My kid, home for Christmas, had me weld up a barnacle scraper.
A long wood handle with a sharp steel blade. Does this seem like a
good idea to you? If not, how? and with what?

Thanks for clueing me in.

Brian W

Brian Whatcott wrote in
:


My kid, home for Christmas, had me weld up a barnacle scraper.
A long wood handle with a sharp steel blade. Does this seem like a
good idea to you? If not, how? and with what?

Thanks for clueing me in.

Brian W


That should get off the barnacles......along with the gelcoat and a few
layers of glass mat (or some plastic from the chopper gun if your boat is
less than 8 years old).

She'll be free of both barnacles and bubbles in the gelcoat!

On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:59:37 +0000, Larry wrote:

Brian Whatcott wrote in
:


My kid, home for Christmas, had me weld up a barnacle scraper.
A long wood handle with a sharp steel blade. Does this seem like a
good idea to you? If not, how? and with what?

Thanks for clueing me in.

Brian W


That should get off the barnacles......along with the gelcoat and a few
layers of glass mat (or some plastic from the chopper gun if your boat is
less than 8 years old).

She'll be free of both barnacles and bubbles in the gelcoat!

Come on Larry, scrappers are used all over and don't bother the bottom
paint, say nothing of the gel coat.

Although, on second thought, he did say "sharp steel blade". I assumed
about 1/16th flat stuff for the blade, unsharpened. No need to sharpen
it like a razor.
Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

Bruce In Bangkok wrote in
:

Although, on second thought, he did say "sharp steel blade". I assumed
about 1/16th flat stuff for the blade, unsharpened. No need to sharpen
it like a razor.
Cheers,


My visualization was of something resembling steel claws or pointy steel
teeth to dig into the barnacle pile to gouge them loose....(c;]

It always amazes me how people think of a boat hull as some kind of
really strong, nearly indestructable material you can scratch but can't
break. I think of them as more like a thick eggshell you can nearly
poke your finger through if you poke it in just the right place.
Reality is something in between there, I suspect, much more fragile than
the average passenger would like to know about.....headed out of the
harbor into the Atlantic.

The CORA (Charleston Offshore Racing Association) insists everyone have
a big diaphram manual bilge pump so my buddy Joe asked if I would
install one for him. I showed up with my little battery-powered drill
motor with a hole saw the appropriate size for the fitting to go in a
line of fittings about 6" below the toerail. "How are you going to put
a hole in it with that?", he quipped. I picked my spot, pressed the
center bit of the hole saw where I thought it should go and pulled the
trigger. 30 seconds later, I backed the thin little plug out of the saw
and handed it to him. "It's only this thick.", I mused. "There ain't
much to 'em.", I continued as his mouth hung open. "Hold this in the
hole until I get the nut on the inside, will ya?", as he was staring
through the big hole I'd just punched into his plastic boat. The hull
couldn't have been more than 3/8" thick, maybe 4 layers of mat at the
most. Those Whales can move quite a bit of water...probably more if
you're in a panic watching it get lower and lower in the ocean.

"Larry" wrote in message
...
Those Whales can move quite a bit of water...probably more if
you're in a panic watching it get lower and lower in the ocean.



Nothing removes water faster than a guy with a bucket and the proper
motivation. LOL


--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Capt. JG" wrote in
easolutions:

Nothing removes water faster than a guy with a bucket and the proper
motivation. LOL




People are always horrified when they saw my powerboats come out of the
water on the trailer streaming water out of the table tennis drain cocks
I always installed in them. In 40 years I never had a boat sink because
of them being screwed in where the transom plugs I could never remember
to insert before launching were to go.

I met a guy with a better idea at the ramp one day. He said they wanted
to much for these autodraining gadgets. So, he installed a toilet tank
valve seat (without the overflow tube) into his transom over where the
old drain used to go. On the outside of the BIG hole was a standard
flexible rubber toilet flush flapper that fit through the hole as it
should, suspended by the two ears it would sit on inside your toilet
tank. The only difference being the end of these ears had nylon washers
forced over them so the flapper couldn't fly off and get lost while she
was on a plane and the hole was WIDE OPEN to the sea.

If the water wasn't so deep he couldn't start the engine and drive the
nearly-full runabout away from the dock, he said he could empty the hull
in less than 1% the time it would have taken the little hole with the
plug removed. The boat simply.......well............FLUSHED!

Come off the plane, a tiny bit of water splashed into the stern to seat
the flapper and she was ready to fish. Take off again, and whatever was
in the boat....FLUSHED out the back....EVEN THAT CRAP THAT ALWAYS
PLUGGED THE LITTLE PLUG HOLE!

Oh, one slight modification to the flapper. The hollow center of the
tapered part that floats until your toilet tank had emptied before it
dropped to close it had been filled with bathtub caulk to keep it from
floating up and STAYING OPEN, which wouldn't be good. His flapper was
quite heavy with the caulk-filled bullet plug. "It always lays open
when we're underway at any speed", he told me.

To clean the fish crap out of the bilge, you used a stick to hold the
flapper open to "fill" the boat with enough water to wash the deck.
Then, you simply took her for a spin to FLUSH. It looked really clean
to me!

Can you imagine the shame of anyone on a yachtie dock spotting such a
rig out of a toilet. They'd be horrified! Those come from WALMART!

On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:49:26 +0000, Larry wrote:

Bruce In Bangkok wrote in
:

Although, on second thought, he did say "sharp steel blade". I assumed
about 1/16th flat stuff for the blade, unsharpened. No need to sharpen
it like a razor.
Cheers,


My visualization was of something resembling steel claws or pointy steel
teeth to dig into the barnacle pile to gouge them loose....(c;]

It always amazes me how people think of a boat hull as some kind of
really strong, nearly indestructable material you can scratch but can't
break. I think of them as more like a thick eggshell you can nearly
poke your finger through if you poke it in just the right place.
Reality is something in between there, I suspect, much more fragile than
the average passenger would like to know about.....headed out of the
harbor into the Atlantic.

The CORA (Charleston Offshore Racing Association) insists everyone have
a big diaphram manual bilge pump so my buddy Joe asked if I would
install one for him. I showed up with my little battery-powered drill
motor with a hole saw the appropriate size for the fitting to go in a
line of fittings about 6" below the toerail. "How are you going to put
a hole in it with that?", he quipped. I picked my spot, pressed the
center bit of the hole saw where I thought it should go and pulled the
trigger. 30 seconds later, I backed the thin little plug out of the saw
and handed it to him. "It's only this thick.", I mused. "There ain't
much to 'em.", I continued as his mouth hung open. "Hold this in the
hole until I get the nut on the inside, will ya?", as he was staring
through the big hole I'd just punched into his plastic boat. The hull
couldn't have been more than 3/8" thick, maybe 4 layers of mat at the
most. Those Whales can move quite a bit of water...probably more if
you're in a panic watching it get lower and lower in the ocean.


Some time ago there was a long drawn out discussion on rec.boats
started by someone who had visited a boat show and leaned against a
Bayliner. The hull flexed......

Older boats (like mine) built before people discovered just how strong
fiberglass really is are 1 inch thick at the rail and get thicker as
you go down.

Regarding moving water out of a boat. A friend once commented that he
had only been seasick once. They were bring a dragger down from Nova
Scotia and got in some bad weather and the garboard came loose. He
said he was bailing with a bushel basket and puking at the same time.
I said, "kind of hard to do that isn't it?" He replied, "not when
you're as scared as I was!"
Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

Bruce In Bangkok wrote in
:

He replied, "not when
you're as scared as I was!"


I think my worst scare was when we were bringing back Geoffrey's
Endeavour 35 sloop from Florida. There was just two of us, Lloyd and I.
Lloyd at got me up for my watch about midnight and I was to get him up
at 3:30 for his 4-8. About 3AM, I'm 100 miles due S from Charleston in
3-4' seas making good time in a broad reach staring at the radar on a
completely moonless night when "something" to my starboard went
WOOOOOOSH!, a moment of silence, followed by a HUGE roaring SPLASH! that
went on and on.

......then, total silence, the sea noise as if nothing ever happened. No
monster wave, no swamping, no going off course, as if it never happened.
BUT IT DID! Supercharged on adrenaline, Larry was WIDE AWAKE for hours
and not sleepy at all. 3:30 came and went. 4 - 5 - about 6:30 Lloyd
came out looking refreshed from the V-berth and a shower in the tiny
head. "Why didn't you wake me?" My hands were still a little shaky and
my face must have still showed my supercharged state.

I don't think if a Navy Boomer had done an emergency blow and come out
of the water 50 yards off my Starboard beam it would have made any more
noise. I didn't hear any tanks blowing or mechanical noises emergency
blows are sure to make...and I didn't hear a blowhole open to vent a
whale, but that's what it must have been.

We had a second scare during breakfast that was more manageable. We had
a table that hooked to the helm stand and had just pigged out on Lloyd's
excellent Jamaican hot scrambled eggs mixed with fried onions, bell
peppers and potatoes smothered in some kind of spicy Taco cheeze whiz.
We were talking about the third book he was just finishing during the
cruise, his favorite pasttime at sea.....when this MONSTEROUS wooden
cable reel nearly as tall as our mast just floated by. The RADAR alarm
didn't sound, I rushed around the helm to watch the scope and saw
NOTHING, no return at all from our little 2KW Raymarine on a stern stick
up 25'. The wind had died in the morning as the sun came up, the sea
had calmed, but we were still making 5-6 knots on the beam reach with a
150 Genoa wrapped around the main well, a goodly apparent wind over the
airfoil. It just floated there....EMPTY. Now, during the night the old
cruiser was making a good 8 knots and we both started thinking about
what would have happened and were we would be if we'd slammed into that
damned reel at 8 knots in the pitch dark. It would have surely broken
the bow off and sent her to the bottom as she had no watertight
bulkheads like the Amel Sharki Geoffrey sails, now. There was as much
reel in the water as above it...

Dogged tired, I did crash, finally, and slept about 6 hours before Lloyd
got me up again to take the 16-2000 in light air so he could sleep. I
woke him about 2AM and slept some until we got to the Charleston Jettie
entrance about dawn, a beautiful sight every time I point the bow to its
slot on the South side of the rocks.....

That WOOSH still holds the record over the 15-17' seas we encountered on
another trip up the coast caused by "rushing" I hate. The boat just
becomes a tiring thrashing machine over 9' to fight until the damned
front passed....but it didn't WOOOOSH in the dead of night!

"Larry" wrote in message
...
Bruce In Bangkok wrote in
:

Although, on second thought, he did say "sharp steel blade". I assumed
about 1/16th flat stuff for the blade, unsharpened. No need to sharpen
it like a razor.
Cheers,


My visualization was of something resembling steel claws or pointy steel
teeth to dig into the barnacle pile to gouge them loose....(c;]

It always amazes me how people think of a boat hull as some kind of
really strong, nearly indestructable material you can scratch but can't
break. I think of them as more like a thick eggshell you can nearly
poke your finger through if you poke it in just the right place.
Reality is something in between there, I suspect, much more fragile than
the average passenger would like to know about.....headed out of the
harbor into the Atlantic.

The CORA (Charleston Offshore Racing Association) insists everyone have
a big diaphram manual bilge pump so my buddy Joe asked if I would
install one for him. I showed up with my little battery-powered drill
motor with a hole saw the appropriate size for the fitting to go in a
line of fittings about 6" below the toerail. "How are you going to put
a hole in it with that?", he quipped. I picked my spot, pressed the
center bit of the hole saw where I thought it should go and pulled the
trigger. 30 seconds later, I backed the thin little plug out of the saw
and handed it to him. "It's only this thick.", I mused. "There ain't
much to 'em.", I continued as his mouth hung open. "Hold this in the
hole until I get the nut on the inside, will ya?", as he was staring
through the big hole I'd just punched into his plastic boat. The hull
couldn't have been more than 3/8" thick, maybe 4 layers of mat at the
most. Those Whales can move quite a bit of water...probably more if
you're in a panic watching it get lower and lower in the ocean.

Larry,
You can't judge all boats by that any more than you can judge all boaters by
the words of Wilbur.
Lots, if not most of the older boats have very strong hulls. When I
installed the thru hulls on my Phillip Rhodes Traveler I found about 2.5" of
hand laid glass in the bilge area. That boat was built by a commercial
fishing boat builder in the PNW in '79. My '63 Chris Craft "Caribbean" broke
loose of a very bad anchoring (by a paid "professional") when Floyd passed
by and ended up hard on the rocks on a causeway with some gouges and scrapes
in the gel. The gouges were at the most 3/8 deep, which may be death to
some, but not the tanks that Chris Craft built. The bulkheads were still in
place with the tabbing (pretty heavy duty and tabbing doesn't really
described the quality) unbroken. That boat was refitted and is still in
service.
I bet your little handheld computer that the ratio of boats that sink
because of failed equipment over hulls breaking up is probably 1,000 to 1. I
personally only know one sailor that lost his boat to the hull being
destroyed and he was run over by a frieghter!
I like the motion of a heavy boat and am willing to sacrifice light air
performance. Shipping containers have very hard corners.
Don't mean to offend anyone with a go fast light weight boat, but that's my
opinion and what I practice.

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:49:32 -0500, "mmc" wrote:

Shipping containers have very hard corners.

I hear they lose about 10 000 containers a year. A goodly percentage
probably in the North Pacific. All that Walmart junk.

Casady