Restoration
July 15, 2001
As if Mother Nature were in cahoots with the Cherokee project, the usual sweltering July temperatures haven’t seemed to show up in full force. This week, as heavy fiberglassing gets underway on the transom and sides of the hull, cool Autumn-like weather has moved in – perfect! Below, Bud is preparing the hull sides to receive fiberglass sheathing. The sheathing is glued in place. Once dried, it will be sanded and fared in to the rest of the hull. The fiberglassing of the transom, we are glad to report, is completed. This fiberglass provides the substrate for the varnished mahogony transom that will be installed at a later date. Everyone is feeling the fiberglass itch!
Bud Preparing Hull
Jon Cutting Fiberglass
Applying Sheathing, Fully Sheathed Transom (Note Leonard’s Taped Shorts)
The decking in the forward guestroom is getting a coat of epoxy. Meanwhile, Jim is fitting deck beams and decking in the galley area.
Brooks Applying Epoxy to Decking
Jim Making Things Fit
Norm is applying faring compound to the aft guestroom head. His sidekick Brooks is coating panels in the aft guestroom itself. This faring process takes many hours of sanding to provide a good, flat, fare surface for paint.
Norm and Brooks Faring Well
The black, lead-impregnated rubber mat has been glued to the engine room bulkhead. Lead is used for sound-deadening because of its density. It also keeps the bulkhead from vibrating at a high rate of speed. The mat is being held in place by many stifflegs as the glue dries.
Vertically-placed Mat Held by Stifflegs
These days, if you happen to be anywhere between Staits and Marshallberg around sunset, you’ll hear top 40 music rolling out across the water. It’s coming from a trawler owned and operated by seventeen year old Zack Davis. Zack has been fishing alone (if you don’t count his dog Whitey) since he was twelve, and just this year traded his twenty foot skiff Firecracker for a bigger boat. Zack can sew together his own nets, maintain his engines, work his winches and keep a steady course. While most kids his age are cruising the roads bored and looking for action, Zack’s cruising the inky waters of Core Sound, “catching bugs.” He bought his own truck, and knows his way around the building of boats too, since his father and great-grandfather built boats. Zack wants to go to college, but is proud of the business he’s established for himself and may just keep it up later in life too. “The old timers say there’s no future in commercial fishing,” he remarked. “But I’m used to all the rules and regulations. I don’t get discouraged.” His boat seems to prance along the water with optimism; the other night Zack trawled by to the Beatles singing, “One day, you’ll look, and see I’m gone, for tomorrow may rain so, I’ll follow the sun.” Signing off for now, Barbara “Fish Doctor” Blake
Zack Davis Shrimping on Core Sound
