The Salmon Troller WHITE CLOUD

Outlaw, are they the listing broker?

For me the moderator NOT stepping in and moderating every post is a positive. Several other forums are so closely moderated, sometimes one sidedly, that I lose interest in trying to post.

I believe that you need to be an adult to be on this forum. By that, I mean that not everything everyone says is going to please everyone. Some people have opinions which are unpopular. Some people even say things that are rude, crude and socially unacceptable. That kind of talk happens everyday everywhere. Would you advocate a moderator in each bar/park/workplace?

I think that most of us automatically recognize who said it and either ignore it or post a comment back. If the moderator were constantly sanitizing each thread we would gradually become a bunch of "little Bakers", because the only ones who would stay and converse would be those who believe the same things he does. That's what happens with heavily moderated forums. Seldom is there a healthy debate because the favorite son gets his say and the outsider gets his posts stricken.

Worse than strictly moderated forums are those with moderators who aren't man enough to even admit they are moderating your posts. Every post you send is delayed because the subject line matches a "filter". What pansy a**ed crap. The favorites get 2 or 3 posts immediately and the opposing sides post appears several hours or a day later.

Just my opinion, yours may vary.

Ken

Rick,

*** I slamed you because you ranted at me and called one of our new members stupid.
*** You said " I don't want to sound rude or anything" and then you refered to the iron bark as a " patch " but in that reguard you probably were quoting. Then you said the iron bark is " as fundamental to older wooded workboats as a rudder " with the obvious implication that if Outlaw knew what a rudder is* .. he should know what iron bark on wood boats is for. Furthermore iron bark*( as discussed ) obviously is nowhere near as fundamental*to a boat as a rudder! If you had not said " rude or anything " " patch " " ... fundamental ..." and just said " the*spot that looked like a patch*probably is*iron bark and*is usually there*to protect the hull " no offense could be taken.
*** As for Dock Street I knew someone who worked there and they had very bad things to say about*the owner so I wanted to give Outlaw a heads up so he*would have all his antennas out to protect himself as required. It's possible ( but not*likely ) what I heard was not even true so a simple heads up was all the situation called for.*If you recall I didn't accuse anybody of anything but I did imply that there is/was something wrong at Dock*Street. I also made it clear that my information or knowledge was*a bit dated. I did, however state my warning*too harshly and for that I apologize.****

Eric Henning

Geesh - for a while there I thought I was on the "trawlers and trawlering" list ! Easy goes it guys !

Outlaw - you will find that you will get a lot of conflicting answers to your posts and once you get through reading them you can sit back and decide which course of action is best for you.

When I first started the refit on our boat I posted a few questions on several boating lists (this one did not exist then) and got some very conflicting answers to them. Two in particular were the source of arguing back and forth between the list members for weeks and never did anyone take notice that I had an ex commercial fish boat, built like a brick s--t house rather than a pretty, lightly built, pleasure boat.

My advice to you in the pursuit of a commercial vessel is to get as much time as possible on board yourself and start at the bow and take a good look at everything, under, inside and alongside and only then will YOU have a firm idea of what you are looking at. I do not mean that you should skip having a good surveyor look at the boat but also have a good look yourself so you know what the surveyor is talking about and what you are getting yourself into.

Which ever way you go, good luck on your project, Old Fishboat and I have been down this path so we have definately had some experience (s)

John MV Penta

hey oldfishboat.wonder when you were going to chime in. thanks. all your ?'s are totaly right on.i don't know a thing about the boat , well just a little. haveing a prob getting to talk to dock street. they have a listing on the boat on their web. thats all i know. i just saw the pic's of the new house going on. a pic of the old house. the boat was built in 1928 as a ketch motor sailor then turned into a salmon troller. there are no fishing #'s on the boat. it is rigged for trolling. the chain stay looks like they are orig and in place, who knows. the deck is covered with something. of what, who knows. everything is who knows. the hull looks ok, nothing protruding, just tired looking. whats inside, again, who knows. untill i can talk to someone at dock street and go aboard and get inside and look for my self, again, who knows. in the back there looks like a lazzeret with alot of stuff in it. the forward hatch, i pulled up and look in side as good as i could was dry and open. was dark in there so hard to see. the engone is a perkins with low hrs. can't really tell with out a mag what the house is made of or the bulwarts. looks like 1/8 steel plate. so there for the moment thats all i know. as soon as i can get aboard and talk with dock street i know nothing. if i see that it is in pretty good shape and i decide to go further with this then i will call in a survayer an a good diesel man. take it for a spin around the block, do a haul out. offer a bid and go from there.
this has been a great show on here. so everyone, lets get along and be happy. man life is way to short to ruffle feathers. i know you are all there not wanting to see me make a big mistake and i thank you all for that. your oppinons are of great value. i know lots of things but sometime as you all know, one can get carried away and lose their thinking. i haven't done that yet, thank God. will let you all know when i find out myself what will happen next. thaks all.

Outlaw

I've just about had it with all this bickering! Keep it up and you won't have SeaHorse ll to kick around anymore....<grin>

Outlaw---

I don't know anything about the troller White Cloud or the Dock Street brokerage so I can't add to the controversy and bickering*swirling around them.* I can say that in the past ten years of trawlering in the PNW I have seen a number of outstanding troller/seiner/longliner conversions, both wood and glass.* So if you have the wherewithall to take on a project like this, or buy an existing conversion, they can be very nice boats indeed.

Wood is every bit as good a boatbuilding material as glass, aluminum, or steel.* All four materials rerquire different construction, maintenance, and repair techniques, but I don't believe that one is superior to the other as a blanket statement.* Anyone who doubts the longevity, maintainability, or repairability of wood*has only to visit the Grand Banks Owners forum to see that wood boats that were well made to begin with can give every bit as long a service life as glass or metal boats.* But I suspect you know this already.

The one thing I would suggest investigating as you pursue the acquisition of an older wood*"fishboat" is the question of insurance.* While I don't know if the practice has spread to all marinas in the Puget Sound area yet, proof of insurance has become a requirement for acquiring or retaining a slip at many of them, including Squalicum Marina in Bellingham where we keep our boat.* No insurance, no slip.* Not a problem for a newer or glass boat, but it can be a challenge for an older wood boat.

Several years ago the owner of an immaculately maintained 1940s, 36-foot, double-ended salmon troller was forced to leave our marina because he could not obtain insurance, or at least not at a price he was willing to pay.* He moved the boat to a private dock in a waterfront community north of Bellingham where exposure to the winds and*weather took quite a toll on the boat.* "Donna," was gone from our marina for two years*until last year, when she reappeared.* I was telling the owner how nice it was to see" Donna" back and he said he was finally able to obtain the required insurance and return to the protection of the marina.

If you plan to keep your boat where having a specific type of insurance coverage is not a requirement then it's not an issue for you.* But if you are intending to keep the boat in a marina then the insurance question is something you might want to have answered sooner rather than later.

Finally, others have talked about the importance of getting good hull and engine surveys.* Good advice but make sure you get a surveyor who REALLY knows wood boats.**There are some great surveyors in the Puget Sound area but many of them--- perhaps even most of them--- deal almost exclusively with fiberglass boats.* This makes sense since that's about all most surveyors encounter these days.* So take the time to determine if a surveyor who's recommended or who you hear about really understands the characteristics of wood, how it's affected by time, neglect, etc.

Good luck with your search and remember, boating is supposed to be fun.


(currently in Xiamen, China, at the other end of the bridge from the Nordhavn plant)

-- Edited by Marin at 03:50, 2009-02-09

Outlaw:* At Van Isle Marina in Sideny BC there is an outstanding old wooden 46 fisheries boat for sale. Dock D Slip 411. Perfect seaboat for the PNW. It is in good condition with all the stuff you'd like + more. 6-71, hydraulic dinghy hoists and anchor drive, Dickenson stove and it floats and runs to boot! Paint is good fro a season or more. I'd say $30-40 K and its yours. Call Greg Andrew at Van Isle for details.

thanks guys. yeah, the insurance thing, almost left that one out. whoops, you are right that could be a prob. will check in to it.

Outlaw

Outlaw - if you go ahead with purchasing an ex commercial wood boat (or any hull material for that matter) you might want to look at the Westcoast Work Boat Assoc.. We have been able to set up reduced rate insurance for our boats through a BC firm that are not all that bad. We do not have Penta insured as a "boat" at the moment as she on the hard in the back yard and covered with a rider on the house insurance but I will be getting her insured before re launch.

www.wwba.ca

John MV Penta
Sidney, BC

Outlaw,

*** Following up on what Marin said Lynne Reister owns an old Monk and is heavily involved in wood/classic boat stuff around the Sound. She's a wonderful person, quiet and honest. There was an article on her in the June issue of 2004 PMM. She does not do mechanical but she does FG boats also. I don't know how she keeps her pony tail out of the bilge and she is probably even more in demand now than before. Shoping for a boat is an exciteing and scary time so any way to reduce the risks is very good.

Eric Henning*

eric, thanks, if i do anything i will give her a call. what is your boat, i like it

Outlaw

"Wood is every bit as good a boat building material as glass, aluminum, or steel. All four materials require different construction, maintenance, and repair techniques, but I don't believe that one is superior to the other as a blanket statement. Anyone who doubts the longevity, maintainability, or repairability of wood has only to visit the Grand Banks Owners forum to see that wood boats that were well made to begin with can give every bit as long a service life as glass or metal boats. "

What is missing here is the COST of constant maint , because a tiny deck or other leak that would only be cosmetic on plastic or tin boats may be a disaster for a woodie.

The price of a woodie is 100% up to the second repairs , leaving the boat to sit for months or years can cost thousands of times the problems of other construction methods.

For a GB owner that lives aboard keeping water OUT is a simple tho perhaps full time job (at least observing leaks is EZ) the repair may be a task.

FF

FF wrote:

For a GB owner that lives aboard keeping water OUT is a simple tho perhaps full time job (at least observing leaks is EZ) the repair may be a task.

Click to expand...

Not true at all.* First of all, very few GB owners live aboard their boats so they are not there battling the ingress of water on a full-time basis.* But a GB woodie, or any quality wood boat, that is up to snuff is no more prone to*water leaks than a boat made out of any other material that's in the same condition.

I see just as many comments about window leaks, deck leaks, etc. on the GB owners forum from the owners of fiberglass GBs as I do from the owners of the woodies.* I think oldfishboat is right on the money*when he states that the differences in build materials only makes the problems different, it doesn't make them more or less.

The owner of a steel boat---- and I know several of them--- can spend a lot of time tracking down leaks that put water on the inside of the hull.* Keeping the inside of a steel hull dry can be a "full time job."* A steel hull rusting out from the inside is every bit as expensive a fix as a wood hull rotting out from the inside.* The owner of a fiberglass boat with deck leaks--- be it from leaks from a teak deck or water getting in around hardware mounted directly to a fiberglass deck--- can face repairs every bit as expensive as the owner of a wood boat with the same problem.

As oldfishboat says, any boat made of any material*will suffer expensive damage if not maintained.* But all the boatbuilding materials--- and I guess I should have included ferro-cement, too--- are good if they are used in applications where they make sense.* You probably don't want to make a guided missile frigate out of wood, and you probably don't want to make a kayak out of ferro-cement



-- Edited by Marin at 19:35, 2009-02-10

The woodie will be rotting due to wet/dry, wet/dry as time goes on.

The plastic boat may suffer mold and loss of soft goods , foam and similar , but a simple leak does not place the hull at risk.

Tin boats will have almost the same paint protection , inside or outside so a leak is not the cause of hull rusting , FAILURE to remove the interior and do a complete re do of the necessary surface protection system is.

All it takes on a woodie is a DRY boat NO LEAKS , and they last a long time , but that is a really high standard.

Failure to maintain the wood vessel 100% will eventually destroy the vessel, not so on plastic or tin.

FF

oldfishboat wrote:

FF

I have ta laugh. You got me !!!


You post this stuff in a thread talking about a wood boat built in 1928.

Click to expand...

Kinda what I was thinking.....

But, I would never own a wood boat.

I remember an article that was written in the early 70's in "Sail" magazine (Yes, before I came over to the dark side LOL). It was a tongue in cheeck April 1 article about a newly discovered genus of the wood boring toredo, or ship worm. It talked about the horrors of the Polyestermite which attacked fiberglass the same way shipworms attcked wood.

Shortly after that article, the industry discovered boat pox or blisters, which is an expensive fix for fiberglass. Nothing is impervious.

On a side note (and back to the thread topic of an older wood trawler, I went aboard an older wooden boat one time that had salt blocks on shelving down in the bilge, which was used to keep the boat "sweet", the practice being in the old days to keep the humidity, leakage, etc, as the same salinity as the outside water, and to prevent dry rot. You might want to check this out with some of the real old timers, Outlaw.

"... salt blocks on shelving down in the bilge,..."

My 1944 tug had "salt shelves" between the frames and the ceilings. They were horizontal boards that kept the salt from falling down to the bilge (looked just like the fire stops in a wood frame house) and after many years the salt hardened like rock. At the risk of starting a discussion on the merits of salt shelves, it seemed to be very effective as there was no sign of rot in those areas.

But, playing on the fringes of that old argument, fresh water is what rots wood boats, salt water and metal parts dissolves them from the inside. Electrolysis creates sodium hydroxide that dissolves the lignin in the wood and leaves the cellulose fibers bulging out looking like straw. The cure for that is a garden sprayer full of vinegar.

And getting back to WHITE CLOUD. Those aluminum bulwarks are common on those boats. The combination of wracking, rafting up or bouncing off pilings, put a lot of stress on wooden bulwarks and let rain get into the futtocks and clamps then there is the devil to pay ... no nautical pun intended.*Aluminum bulwarks will save enough work to provide time to deall with all the other areas that are falling apart behind your back.

"... a small drill bit and a smile on my face ..."

Tee hee, I have this image of you standing on the dock with Dewalt in hand, ready to board.

I always used a scratch awl and a little plastic hammer, it created a little less apprehension at the start.

yeah, i remember growing up, thats been along time ago, oh no, i am still growing up.lol. around the boats and remember salt blocks, forgot what they did with em, now i remember. an yes that house and bulwarks are aluminum on white cloud. i re-read dock street post with the pictures. didn't read much of the post till now. thought they were steel. it was hard to tell with the paint on it. so that could be a good thing,hmmm. have not had time to talk to dock street yet. that boat ain't going anywheres anyways to soon thats for sure as there is no brokage sign on the boat just the for sale sign and the # is no good and nobody at the warf knows anything. so will try and get down soon.

Outlaw

Further to what Rickb says, fresh water boats from the Great Lakes and the rivers were quick to rot out. In the early 70's, before Trojan went FRP they built many wood boats using various preservatives in the timbers, planking and*plywood. I for some years owned one of these in fresh water and 0 rot. Wheras some of the same age non preservative wooden vessels were rotting after 6 years in fresh water. Of course wooden boat's topsides that see rainwater as compared to salt water rot out too - tough to rub salt up there.

I must say, FRP on my current vessel is much easier to take care of than wood*but my varnished caprail is another story.

"... tough to rub salt up there ..."

That's why a salt water washdown is part of life. I used to use a product called Timbor when moored in fresh water, it's a borax compound sold as an insecticide that comes in bags like salt. You make a saturated mixture with water and spray it all over with a garden sprayer ... just like the one full of vinegar. The stuff kills the fungus that causes dry rot

I had varnished caprails on my tug, they were beautiful but after a couple of years I broke out the black paint and never looked back. My yachtie friends cringed and my workboat buddies just smiled. My story was that it was all workboat outside and pure yacht inside ... and it was, except for the original engineroom.

-- Edited by RickB at 16:23, 2009-02-11

usualy the reaction from the owner at that point tells me a lot.



IF Someone came to inspect MY boat with a drill ,

he would be rapidly invited to leave or find out hoe well a 357Magnum makes holes.

NO survey needs a drill, a rotten tub can be found with a sharp DOWEL.

For most look sees, a tuning fork works best , totally non invasive.

FF

Caliber is less important than bullet type.

I have always found that a hollow-point will stop fairly quickly in good wood and not damage anything on the other side, and the hole is easy to plug. But if the wood's no good who cares what's behind it ...