On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:34:01 -0400, "Leanne" wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:48:04 GMT, (Richard
Casady) wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 03:27:46 GMT, (Richard
Casady) wrote:

On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:00:03 +0700, wrote:

y out board is almost ten years old and still going strong drinking
its 50::1 mix. Wonder if your 9.9 will last as long?

My outboard is more than eighty years old. Starts with a rope, of
course. One half HP. Powers an aluminum canoe. Grumman if it matters.

I apologise for unclear writing, but the canoe is the Grumman. The
motor is an Evenrude. Parts for the boat are sheet metal and rivets.
Neither has ever needed any parts. The motor doesn't necessarily have
high hours, no way to really tell. Sure as hell couldn't ask previous
owners, when we got it fifty years ago. It wasn't that old then, a
mere thirty years. We have a recoil start one horse that is only
slightly newer. We also had a duckboat. Twelve foot long, it was
shaped almost exactly like a WWII German S-Boat. [also called
E-boats], and was fast for the power, 22 mph with a five, and not bad
with the one. The canoe is scary fast with a three, the narrow beam
and all, but the one is nice. My dad used the half with his sixteen
foot schooner. { a converted cedar,with an oak keel, rowboat. Made
locally, the type hull was the standard local fishboat for decades}
got the hull free from a neighbor. Sat out for years, the keel had
rotted away. Cedar was still good. Replaced the keel with custom made
steel. Got it from the Des Moines firm that made the Gateway Arch, at
about the same time. They had two jobs that year.

Casady

I knew that Grumman built boats but did n not know that they had built
engines also. I just assumed that hey were one of the early outboard
motor makers that disappeared in the early on. In looking things up I
did discover that Ole Evenrude was not the first maker of out boards,
which is sort of a standard belief here. There was actually an earlier
builder who appeared to be fairly successful but still disappeared
fairly early on. Waterman built up top 1,000 engines a year as far
back as 1905.

Aluminum was the first nail in the wooden boat market and when GRP
came along it pretty much killed the wooden boat makers.

Back in the days of wooden working boats all the lobster boats were
cedar on oak frames. From talking to the old folk the wood lasted but
the galvanized boat nails holding it together only lasted 10 years, or
so.

.




Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)


I remember watching Enoch Winslow steaming the oak frames and forming them
into the shapes that he needed. He used to build up to 40' boats. He would
start one in the fall and it would be on the way to the water on or about
Memorial Day. It was a one man operation and something to watch, especially
when it was all planked and he rolled it over to finish it out. My dad's
automobile garage was next door to his boat building shop. Most were
Eldridge-McGinnis designs, but he made three or four of his own lines.

Leanne


When I was living in Maine all of the lobster boats were wooden boats
with an underwater profile like a very shallow draft sailboat. They
had a proper keel, although probably only 2 feet deep at the rudder,
steam bent ribs and cedar planking and were built right side up. The
tradition was to build a boat during the winter, fish it all summer,
sell it in the fall and start on a new boat.

I was privileged to know a 80 year old fisherman who was still living
this way, pulling 50 traps a day, although he was, when I knew him,
semi retired (and the price of lobsters was high) so he had not built
a boat in several years.


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

But millionaire's yachts don't really tell the story. Where are all
the people that used to build Sharpys, Friendship Sloops,Chesapeake
Skipjack, Dorys, Skiffs and all the other wooden working boats - all
gone.


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

They have moved to Indonesia in places such as Sulawesi, the Molluccas
and Kalimantan and a host of other places where they still built huge
wooden trading ships in the same old manner on the beach. You must
have seen some of these on your way through Bruce. The ancjors are
still hauled up by man power on a horizontal windlass.

A couple of years ago on Pankor Island near Lumut, an old boat
builder, Eng Hok, was building a 65 footer traditional craft for a
wealthy private client. It was built in the traditional junk manner,
being planked around solid bulkheads set on the keel.

When I was a young kid in Wellington, New Zealand I used to help a
friend's fisherman father caulk his 40 foot double ender with cotton
waste, red lead and hemp. Came in handy a few years ago when I was
able to show a friend who had bought a genuine 100 year old Colin
Archer pilot boat from a defunct US museum how to caulk his leaking
boat. he had kept it afloat with sikaflex but the water eventually
leaked past this. Couldn't find a genuine caulking iron anywhere in
Sydney (Aus.) so made one out of a brick cutting bolster.

cheers
Peter

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 21:15:35 +1000, Herodotus
wrote:



But millionaire's yachts don't really tell the story. Where are all
the people that used to build Sharpys, Friendship Sloops,Chesapeake
Skipjack, Dorys, Skiffs and all the other wooden working boats - all
gone.


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

They have moved to Indonesia in places such as Sulawesi, the Molluccas
and Kalimantan and a host of other places where they still built huge
wooden trading ships in the same old manner on the beach. You must
have seen some of these on your way through Bruce. The ancjors are
still hauled up by man power on a horizontal windlass.

A couple of years ago on Pankor Island near Lumut, an old boat
builder, Eng Hok, was building a 65 footer traditional craft for a
wealthy private client. It was built in the traditional junk manner,
being planked around solid bulkheads set on the keel.

When I was a young kid in Wellington, New Zealand I used to help a
friend's fisherman father caulk his 40 foot double ender with cotton
waste, red lead and hemp. Came in handy a few years ago when I was
able to show a friend who had bought a genuine 100 year old Colin
Archer pilot boat from a defunct US museum how to caulk his leaking
boat. he had kept it afloat with sikaflex but the water eventually
leaked past this. Couldn't find a genuine caulking iron anywhere in
Sydney (Aus.) so made one out of a brick cutting bolster.

cheers
Peter

Sorry to disillusion you but they "didn't move to Indonesia -- those
guys had been there since the Portuguese, or before.

True that they are still built on the beach and the lines laid out by
eye but the sails disappeared at least twenty years ago. All the
pinisiq have engines these days. Progress!

I could tell a long story about taking some foreign engineers down to
the harbor at Cirebon only to find that all the romantic Schooners
were now motor vessels. The only way I saved any face was a smaller
lanteen rigged vessel loaded to the waterline with bamboo came
creeping into the harbor under sail, sailed directly across the harbor
headed for a creek where a number of these vessels were moored and as
they approached the mouth of the creek the (obviously) youngest crew
member dove over the side, swam ashore and belayed a line around a
tree. The boat came to the end of the line, turned into the wind and
coasted into the creek -- do it every day, right?

If you want to see old time boat building come to Thailand. At
afternoon tide they bring a fishing boat up the marine railway at the
shipyard in Phuket. The sanders and the power saws go all night. At
day break the caulking crews move in. These all seem to be extended
families, Father, mother, sons in law, etc. They use the same sort of
caulking irons that I saw in an 80 year old boat builder's shop in
Maine years ago but they don't use the hammer. They use a hatchet with
a welded pipe handle that is used to drive the iron and the sharp edge
is used as an opening iron to spread the seam a bit. The women folk
sit in the shade and rub some sort of orange paste into the cotton --
I assume sort of red lead kind of stuff. Send the safety people right
round the bend with that act. Lead? Ahaaaaaa.

Come afternoon tide and the boat is fresh painted, caulked and ready
to go back in the water.

Eng Hok was a Chinese anyway. And if it was traditional teak it
certainly was a millionaire he was building it for. I've seen some of
that stuff 24 X 24 inches by, say, 30 feet in the fishing boat yards.
Of course, it is smuggled Burmese wood but can you imagine what legal
duty paid teak timbers that size would cost. For a fishing boat?

Enough. Where are you now. Back in N.Z. as, "Honey can you take out
the garbage?" Or swanking around Central America as Captain Peter?


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

Sorry to disillusion you but they "didn't move to Indonesia -- those
guys had been there since the Portuguese, or before.

Bruce, Merely a "tongue in cheek" remark. They have been there long
before the Portugese as the Molluccans have been using these boats to
trade with the Aborigines of northern Australia since before Europeans
ventured near these waters. They bought beche de la mare or sea dried
cucumbers and pearls in a peaceful annual trade. Don't know what they
exchanged for them though. I presume that there was no merchant bank
system in the area at the time, possibly because there were no
computers. I know that there is reference to these boats and trade
with South East Asia from Tang and Sung dynasty times.

Eng Hok was a Chinese anyway. And if it was traditional teak it
certainly was a millionaire he was building it for. I've seen some of
that stuff 24 X 24 inches by, say, 30 feet in the fishing boat yards.
Of course, it is smuggled Burmese wood but can you imagine what legal
duty paid teak timbers that size would cost. For a fishing boat?

No it wasn't teak - some Indonesian timber species.

I have been on a lot of these traditionally lined Indonesian barter
trade cargo boats. at Butterworth wharf along from our Customs base I
spent about 2 hours one day carting bags of rice on my shoulders off a
truck and down a very narrow bouncy plank into the hold. I just wanted
to see what it felt like - damn hard work, especially in the heat and
humidity. Indonesia has high duties on the import of rice and thus
rice - low grade quality - is imported into Malaysia from India and
then transhipped into the kargo kapals to be smuggled into Sumatera.

The crews are very friendly and are always happy to show you around. I
guess that i have the advantage of being Matsalleh and also of my
surname (anglicised from the Greek) which is a common Indonesian first
name - always a conversation point

At sea on patrol Customs stops many of these barter trade boats and
examine their cargo which is bound for Malaysia - fresh fish in ice,
vegetables, water melons etc. - great for the patrol boat crew as they
can buy fresh food. The bottoms of the ice water chests have to be
probed as are all hideable spaces on board. The engines are dry
exhaust Chinese diesels and the heads are an open enclosed to waist
height squat board over the stern. You must be familiar with these.

I admire the way that they manouvre. They may be four or five abreast
in port. The inner one against the wharf wants to get out. By the user
of lines and sheer prop power they manage to swing the outer boats
upstream and move out.

Butterworth has a host of old black wooden lighters that I though were
derelict and unused until I saw them unloading bulk Indian sugar from
a freighter moored in the stream. A tug towed them upriver past our
yacht.

Enough. Where are you now. Back in N.Z. as, "Honey can you take out
the garbage?" Or swanking around Central America as Captain Peter?

Yep! it's "Honey, take out the garbage", but in Sydney. I also go back
home to Penang via KL. every three or four weeks I plan to head back
to Curacao possibly in January.

It's a damned lie!! I have never swanked in my life. I don't own spats
for my shoes and don't have a gold tipped cane - at least that is my
image of swanking.

cheers
Peter


Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:53:10 +1000, Herodotus
wrote:



Sorry to disillusion you but they "didn't move to Indonesia -- those
guys had been there since the Portuguese, or before.

Bruce, Merely a "tongue in cheek" remark. They have been there long
before the Portugese as the Molluccans have been using these boats to
trade with the Aborigines of northern Australia since before Europeans
ventured near these waters. They bought beche de la mare or sea dried
cucumbers and pearls in a peaceful annual trade. Don't know what they
exchanged for them though. I presume that there was no merchant bank
system in the area at the time, possibly because there were no
computers. I know that there is reference to these boats and trade
with South East Asia from Tang and Sung dynasty times.

Nope, wrong again :-(

The word Pinisq that I used (usually spelled as pinisi) had a
European, usually schooner, rig on a native hull so these specific
boats post dated the Portuguese.


Eng Hok was a Chinese anyway. And if it was traditional teak it
certainly was a millionaire he was building it for. I've seen some of


No it wasn't teak - some Indonesian timber species.

We had a project to inspect a oil supply base on an island about half
way between Balikpapan and Suribaya (forgot the name) to see whether
it was reasonable to rebuild it. In any event due to the island being
an atoll there was a pretty long jetty and a dock at the end. After we
did our inspection and did the numbers we made out presentation to the
Oil Companies. The deck of the dock was in really poor shape and we
had proposed a pre cast concrete deck to replace it.

During the presentation one of the engineers suggested that we
consider "Iron wood" in place of the pre cast concrete. So we costed
it out. I had a bloke who had been working for timber companies in
Indonesia for twenty years or more and spoke the lingo like a native,
go down to the Buggis harbor in Jakarta and talk with the lads.

The up shoot was that even using illegally cut wood, smuggled to the
island, the wood was nearly twice the cost of the pre cast concrete --
which we duly reported.

The crews are very friendly and are always happy to show you around. I
guess that i have the advantage of being Matsalleh and also of my
surname (anglicised from the Greek) which is a common Indonesian first
name - always a conversation point
Muhammid? Ali? Abu Bakar?.

At sea on patrol Customs stops many of these barter trade boats and
examine their cargo which is bound for Malaysia - fresh fish in ice,
vegetables, water melons etc. - great for the patrol boat crew as they
can buy fresh food. The bottoms of the ice water chests have to be
probed as are all hideable spaces on board. The engines are dry
exhaust Chinese diesels and the heads are an open enclosed to waist
height squat board over the stern. You must be familiar with these.

We had a project manager who was a wooden boat lover on a job down in
Buggis Land who got pretty friendly with some of the captains and
crews. They were doing a lot of monsoon sailing back and forth to
Irian Jaya, I assume for either spices or alligator hides as they
wouldn't talk much about the cargo. Just that it was a year trip, N.E.
going down and S.W. coming back - in 25 foot boats?

He also talked to a bunch of the Schooner men. At that time they were
still sailing, and asked them where they went? "To Singapore". "Oh,
what do you carry?" "Oh, cement, rebar and rattan mostly." (All
forbidden to be exported, by the way.) "And, what do you bring back?"
"Well, you know, vidios, TVs, that kind of stuff." "And you offload at
Jakarta?" "Well, near Jakarta".

I admire the way that they manouvre. They may be four or five abreast
in port. The inner one against the wharf wants to get out. By the user
of lines and sheer prop power they manage to swing the outer boats
upstream and move out.


Butterworth has a host of old black wooden lighters that I though were
derelict and unused until I saw them unloading bulk Indian sugar from
a freighter moored in the stream. A tug towed them upriver past our
yacht.

I really have never been to Butterworth and always thought that was
Pinang's reason for being there, as a port.


Enough. Where are you now. Back in N.Z. as, "Honey can you take out
the garbage?" Or swanking around Central America as Captain Peter?

Yep! it's "Honey, take out the garbage", but in Sydney. I also go back
home to Penang via KL. every three or four weeks

I don't think that would work at my house. "Honey, I'm off for far
eastern places. Call if there are any problems."
She'd be there waiting when I arrived.


I plan to head back
to Curacao possibly in January.

It's a damned lie!! I have never swanked in my life. I don't own spats
for my shoes and don't have a gold tipped cane - at least that is my
image of swanking.

Well those wide legged British shorts and a pith helmet will do if you
have nothing else but remember that gentlemen do keep their tie tied.
Even in the colonies one must keep up appearances, you know.

Oh, by the way, I got those horrible pictures and will answer as soon
as I can think of something appropriate.



Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)