April showers..........Ummmm, SNOW ????????

Saturday morning......... April 19th...........snow, SNOW??????? That's right snow! Saturday morning was "Wooden Boat Foundation Marine Swap Meet" morning, and we were greeted with a pretty good dusting of snow. The snow didn't keep the die hard NW boaters away though. Had a great time, sold tons, came home with a few new things, but mostly thinned out my ever growing supply of old parts that need a new home, but more on that next post. More snow on Sunday............. Hey, where did Spring go?????

The Work Begins!

Saturday was BEAUTIFUL!!! We headed out to the boat in the afternoon after a very successful morning of yard sales and spent a full half-day on the boat. The Newport wood stove is installed in the pilot house, the old propane galley range is pulled out, and the work bench top in the foc'sle has been pulled as well. There is still trim to install on the Newport stove and a little wood work to finish on the pedestal it sits on, but it is usable as it sits right now. Next trip out, we'll fire it up and see how it works!


Sweet Pea rowed out in the dingy and gave the hull a good scrub along the waterline................
All in all, a great day in the sun and a great day on the bay :)

Name Board & Moorage Permit

It must be Spring! We headed out to Fort Worden State Park and bought our new moorage permit on Sunday. Now we're legal and ready to start using the dock out at Mystery Bay. I made up a name board to display our moorage sticker as opposed to affixing it to the transom like the official directions direct you to. It is made out of a thin sheet of Plexiglas so when we display it in the pilot house window it will create the illusion of it being affixed to the actual glass. We can move it from one side of the boat to the other depending on which side is against the dock. It's all of the little details that add up.........

New Stove Legs

I tracked down a set of four, solid bronze, very heavy (about 2 1/2 lbs. each!), new-old legs on eBay. The Seller who sold these to me buys out new-old stock from European foundries and then sells them "retail". The legs are at least 50 years old, and probably much older according to the seller. I agree............... although, I would date them as OLD as opposed to the 50 year old range. I built up the new "undercarriage" for the Newport Stove today and mounted the legs. It turned out great! I will have to wait until I can line things up with the stove pipe before drilling and bolting it all together permanently. I will add a front panel of brass to cover the open frame of the lower "undercarriage" after it is all bolted up. Maybe if I can find a long and narrow piece of bronze ornament, I'll add that over the brass cover plate.

This stove was originally a wall mounted unit, and was never produced as a free-standing one. We are doing a "grand conversion" on it and bringing it BACK to the look of an older time.
More photos after we get it all finished up.

Vintage Horn.........New Outa' the Box!

There has been one item that has been missing from the pilot house cabin top all this time......... a proper horn! I have been searching for just the right one, one that fits the boat in style and is from the right time period. Well, I found it. Where? On eBay of course! I have made it a point to search for items on eBay in obscure places where sellers may have listed items incorrectly or under descriptions that have the item misspelled. I found this vintage boat horn listed in "Home & Gardening > Patio & Grilling > Grills & Accessories > Gas Grills". I found it using the brand name search of Perko! Well, as you can imagine, only one other person placed a bid, and it was low. I got it for a screaming bargain! The best thing about this horn is the fact that it is brand new, never used, right out of the box, and it's at least 60 years old, probably older! It is a 6 volt model with the old woven cloth covered wiring, so I will need to rewire the leads and and put in an in-line voltage reducer before we can actually use it............ small price to pay for such a fantastic piece! This horn is a match for the vintage New-In-Box spotlight that we bought last year. I can't wait to get all this stuff installed!

A day on the Bay

Yesterday the sun was out and we headed out to Mystery Bay to check on the Bernadine and see how she was doing on the mooring. A little breezy, but we had N8 along to serve as oarsman to get us out to the boat and back. We replaced the mooring line, pumped the bilges, measured the windows for curtains and cleaned up "carnage"................ That's right, the otters had been massacring fish on the aft swim deck and forgot to clean up after themselves (enough said there!)......... the cabin top was covered in "guano", along with the assortment of clam shells and crab claws. To the occasional visitor to the ocean, those otters and sea birds are so cute (enough said there!).

With more days of sunshine, we are getting closer to fitting out the exterior of the boat! At the end of the month we'll have our moorage permit and we'll start the process of finishing up our rebuild projects.

"THE CREW"

Boatload of Bronze!

Every now and then we hit the mother lode of yard sales.. On Saturday, we hit that very vein of pay dirt!
We decided to go out and hit the local yard sales as the day was looking like it would turn out to be one of those wonderful Pacific Northwest Spring days where the sun actually shines! We hit a couple of sales here in town and then decided to head out to Maristone Island to hit one that opened at 10 am. The ad said that there would be "boat stuff" as well as the usual tidbits.
Well, we got there about 10 minutes after it opened, parked by the road side, and immediately noticed a woman walking out with an old fisherman's anchor and boat light in hand....... then another fellow walked out with some old bronze boat items! I could smell the old bronze in the air! We hopped out of the car and headed down the driveway...................... OLD boat stuff everywhere!
To make a long story short, we walked away with an entire milk crate full of old bronze fittings and pieces for "yard sale prices" :)
The guy who was selling all of this boat gear said that it had been stripped from a 35 foot sailboat that had been built in 1931, in England. This puts the majority of this bronze hoard in the same time period as the Bernadine!
I haven't really gone through all of it to make decisions on what stays, what goes, what will be installed, etc., but if you check out the picture, you can see for yourself, what we hauled home!

Stay tuned.....................