Bill Pike's Blog

The Fix!

bill_pike — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:04:00 GMT

Okay. So this looks pretty simple, right? You simply cut the old, broken piece of teak out (see the ol' clunker shown above as well as the pix in the previous post: Uh-Oh!) and then scarf in a replacement piece, secure it to the underlying metal supports with bolts, countersink the heads of the bolts in the fresh teak, then plug the countersinks with teak bungs and wait for the weather to turn everything silver gray and uniform.

Wrong!

The preceding bunch of verbiage would make a lot of sense if it was actually possible to put a bit of a bend into a 1 1/2-inch X 3/4-inch teak plank that happens to be only about five foot long. But since such a piece of plank is so short as to be virtually unbendable, you have to go another route, employing an old-time wooden boatbuilding technique called spiling to accomplish a fix.

How does spiling work? Hmmmmmm, there are various ways of doing it, but let me try for a brief explanation of how the technique was used to cut the piece of teak shown above to perfectly replicate the original plank, bend and all. I'm going to toss in a crude drawing (I did it myself) that may help:

The first thing you do is fit a piece of scrap board (pine works well) underneath the missing section of plank (with both ends cut diagonally with a coping saw to prepare for a couple of scarf joints) and secure it as shown in the drawing with temporary clamps. Make sure the piece of scrap pine or whatever is reasonably flat, without a trace of warp.

The next step is the critical one. Use a woodworking compass (something like navigational dividers, but with a pencil on one end) to replicate the curve of one of the inner planks on the scrap planking, arcing across from one diagonal cut to the other. The key here is to make sure you keep the compass at right angles to the inner plank as you go along, thus drawing a curved line on the scrap that connects the two diagonal cuts and accurately parallels the inner plank you've chosen to work with.

The penultimate step entails marking the ends of the replacement piece you've drawn. Once you've done that, you remove the clamps and either transfer your scrap drawing to an appropriate slab of teak and cut out the finished piece or else cut the drawing from the scrap with a band or reciprocating saw and use what results as a template to cut the final version.

In either case, the job's remainder is comparatively straightforward. After doing a dry fit to make sure all is well, you simply secure the scarf joints at the ends of the teak replacement piece with epoxy, and bolt and bung the thing to the supports underneath.

About the only thing I've got left to do on this whole deal is mix some fine teak saw dust with epoxy and use it to fill and fair the older planks around the repair--I've decided to remove both brackets for my Weaver davits to obviate any problems in the future.

Uh-Oh!

bill_pike — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:44:00 GMT

You know...just about the time you figure all is well, something comes along that upsets the apple cart. Last Sunday my wife BJ and I paid a visit to Betty Jane just to make sure she was alright. Because of the abnormally cold weather in Florida this winter we haven't done much day tripping of late and our time aboard, at least for the past couple of months, has consisted basically of checking to make sure Betty's main engine hasn't frozen up solid, her water system isn't generating ice cubes, and her lines and other peripherals are chuggin' along okay.

So what happened here? The way I figure it, during an extraordinarily high tide during the preceding week (North Florida tends to have radically high/low tides during the winter months) one of Betty's criss-crossed stern lines got hung up under one of the Weaver davit brackets on her swim platform. As the tide went out, the line remained in place under the bracket, eventually pulling it up and away, along with a sizable chunk of one of the planks of the swim platform.

This particular plank section was slightly broken at the time my wife and I purchased Betty in Maryland, by the way, perhaps due to a crunchy encounter with a Chesapeake Bay piling. So the tragic little uproar shown above had historical antecedents.

At any rate, while I removed the Weaver bracket with ease thanks to the corrosion-resistance of high-grade stainless-steel bolts and nuts, the remainder of the plank was another story. Because the bronze (or brass...I'm not sure which) bolt fastening the plank section to the support underneath was seriously melded with a counter-sunk nut under a teak bung (thanks to effects of mucho saltwater), I had to twist and break the bolt off using a couple of pairs of trusty Vice Grips.

The fix turned out to be a little more complicated than I'd originally hoped for. For starters, I'd thought to simply 'squish,' as my wife and friends from neighboring boats suggested, the broken plank section back into place, add some epoxy to the equation to unitize the whole, and after the whole shebang had cured, smooth it out with an electric sander to achieve a reasonable aesthetic.

I should have known! After I'd attempted to put everything back together with slow-curing epoxy, the job simply did not even come close to my (some would perhaps say) rather perfectionist standards concerning boat repair. Indeed, while the job may have looked vaguely like a silk purse to a dairy farmer (not to be overly critical of the folks I used to milk cows with as a lad) it nevertheless bore the aroma of a sow's ear to me (not to be overly critical of the porcine race I used to feed and care for as a lad) and would never have been satisfactory long-term.

"I don't have time to fix this thing the way it really needs to be fixed," I noted, after ripping out the squished-epoxy extravaganza I'd managed to create before it cured. "But I bet my boat-carpenter friend Steve Mattke does."

Last I knew, Steve was pretty well along with the project and I can hardly wait to see the results. Yeah, scarfing in a new section of teak plank will cost my wife and I a couple of hundred dollars, most likely, but the job will finally effect a repair that's been hanging fire now for almost five years. And most likely, the whole thing'll look better than ever!

And incidentally...someone at the recent Miami Boat Show told me about a plate assembly now made by Weaver that lets you remove its problematic spring-loaded mechanism (and stow it some place safe) until you actually are going to use it. I'm gonna checkidout!

Just A Tad More ZF-inspired boathandling

bill_pike — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:10:00 GMT

Anyone who reads the stuff I write will eventually see that I'm a little tetched on the subject of boathandling and slow-mo maneuvering. There are a couple of reasons. First, boathandling's very important--unless you can easily and safely extract your boat from various marinas and docking situations and then return her to either the same or another marina or docking situation with the same relative level of ease and safety, you can't really enjoy all the other aspects of cruising, fishing, or whatever else you want to do. And second, I love boathandling and slo-mo cruising, even though it's taken me years to learn how to do it and cost me more than a few scrapes, dings, and bouts of anxiety.

The picture above was taken from the flybridge of a boat I recently tested out of Miami--the Bertram 511. I snapped the photo while we toodled along the Miami River, a fairly narrow, scenic (it's loaded with boats, tugs, and island-hopping ships), and somewhat congested stretch of water that separates Bertram's manufacturing facility from sea-trial city, otherwise known as the Atlantic Ocean.

At any rate, while navigating the Miami River I was able to get pleasantly familiar with an onboard feature provided by the folks at ZF--it's called Autotroll. Yeah sure, there are numerous engine-control systems available on boats these days, but this one struck me as being particularly nifty, principally because it's so darn simple. Quite frankly, I've played with several other systems over the past few years and none of them seemed so self-explanatory and ergonomically comfy. Check it out:

The only evidence of Autotroll shown above is the small, squarish panel to the right of the steering wheel and mounted flat on the dashboard. Give this baby a couple of dabs with a forefinger and you're immediately in Autotroll, a mode of operation that precisely--and the key word here is precisely--controls the amount of slo-mo propeller power you put into the water. Lemme give you a close-up of the panel below:

The way this thing actually works is what I like most about it. Once Autotroll is engaged, you simply adjust your engine-control levers while gauging the result by monitoring a vertical series of annunciator lights on the sides of the squarish panel, in much the same way that you monitor trim tab deployment via a dashboard control panel. Fine-tuning operating speed in the slo-mo realm's never been easier. And, as I mention in the sea-trial report on the Bertram 511 (we're talking the March issue of PMY, I believe), it beats the livin' daylights out of clunkily clutching first one engine into gear, then the other, in hopes of maintaining steady progress along a restricted waterway without disturbing other vessels, particularly those tied ashore, with a sumptuous wake.

But hey, the frosting on the cake is this. Should you need to stop in a hurry (I remember having to do so once on an especially terrifying evening when, as chance would have it, I caught vague sight of an unlighted vessel smack dab in the middle of a narrow channel that had remained fairly obscure on my radar, due to clutter from nearby buildings), you simply pull your engine-control levers into reverse and get full power automatically. Cool!

One More Preview Of Coming Attractions

bill_pike — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:21:00 GMT

Okay, so now it's official. Betty Jane's new flybridge cushions will appear in the Upgrade section of Power & Motoryacht's March issue. At the present moment, the folks at Jones Upholstery, a local place that does both marine, residential, and commercial upholstery repairs and replacements, is most likely finishing off the project and tomorrow (Saturday) I hope to toodle on over to the marina in my Prius (redolent with the smell of fresh high-grade, heavy-duty marine vinyl) to try the cushions on for size, fit, and aesthetics. Exciting? Oh yeah!

If anything, the pricing of the whole deal was more surprising than anything else. While I'd expected to pay a thousand dollars or more, six brand-new cushions from Jones only cost me about $600, a sum I couldn't quite believe until I'd checked with other shops in Florida that proposed similar bottom lines. Gives me hope, actually. At some point, I'm planning to replace the fabric coverings on Betty's interior cushions and, from what I can tell (based on the cost of the exterior cushion replacement job), the blessings of affordability may waft down upon me in the next couple of years, not the next couple of decades.

The machine the Jones guy (shown above) is using is German, by the way, and very old. According to Randy Jones, Jones head honcho, such machines are rare these days and quite valuable. They offer higher levels of control and precision.

One other important thing I learned from Randy goes as follows. For some reason or other, I've been under the impression for years that marine-vinyl welting (a raised tubular-type edging on cushions and other upholstered articles) is a separately manufactured product that's typically marketed and sold to upholsterery shops for incorporation into new cushions and other products. While this is indeed the case with some upholsterers and manufacturers, Jones and others refuse to use pre-manufactured welting, choosing instead to make their own (as is illustrated in the photo below) on site.

Why?

"First of all: color," says Jones. "If you buy welting already made up it's quite likely that the color you get will not match the marine vinyl material you are using to make your cushions."

Then there's one other consideration--quality. According to Jones, if a shop creates its own welting using high-quality marine vinyl and UV-rated thread from an outfit like Glen Raven Mills (the folks who make Sunbrella canvas products), the shop knows what it's got in the end--a solid product that will nicely accentuate and strengthen a new cushion for many years into the future. Go with pre-fab welting, Jones adds, and while the job may look decent initially and save a customer a few bucks, the end product is likely to look like a silk purse trimmed with a sow's ear as time wears inevitably on.

Merry Christmas From Betty Jane

bill_pike — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:36:00 GMT

Ho, ho, ho. And just in case you think the above photo was taken during a stint of hotsy-totsy Florida weather, let me state right here and now that the mercury at the time I snapped this snap was pushing a paltry 40 degrees and the wind was blowing 20 knots and gusting higher. Sure, such conditions are not especially noteworthy to the snowmobilers of Big Piney, Wyoming or the folks shoveling snow in Lake Traverse, Ontario. But hey, they certainly knock the wool socks off us Florida Panhandlers, although weather's not the point of this entry, to be truthful...I've got something else up my sleeve.

Betty Jane's a beaut, ain't she? I mean, with the wreath and all? And she's about to become even more beautiful, thanks to yet another boat improvement project I've got in the works.

Now, some of my friends and associates think I'm a little obsessive about this sort of thing. They contend, for example, that there are few, if any, other boat lovers kickin' around the docks these days who will clean and refurbish an antiquated fiberglass holding tank with as much devotion, care, thoroughness, and poetic reverence as yours truly. And lemme tell ya, once I'd prized off the fitting on top of the tank (with the corroded pickup tube hangin' down) I was absolutely flabbergasted to discover...

But then again, let's just skip the intricate details of that particular extravaganza in observance of the warm, cheery, turkey-dinner-laden spirit of the holidays and get on with exactly and precisely how Betty's gonna become even more beautiful than she is in the near future.

The story starts just a week ago when my wife (and Chancellor of the Exchequer) B.J., declared that, as a Christmas present, she was willing to turn loose of a significant sum that could be used to upgrade the exterior vinyl cushions that have been mouldering away on Betty's flying bridge since shortly after Captain Cook sailed into Sydney Harbor.

B.J., I am guessing, was responding to my application of steady pressure concerning the subject of new cushions for literally months now. That's how you get new stuff for your boat, you know. Steady, gentle, long-term pressure upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer!!!!!!!!! It's easy. A poignant comment here. A bit of sad reflection there. While eyeballing the part or area of the vessel that requires replacement or upgrading. And again, of course, that steady, glacial, inevitable,juggernaut-like psychological pressure.

Should I do a separate blog entry or column on the Machiavellian aspects of boat ownership, I wonder? Or have I done so already? Hmmmmmmmm?

Anyway, Jones Upholstery is working on the job right now. And I will report on how everything turns out--what the whole deal ultimately costs me, the vinyl I chose, why I picked the particular shop I did, etc.--in the Upgrade section of the March issue of Power & Motoryacht.

You can tell Betty's fairly excited about the prospect of brand-new cushions, I think. Check out the photo again. I swear, boats are just like people: love 'em and they'll love you back!

Happy Holidays!

Freedom Of Expression

bill_pike — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:31:00 GMT

There's a certain freedom about boats and the boating life. Or maybe it's better to say there are certain freedoms. After all, the ability to just up anchor and go lots of places that land lubbers can't is one type of freedom. But there are others as well.

Take, for example, freedom of expression. Now first off, I am not talking about being able to vociferously express an opinion about something in public. That freedom's available to boaters and non-boaters alike, at least within reason.

Nope. What I am talking about is the freedom to express yourself sartorially, or in my wife BJ's parlance, to "dress like Kurt Cobain" when onboard or wandering around your marina or adjoining properties.

Boats and marinas are wonderful places to dally with excitingly ghastly sartorial possibilities. Since I was a kid I've loved the grunge look, popularized I believe by Neil Young back in the day, but by me well before Neil went searching for his heart of gold.

So anyway, having perused the photo above, I'm guessing that you've already glommed on to my personal penchant for dressing down when onboard, particularly while washing down. And just in case you haven't noticed and thoroughly appreciated the various components of this anti-fashionable ensemble, let me list just a couple, with accompanying and related snippets of praise:

1. The blue jeans are about shot, according to my wife. You can't see the holes and rips in this photo but they are there, trust me. They provide ventilation, of course, and a certain casual cool, at least for spectators who are hard-core grungers. (Note how the bottoms are rolled up into nifty cuffs? Adds a salty touch and keeps cuffs from getting all wet and sudsy.)

2. The shoes are self-draining. They have more holes than the blue jeans, but only for practical reasons. Self-draining shoes are good for washing down warm or semi-warm weather. They are not especially good for cold weather or muddy conditions, neither of which predominate on boats.

3. And finally, the two shirts. The tee (which is underneath) is all about zesty and admirable youth, at least in my opinion, and the exterior Patagonia long-sleever (which is reportedly composed of recycled products) lends an aura of environmental correctness to the wash-down endeavor, besides a sort of flair or panache that, like most good poetry, is hard to define but easy to appreciate.

One final note. Most of the above stuff is old. It has to be, for two reasons. First, old means you are totally free of problems arising from grease and oil stains and paint globs while onboard. When stuff gets too grungy, you just toss it overboard. Bury it at sea.

And second, old means you are totally free of concerns like: Hmmmmm, do passersby think I am some sort of maritime dilletante trying to look like I know what I am doing with this deck brush and bucket?

Try washing down with Ralph Lauren shorts and a Guy Harvey shirt and somebody's gonna think you're a wet-behind-the-gills newbie. But dress like a hobo and they'll know you belong, and have belonged for a long time. At least that's how I see it.

An Experiment Begins

bill_pike — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:18:00 GMT

Well, the thing just arrived on a FedEx truck. Wrapped up in a big cardboard box. So, as you can see, I took it out of the box and placed it atop the desk in my office. It's a little larger than I'd anticipated but what the heck.

What is it?

A few months ago, I wrote a story in PMY (October 2009) about an up-and-comer called Nautic Air and the air-filtering products the company uses to improve air quality on yachts. The piece was well received, as far as I could tell. But, during a subsequent boat show, a couple of my magazine-writing colleagues suggested that I hadn't known what I was talking about. Nautic Air products, they contended, were problematic. They cited stuff they'd read on the World Wide Web to back their claims up.

I told them I'd read the same stuff, that it didn't really pertain to the products being manufactured by Nautic Air, and that Nautic Air was gaining access not only to yachts, but to hospitals, and homes across the land. Nautic Air's technology was better than the gloomy products they'd read about.

Nobody seemed impressed.

So?

At my behest, just a few days ago, Heath Schuman, founder of Nautic Air, shipped me a new Nautic Air Na 20 unit to test drive in my home and on my trawler Betty Jane over the next couple of months. I have it fired up and gently circulating air at this very moment, as a matter of fact. Planning to bring it along this weekend, too--for a two-day stint on Betty.

Using photo catalytic oxidation, or more technically the reaction between UV light and a very high grade of the catalyst titanium-dioxide, The Na 20 is supposed to generate a level of air quality that's so improved as to be easily noticeable. Quite frankly, I've had a minor sinus problem for months, most likely do to some allergy or other. We'll see what happens.

The Virtues of Basket Weaving

bill_pike — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:59:00 GMT

There's a reason why basket-weaving is (or at least used to be) a popular endeavor at the Puzzle Factory. It engenders in the weaver, after a certain amount of recuperative time has elapsed (said amount of recuperative time wholly dependent upon the state of mind of the weaver, of course), a sort of trance wherein warm waves of relaxation wash over hurts (real and imagined), worries (real or imagined), concerns (real or imagined), strokes of genius (real or imagined), and most other forms of craziness (real or imagined). It's cool.

When I weave baskets I like to do it with a sort of nautical flair. And one of the best baskets I've done lately (I should say figurative baskets, perhaps) came together onboard my cherished trawler Betty Jane just a week or so ago. With her canvas weather cloths recently cleaned and resewn by a local canvas shop, I set to work (with 3/16-inch stretch-resistant, Stay-Set double-braid rope) lacing the cloths back onto the stainless-steel rails that encompass the flying bridge.

Initially, the job seemed onerous. But after a while, and especially after I'd discovered I could do the lacing while comfortably seated in a deck chair, a sweet melifluousness settled in. Heck, I even began whistling a little tune. I think it was something the Rolling Stones were famous for, or maybe it was the theme from The Sound of Music. Who knows.

A national debt said to be somewhat north of $12 Trillion? A couple of iffy wars draining the treasury and psyche of the country? Congress deadlocked?

Eh! Somehow it all began to seem rather unimportant to me and Betty, at least for a while.

Why The Heck Didn't I Think Of This

bill_pike — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:31:00 GMT

Okay. Here's another one from IBEX...a grrrreattttttt one. And my colleagues and I on the judging panel gave it an innovation award, too, mostly because it adds safety to a boat without adding a whole lot of extra cost and also because it obviously has developed from, in not just my opinion, a veritable stroke of genius.

The idea's pretty simple really. Groco, the outfit that's been around for years selling valves, sea strainers, sea cocks, MSDs and a host of related products, is offering a series of bronze monitors with paddlewheels (similar to those on boat speedos) installed inside. A monitor can be te-ed into any inlet waterline (downstream of the strainer typically) that feeds sea water to a temperature- and/or flow-sensitive piece of machinery, like a main engine or engines, a generator, an air-conditioner, or a cold-plate refrigeration unit.

Shortly after installation of however many monitors seem necessary, a black-box computer that's part of the system calibrates normal water flow through each monitor and makes an electronic record of it. Should the flow in any given monitor drop below normal once calibration is complete, the black-box computer sends a signal to a dashboard panel that produces both an audible and a visual (light) warning for the operator. The paddlewheels themselves can be cleared by pulling a lock-in plug from the bronze tee fitting, after closing the related sea ***, of course. And the paddlewheel can be removed entirely in the event it should become obstructive in an emergency.

Why is all this so darn groovy? Well, now and again, especially when Mr. Murphy is in a real zero-tolerance mood, a main engine or a genset will catastrophically overheat well before the full extent of the catastrophe has materialized on the dashboard gauges. Hey, it happens! A gizmo that signals a decrease in inlet cooling water well before the water even gets to the engine, on the other hand, is likely to give boat owners much timelier warnings than they are going to get from their engine gauges. Moreover, air-conditioners and refrigerator units seldom, if ever, have gauges that signal a water-flow problem. So being able to carefully monitor the water flow coming out of their related sea strainers is going to save somebody some moolah somewhere along the line. Probably big moolah!

But how does the main-engine monitor take into account all rpm settings, you may ask. The thing is simply interfaced with a tachometer (either bridge-mounted or engine-mounted) and then calibrated via the black box for an extensive variety of throttle settings, thus allowing the monitor to pick up on trouble no matter how fast or slow the boat is going.

Groco's calling the new system the SSA (Strainer Service Advice) and offering bronze paddlewheel-equipped fittings in hose sizes that range from 3/4 inch to 6 inches. A black-box computer, a dashboard panel customized for the number of monitors an owner requires, and an ample amount of wiring harness completes the package. I am not absolutely sure SSA is actually on the market yet but will find out within a day or so from Groco. I'll include pricing as well if I get it. And some drawings and pictures.

Flea-P-S (Unfortunately, Not Ready For IBEX Quite Yet)

bill_pike — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:48:00 GMT

I've just returned from the IBEX Show in Miami, where new products to the marine scene are showcased. While there as an Innovation Awards Judge, I came across several innovative gizmos that are likely to make our lives as boat people safer, easier, or simply more fun in the future. They were all great, of course, and I may brag on them a little in upcoming posts.

When I got back home, however, I discovered something maybe even a tad greater--a rather bulky and mysterious package that had been dropped upon my front door step, courtesy of the U.S. Mails. I LOVE mysterious packages. And when I opened mine it contained an unusual product that is most assuredly not ready for IBEX next year. But on the other hand, I continue to be so intrigued with the darn thing that I feel compelled to share it with the entire blog-O-sphere.

Called the Flea-P-S by its inventor (and I don't think he'll mind if I use his name here) Don Grant, it utilizes a technology Grant says the Vikings employed to get to American long before Columbus had even begun toying with the concept. But before we go any further into this fascinating technology of the Nordskis, let me give you a photo of an entirely critical component, in fact THE most critical component of the Flea-P-S: The flea...and, more to the point, the source of the flea:

A word of caution here. That's Pymander right up there, a cat who calls my home his own. Do I mean to imply that Py has fleas here. Certainly not. I am simply using him, or rather his photo, as an illustration of the type of source we are talking about or, to be more precise, that Grant is talking about. Dogs will work as well as cats for getting fleas, by the way, and, let's face it, even an especially scruffy crew member may fill the bill in a pinch.

Now to Grant's thesis. Apparently, says Grant, the Vikings were able to navigate sucessfully across oceans way back before anyone else primarily because they'd discovered one important thing--fleas jump or crawl in a northerly direction when given half a chance. He says he heard this bit of navigationally valuable information while listening to National Public Radio, he adds, so, for my money, it's true beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Anyway, Grant's come up with a device (which he kindly mailed off to me knowing, somehow, that I would be one of the few people in the world who would properly appreciate it) that is purest genius in its savvy simplicity. It consists of little more than a square board with N, S, E, and W marked on it--you can forget about boxing this particular compass O Navigation Afficianados (but then again, why do you need to be THAT accurate with degrees and all if you're only trying to hit a whole continent)--with a recess in the center (presumably a habitable spot for an individual flea or even a family) covered by a walnut shell (or rather half a walnut shell) attatched to the board by a long piece of string. Let me give you another picture here for the sake of illustration:

Using the Flea-P-S is actually quite simple, as you'd imagine. Grant's directions go pretty much as follows:

1. Place Flea-P-S on flat surface near your helm station--I put mine on the kitchen table since I was a little worried about spreading fleas around my wondrous Grand Banks 32 Sedan trawler Betty Jane.

2. Place flea in recess in center of device--I am still looking for a flea and am contemplating discontinuing Py's Frontline treatments (for flea eradication) at least for a while, just as an experiment. I live to serve...indeed I do.

3. Place cover (walnut half) over flea and count to ten either out loud or to yourself or with boat mates in unison, Viking style--I counted aloud Viking style, in fact very aloud, in an attempt to make up for the absence of a flea and because I have blonde hair. Is blonde spelled with an e at the end?

4. Quickly remove cap and note the way the flea crawls or jumps--I removed the cap and nothing happened.

5. Turn Flea-P-S in direction of jump or crawl (N stands for North)--this didn't go real well either.

6. You will now know your compass heading--I didn't but I was standing in my kitchen afterall and really didn't give a darn.

So finally, let me give you one more picture (with the walnut half removed so the flea can jump or crawl) to solidify your understanding of what this whole thing is about. Most likely, you will not see the flea jumping or crawling but that is because I could not flnd a flea on Py. Should I be able to cultivate some livestock on him over the next few weeks I will do an update with some better data. In the meantime, however, I am guessing these photos will help you build your own Flea-P-S should you want to check out all this Viking stuff for yourself. Enjoy!

Bump Speed

bill_pike — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:39:00 GMT

Lots of people tend to run fairly fast in marinas, I guess because their sense of optimism overwhelms their grasp of reality. More than a few times I've seen various vessels, from ships to runabouts, tangle with docks and/or other boats in tight spots because of too much speed combined with the unexpected obtrusion of a mechanical difficulty. Say, something like a stuck throttle, a gear jammed in the forward mode, or some other lusty trick of fate.

I've owned and worked on a whole bunch of boats during my life, some recreational and some commercial. But I've always entered marinas, shipyards, and other such places the same way--slow. Basically, this is because I believe that it is much easier to add motive power to a moving vessel than it is to subtract motive power. Inertia being the culprit, of course.

At any rate, here's how I enter my marina aboard the Betty Jane. Upon nearing the entrance (see photo above), all things being equal, I slow down by shifting into neutral, a move that allows the boat to almost drift to a stop. Then I shift back into idle-ahead while transiting much of the marina, although I might occasionally shift back into neutral again at corners or if there's a lot of traffic around. The key to this part of the plan is to simply keep moving at a steady, reasonable rate. After all, you and your crew want to get to the dock sometime!

Now for the second half of my nifty little method. Once I get into the fairway that intersects my slip, or sometimes even before, I pull Betty out of gear and let her coast again, in order to take virtually all way off. Then, to keep the ol' girl creeping along, I simply bump her gear shift into idle ahead briefly...just for a second or two. Then I pull 'er out. And I continue to bump the shift ahead/out every minute or so (see the photo above) to keep just a little, highly manageable forward momentum going. Bump. Bump. Bump. And remember...dead-idle's the deal. Keep the throttle pulled back all the way!

Once I get to my slip, I try to virtually stop the boat (usually by shifting into reverse momentarily) before making my swing to back down. Betty, like most vessels, is easier to rotate or turn when's she stopped. Otherwise, she's both going ahead (or astern or sideways or whatever) and turning at the same time, a complex lashup of anxiety-producing vectors, particularly when the going-ahead component gets out of hand.

Frankly, I can't think of anything better for safely transiting seriously restricted waters than bump speed. I've used it on oil-field boats, tug boats, trawlers, cruisers, outboard skiffs...you name it. The technique works as nicely for twin engine vessels as it does for singles, by the way. Often, what works best with twins is an alteration of the bump gear, first port, then starboard, or visa versa. You can often even steer with your alternate port and starboard bumps while keeping your wheel centered.

Kroil?

bill_pike — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:58:00 GMT

A couple of summers ago I had to discombobulate Betty Jane's antique steering system so I could install a new Simrad autopilot. Unfortunately, there were several tight-fitting stainless-steel and bronze components of the system that were so corroded together it seemed virtually impossible to get them apart.

I am not easily deterred, however. And I tried (singly and then in unison): WD 40, several brands of penetrating oil (including the much-touted PB Blaster), a gear puller or two, a propane torch, and various mallets and ball-peen hammers, both with rags (to protect bronze surfaces) and without. Nothing worked--I mean nada!

When in doubt call up a relative, right? I called my brother--the industrial-strength industrial electrician who lives in Northern New York State--and he suggested a product called Aero Kroil. He said that he had used it many times on big machinery and that it had never failed. If there was any substance on the planet Earth that would help me get Betty's steering system apart, he added, it was Kroil!

So I bought a can at a machine shop for something like $15, as I remember. And I sprayed it into the interstices between the parts and waited a minute or so (per the instructions on the can) and presto! "The oil that creeps" crept. And with a little (and I mean a very little) help from a mallet, the components slid smoothly apart and I was able to get on with my project.

Kroil? The stuff's magic!

Cane Garden Bay

bill_pike — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:03:00 GMT

So I recently shot this not-so-artistic photo while cruising in the British Virgin Islands for a story for PMY's December issue. And while some of the events of the trip went well beyond (and were perhaps even darker than) mere cruising, the sun and the palm trees shown here nevertheless declaim a certain steadfast joy.

My wife BJ and I connected with the trees while entering Cane Garden Bay (on the north coast of Tortola) onboard a 47-foot Moorings power cat. Even as I sighted my way through the reef, the ground swell (originating Lord knows how many thousands of miles to the north) seemed just a little too hefty for comfort but I kept on easing slowly ahead, mostly because some friends of ours had told us once that we simply had to see the place, no matter what. The swell stayed hefty all night unfortunately, but there was a plus side to the constant skewering and heaving.

It's called beauty, I'd guess...or maybe poetry. See, Cane Garden Bay in September is virtually deserted due to the threat of hurricanes. But on Sunday evenings sometimes, if there are no hurricanes or threats of hurricanes, after all the little kids and families have left the beach, a couple of restaurants may stay open under the tall wavy trees. And they often offer excellent reggae bands. And the bands play good, solid, home-made reggae music.

And it drifted out to us that night from one of those restaurants on a wood-smoke-flavored breeze. Along with the laughter of a few inspired customers who continued to sit around listening, chary of going home even though it was late. And over our heads there were stars, billions of stars, all visibile thanks to the welcome absence of civilized light. And there was the Milky Way as well, arching across the unfathomable dome of the sky.

The softness and philosophical quietude of it all was reassuring, I suppose, given the near-infinite sadness we'd bumped strangely into the day before.

My Buddy Charlie

bill_pike — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:31:00 GMT

Over the years, my trawler Betty Jane has hosted any number of friends with storied pasts. And just this weekend another came aboard--my buddy Charlie. And off we went to explore an in-no-wise-charted spot on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico called Crooked Island. I'd never been there before. Certainly Charlie'd never been there before either. And, as luck would have it, Bill and Didi, my friends off the Viking in the the slip adjoining Betty's, were willing to give us a little rundown on how to get through the narrow pass.

Precisely because the lagoon at Crooked Island is so pretty I am not showing a picture of placed here. You gotta draw the line sometimes in order to protect your home waters from tourists. And getting in there didn't prove too difficult, although coming out got a tad problematic due to a totally air-headed thing I did.

While plugging along in water that was too shallow for Betty's own good I bumped the bottom, albeit gently. And I did this, believe it or not, without paying even the slightest bit of attention to the perfectly wonderful track on my Garmin GPS I'd established while entering the lagoon.

Anyway, here's a picture of Charlie (who spent many of his younger days working on shrimp boats in the Gulf...note the shark tatoo on the right shoulder) so you'll have his profile in mind while I muddle onward here:

So after my bumptious bump-bump episode, I got to thinking about why a smart guy like me, with seafaring credentials and experience up the ying-yang, would keep on keepin' on in dicey lookin' water, even as his depthsounder begins to pop scary numbers and his friend gets a little antsy. I mean, was I trying to save time? Was I trying to save fuel? Was I trying to do anything in particular? Was I even thinking?

Hmmmmmm...not really.

So I cogitated upon all this dreary stuff for quite some while as we wended our way back to Panama City that evening, Charlie and I. And here's the only thing that tends to make sense about the whole deal. Charlie put his finger on it while he was talkin' about returning to port on a fantastically slow, fully-loaded shrimp boat, with the delights of civilization hanging on the far-distant misty horizon, seemingly unreachable and tantalizing as hell.

"Maybe you were just in a hurry to get home, Bill," he laughed.

A Rant Concerning Multi-Tasking

bill_pike — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:29:00 GMT

Many years ago, on a dark and stormy night, I was running an oilfield boat of some description west-bound through a rather hairy stretch of the southern segment of the ICW. The stretch was either in or near Houma, Louisiana or New Orleans, I think, although I disremember which. Anyway, I was chuggin' along, approaching a bottlenecky curve, when here comes a big, east-bound towboat pushing umpteen barges at a pretty good clip. Nothing unusual here, of course.

But what soon got my undivided, totally-flabbergasted attention was this. After the umpteen barges had passed me by, along came the tug's wheelhouse, which was on a par with my own wheelhouse elevation-wise. And, by George, it was lit up like somebody's living room, with a TV set on the steering console, and Perry Mason playing on the TV in living black-and-white. Moreover, the skipper was kicked back in his helm seat, manipulating one of the steering sticks with his foot, and gabbin' on the VHF while watching Perry go after the bad guys. Whaaaaaaaaa! The scene was so dang incongruous that I had to swing around in my own helm chair and take another look just to prove to myself that my eyes hadn't played a trick on me.

The enormity of it all began to sink in shortly. Here was a big pushboat, a fair-sized tow, operating in poor visibility due to rain and wisps of fog, with lots of traffic going both east and west and a narrow channel to contend with. And this joker was watching TV and blabbing on his radio while supposedly navigating at the same time. One of the original, or near original, multi-taskers!

Why bring up such a gloomy piece of reminiscence here?

Believe it or not, just about a month ago, I came across a TV-set-equipped helm station on a big strapping cruiser I was sea trialing for a boat test feature. And, upon seeing the darn thing for the first time, I was, of course, constrained to do a double-take very much like the one I did long ago, while looking at the TV-watching skipper back in Louisiana. Check it out for yourself:

Now don't get me wrong. The vessel's helm station was great otherwise, with a logical easy-to-read layout and excellent visibility everywhere, even astern thanks to clear sightlines through the galley and the saloon. But a TV hanging down from the overhead at or near the helm station? Even though the manufacturer might argue that it had been angled for viewing primarily from the dinette area on the port side of the wheelhouse? Or that it was fitted for at-anchor or dockside viewing only?

In my opinion, given the many duties and responsibilities entailed in safely navigating a vessel, particularly during certain high-stress periods, distractions at the helm should be kept to a minimum.

Yeah, a stereo playing after dark in the wheelhouse is nice. And so's a little companionable conversation? But a TV hangin' down? At the helm? So a multi-tasker or semi-multi-tasker can try to simultaneously steer, keep tabs on the road ahead as well as his engine gauges, operate the radio, and navigate, all while watching a favorite program or a movie? You gotta be kiddin' me.