can breath a little now that this been nixed.  We are shooting for spring 2006 now, and the work goes on . . .

Some smaller project that have been happenin’ include installing the exterior walls of the back deck and painting them green (the small window you see pictured is for something to be added later). 

I also installed a gravity-fed water tank and a manually-operated spot light that I got from "Crazy Tim" (see "Chapter 8 . . . the Shocking Truth about Electricity")

The first time I met John, the stranger informed me that he was dying. It wasn’t quite as morose as that, but as he showed me around the boat, he intermingled hull dimensions and engine specifications with details about his failing heart and weary soul, delivered in his slow but steady Kissinger-like enunciation (see “Chapter 1:  In Which an Idea is Born . . .”). At first I was unimpressed by this guy that I thought was looking for anyone as an audience to gripe to, but I soon learned this was a man staring into the face of the inevitable, attempting the impossible task of preparing for death. 

During my few visits with him, our chatting about the boat soon turned to his health, and then inexorably to John instructing me on the necessity of making the most out of life. He was never preachy, but certainly made clear the importance of the topic. Mostly, though I think he was searching his past and convincing himself that he had accomplished what he had wanted to. I never got the sense he had regrets, or was desperate for one last chance, rather, I think he was confronted with the fact that there is no such thing as opportunity, chance, risk or possibility when one ceases to exist.

He inevitably wasn’t able to appreciate the wonder and incomprehensibility of ceasing to exist when he passed away this last winter. Nor can I comprehend his experience. All I know is that, while he is no longer around, he’s left a lasting impression on me that has altered my life’s path in ways beyond measure.

The time came to take another crack at the windshield.  The plan, if you’ll remember, was to use Lexan, but polycarbonate is just too expensive, and I didn’t feel like hauling a 2 ft x 10 ft piece across town, so we went a different route:  We removed the cracked windshield, cut it down to an 8 ft piece, and re-installed it.  For the corners, I picked up a couple pieces of galvanized steel, cut them to fit the bends and screwed them in.  We riveted aluminum channeling onto the steel pieces for the windshield to fit into.  So it’s not real pretty, but it looks decent . . . but more importantly, the windshield is done. 

It is quite satisfying, actually:  not only was this a never-ending and painful task, but it is one of the main reasons the boat was originally pulled out of the water years ago in the first place.