Boating — Routine maintenance
The Florida climate is harsh? If you’re from Michigan you will take exception to that statement. But, if you are a boater from Michigan, you’ll understand. It’s hard to estimate which part of this climate is the worse here. Humidity, heat and the sun all take their toll but I’d vote humidity as the worst boat destroyer.
When you own a boat in Florida and don’t have unlimited resources, you had better enjoy working on your boat. Now most Saturdays and a lot of Sundays are spent working on boats but we stay tied to the dock.
“The weekends are for amateurs,” stated retired Philly Mike as he worked on his boat lift. A small crowd of ‘Dead Enders’ watched from near and far. Boston Bob had his mainsail raised across the canal but he still had time for a little advice. “What do you know about boat lifts? You could never get that slug of a boat on a lift.”
“Hey Mike can I borrow a cup of diesel? I want to go to Key West next week,” answered ‘Boston Bob’ who had his own audience of blow-boaters. ‘Boston Bob’ had been accusing Philly Mike of having electrical current coming off his boat lift and was happy that it was being rewired.
Stray electricity in the water is very harmful to metal parts of boats. That’s why all boats use sacrificial anodes to absorb (kind of) the current. The ‘zincs’ are usually good for six to nine months. If they disappear quickly it is usually stray electricity inside or outside the boat.
At the last formal meeting of “The Dead End Canal Yacht Club” Boston Bob read into the record the story of two young boys who were electrocuted by a badly wired boat lift. Mike got the message and with the help of a real electrician was fixing the lift.
‘Boston Bob’ was working on his lazy jacks. Sort of a spider web that catches the lowered mainsail into it’s web and holds it on top of the boom when not in use. With an easy pull of a couple of lines the mainsail is secured. This is a cruiser’s good friend. ‘Boston Bob’ has a huge main and it looked gigantic in it’s full upright magnificence while the boat sat tied to the dock. Unintelligent nautical terms wafted up and down the canal as the blow-boaters shouted instruction to each other.
‘Geez, he’s got his boy hanging from the top of the mast in some kind of chair,” said Cap’n Crunch. “That’s why I could never be a blow-boater. I love my family too much to put them on a trapeze!”
The sound of an outboard motor sputtering could be heard from down the canal. ‘Philly Mike’ lost his kibitzers to ‘Y-town’ Denny’s’ motor problem. One of his twin outboards had a bad miss and all the mechanics who had tested the motor warned him that an expensive repair was in his future. “What’ ya doin’,” asked Kentucky Bob.
“I found a used part and I’m trying it out to see if it’ll get me twenty five or thirty more hours before I have to bite the big bullet,” replied ‘Y-town.’
“Big waste of time,” said Bob Cook the former Compass Rose Marina yard manager and an honorary member of our yacht club, “it might fail in the first half hour.” Odds were very good Bob was right but ‘Y-town’s’ deep pockets were much shallower these days. His 2001 twenty eight foot Boston Whaler had been rode hard and put away wet one to many times.
Bob Cook is a fountain of knowledge about outboards and nearly everything else. It is up to the boat owner to keep his neighbors away from him while he’s working because everyone has just one more question.
As I looked up and down the canal I was reminded of a great quote in literature, “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing-absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.” The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame.
That’s how boating is. Busy but not doing much. Enjoyable even on a bright Saturday afternoon tied to the dock on the canal. Kibitzing, joking, doing a little work and having fun.
boatguy Ed is a member of the “Dead End Canal Yacht Club.” For information on ‘Super Shipbottom’ paint and putting vim and vigor back into your ship call 466-5670 and find out how.