Tide grid's

Have you ever put your boat on a tide grid to check the bottom or zincs?
*I plan on doing it this weekend and had a dream last night of the boat falling over the wrong way. I have been worying over this.**Any good advice?

SD

Make sure it doesn't lean away from the pilings!

You must be in the only place left in America where you can still use a grid, consider yourself very lucky.

-- Edited by RickB on Thursday 15th of July 2010 11:07:45 AM

Wow!
*I did not know that.
Why would that be?

SD

They're still pretty common up the BC coast and in SE Alaska. I believe there are still even some in Puget Sound. The one in Bellingham was closed in the mid-1990s although they ony recently got around to removing it. Down here the issue is environmental--- they don't want paint and stuff off hulls ending up in the water.

Now that makes sence.
The stuff is in the water anyway. anti fouling paint. ablative.
what if the stuff comes off on the slings or trailer.
*do you have to decontaminate them before the next go around

Dope smoking, bunny hugging, tree kissing liberals.

SD



-- Edited by skipperdude on Thursday 15th of July 2010 11:38:12 AM

skipperdude wrote:The stuff is in the water anyway. anti fouling paint. ablative.Dope smoking, bunny hugging, tree kissing liberals.

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I guess it depends on who you are and what's important to you.* Some of the strongest supporters of the movments to clean up the waters in Puget Sound are the commercial fishermen, particularly the crab and shellfish folks. Their living depends on having clean water with no pollutants.* Even the commercial salmon fishermen have become very vocal about the need to clean up streams and modify logging practices to keep the streams and rivers from silting up, and the movements to protect eelgrass beds and other marshland beds that provide shelter and food to salmon fingerlings.

The other day there was a story in the paper about how carbon dioxide in the air gets absorbed into the ocean water and raises the acidity level.* The danger is that as the acidity level goes up, it can attack and weaken the shells of shellfish.* Guess who's very concerned about this?* The commercial shellfish folks.* The article had charts showing the increase of water acidity in Puget Sound and in the open ocean where it also can have negative effects.

Everything's connected.* Nothings cut and dried or black and white.* If you think something like the scrapings and paint spills around a tidal grid or boat yard is an isolated issue with minimal consequences that mainly inconveniences you, think again.* Multiply your contribution to pollutants in the water by, what, milions, and the affect is not so small.** Think about the people whose livlihood depends on what's trying to live in the water, and your impact is not so small.

You make cookies for a living, right?* (I think that's you but if I'm confusing you with someone else, sorry.)* You use a lot of flour I assume.* How about I put up a smelting operation near the farms that grow the wheat that makes your flour and pretty soon the wheat starts showing high contents of heavy metal?* And what if this practice becomes so widespread that just about any flour you buy has a higher level of heavy metals in it?* Are you going to care?* I just made this example up--- I have no idea if heavy metals would show up in wheat or not, but you get the idea.

Our self-centered society has reached the point where the only thing that matters is how something affecte ME.* If I'm inconvenienced, then the reason is inevitably due to dope smoking, bunny hugging, tree kissing liberals.

I'm not a tree hugger.* In fact I'm a big fan of the guys that cut them down and saw them up for a living.* But I've been around long enough to have realized that there are multiple sides to every issue and that I may have to be slightly inconvenienced to ensure that some other guy can continue to make a living.* If shutting the tidal grids down in Puget Sound helps the shellfish farmers thrive, they are more likely to be able to afford to take that vacation to Hawaii or Europe which means they'll fly on an airline which will help that airline prosper which will enable them to buy new planes when they need them which will help keep me employed.* Like I said, everything's connected.

If you want to walk up to a commercial fisherman and tell him that he's a dope smoking, bunny hugging, tree kissing liberal be my guest.* But based on the ones I've met here and in the lobster industry in Maine and the Canadian maritimes you might want to make sure there's a ladder leading from the water he's going to kick your ass into back up onto the pier

*


-- Edited by Marin on Thursday 15th of July 2010 12:12:10 PM

skipperdude wrote:


what if the stuff comes off on the slings or trailer.
do you have to decontaminate them before the next go around

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The yards here do.* Not decontaminate them, but the slings are pressure washed and all the water from pressure washing--- hulls, equipment, etc.-- is caught and recycled through filters and the contaminents are periodically hauled away.* By regulation nothing that comes off of a boat in a commercial yard is supposed to go into the water.* There are big fines if they're caught doing so. Which is one reason yard costs have gone up, because of the additional equipment and steps they have to take to meet the requirements.

Ok.
you win.
But I don't have to like it.

*I'm in the back waters. All this stuff just has not gotten to us yet.

As a side note due to the earthquake in 64. They can't do any digging anywhere in*Whittier a 5 million gallon fuel tank was ruptured and leaked all of it out. The answer.**They just black topped it

The whole end of Passage Canal is considered a super site. Nothing has been done since 64.

In a State thats as big as Alaska with not*even *a million people. I think things tend to get overlooked.*

You mentioned Shell fish.* The second biggest oil spill in the U.S. happened where I boat. This year*the*fin and Furr guys opened a commercial shrimp season the first since 91.* Shrimp being bottom feeders. *I suppose the toxcity would show up in them first. Every thing settles to the bottom.* Kind of make me wonder how toxic these oil spills really are. Who knows better safe than sorry I guess.
*

SD

-- Edited by skipperdude on Thursday 15th of July 2010 12:25:45 PM

-- Edited by skipperdude on Thursday 15th of July 2010 12:51:25 PM

Another angle might be that the businessmen who have invested a ton of money in boatyards which*are forced to comply with stringent but necessary enviromental standards have an interest in seeing that their investment is not wasted because local governments provide taxpayer funded public facilities that are not subject to the same standards.

There's no tree hugging in that equation.

skipperdude wrote:
But I don't have to like it.

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No, you don't.* It would certainly be more convenient if I could dump my used antifreeze down the storm drain and my old engine oil and old paint overthe side of the boat and pump out my holding tank in the marina or out in the bay.* It would be nice if the dive service in our marina could still wipe down the bottom of our boat in the slip when they change the zincs.* If* I look at from my own selfish perspective, I don't like the regulations that prevent any of these things from happening.

If I look at it from the perspective of the people who earn their living, directly or indirectly, from water that needs to be as pollutant-free as possible to support the fish and shellfish they're growing and harvesting, I don't mind being a bit inconvenienced or paying a bit more for a haul out or whatever.

We support our local marine businesses by buying their products and services.* Sure, we could get a radio for a few bucks cheaper on the internet, but we'd rather help Jerry Ryder make a decent living with his San Juan Elecronics in Bellingnam, so we spend a little more.* In return, I get things like expert advice and prompt service when I need it.* Magnify that example up real big, and I'm happy to do things that, while they may be a little less convenient or a bit more expensive for me, help the folks in the fishing industry (and whale watch industry and fishing resort industry and all the industries that support these things).

It's all about connections.* It's easy to pooh-pooh regulations when all they do from your point of view is make your life seem harder.* But if you put yourself in the shoes of the people the reguations are intended to help, the picture changes a bit.

I'm not saying that every regulation and law is great.* Many of them seem to have been created simply to give the people who created them something to do.* But when it comes to doing things that help preserve other people's ability to pursue their careers, make a living, and support their families, the actions--- whether by regulation or just common sense--- are well worth the slight inconvenience or extra cost they may impose on me.* And since I believe that my not polluting the water, in this case, in the long run helps a bunch of other people stay productive, I don't "not like" the regulations.

But that's just me.* Other people feel the opposite.

*

skipperdude wrote:*I'm in the back waters. All this stuff just has not gotten to us yet.

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*Alaska has*been paying a steep price*to keep it away since '64.

Not sure I get that.

This state runs on oil from the north slope.
I get a check every year for about a grand. Pays 1/2 my slip fees.

God I love it here.

SD

ADEC has always sold out to the highest corporate bidder. The only time they really make any effort is when there is federal cash attached. That entire portion of Whittier that is unuseable hasn't been a problem for the State has it? That's because there is no federal money available.

I used to watch cruise ships docked at Valdez City Dock from the deck of my tanker at the oil terminal and wonder why they were allowed to fill the valley with a blue haze of generator exhaust when we got slapped instantly with heavy fines whenever one of our boilers smoked nearly imperceptibly for a moment. When I queried the guardians in Juneau they could only respond that funds had been cut and they no longer monitored cruise ships in Valdez. This was at a time of record oil revenues, which happened to coincide with a sharp spike in cruise ship traffic ... just a coincidence I am sure.


http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2010/04/articles/pollution-1/alaska-reduces-taxes-and-relaxes-pollution-standards-for-bullying-cruise-lines/

I always got a small chuckle out of the fact that when approaching any city in SE by sea, the first sign of civilization was the appearance of the Federal building or State office building rising above the treeline. While I love Alaska's geography and all that it offers, I, like many others who have lived and worked there but never drank the permanent fund Kool-Aid (along with many who do) laughingly refer to Alaska as being "Appalachia by the Sea" due in part to its environmental practices and dependancy on the public teat that puts politics and graft ahead of the environment.

Remember it was Alyeska's and BP's disinterest in the Alaskan environment and the State's turning of a blind eye that made the PWS spill much worse than it might have been. The handful of people who tried to shine a light on that unholy alliance were run out of town or worse, as tree huggers and outside sh*t disturbers. It is the land of contradictions for sure but undeniably blessed with all the best the mountains and sea have to offer.

-- Edited by RickB on Thursday 15th of July 2010 05:08:50 PM

Forgive me if I've missed the point. I thought we were crying over the loss of our tidal grids. Cheap, easy, do-it-yourself. I understand our loss. But, I find it hard to believe that any one of us is willing to give up the water quality necessary to sustain life, and therefore all that we we love about our water borne lifestyle. At the very least, we contribute to water degradation with our diesel exhaust and the carbons and acids within. I don't deny that I do this, but I can't and won't deny that I do this. Who would I be fooling?

As with most things like this, it's not the tidal grids themselves that are "evil." It's just a platform next to a dock. The concern is the people who use them. If all users took all the necessary measures to catch everything they scraped off their boats or spilled and then hauled this stuff away before the next incoming tide, a tidal grid would be as environmentally friendly as a yard.

The problem is that the construction of a tidal grid makes it hard to come up with a means to catch everything. That plus the fact that tidal grids are often seen as a low-cost way for a boater to clean and paint the bottom tends to attract people who are less likely to take the time to ensure that nothing ends up in the water.

On our first floatplane trip to SE Alaska in 1985 or thereabouts we stopped in Wrangell. There was--- and maybe still is--- a tidal grid not far from the big seaplane float in the harbor. Somewhere I have a photo I took of a local fishing boat on the grid when the tide was out. It was a picturesque scene which is why I took the shot.

But the bottom around the grid was a dead zone of old buckets, used oil and fuel filters, huge splashes of discarded bottom paint, and mounds of hull scrapings. The people who were working on the boat had driven a pickup down onto the harbor bottom next to the grid. A couple of people were scraping the bottom of the boat, and a third person was lying on a tarp under the pickup changing its oil. As I watched he simply pulled the drain plug and let the oil flow out onto the seabed. Given the color of the bottom around the grid, this was probably a common practice.

So I don't really take much issue with the trend to shut down the grids.

It's easy to pooh-pooh regulations when all they do from your point of view is make your life seem harder. But if you put yourself in the shoes of the people the reguations are intended to help, the picture changes a bit.

So you are in favor of Mrs Obummer deciding on your DIET?

FF wrote:

So you are in favor of Mrs Obummer deciding on your DIET?

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As much as some are letting talk radio think for them.

*

Carey wrote:But, I find it hard to believe that any one of us is willing to give up the water quality necessary to sustain life, and therefore all that we we love about our water borne lifestyle.

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Believe it or not, not everyone shares your feelings about this and some of the worst offenders are those who are closest to the resource they help destroy.

Read Marin's description of the grid at Wrangell. That same scene used to be repeated at every village and cannery along the coast. It is the reason we no longer have those grids available in many places.

We are recreational users of the marine environment and its resources, we have the money and the time to wax lyrical about it and many of us expect the same from those who* fight that same environment to survive.*That doesn't justify their misuse but don't ever forget that*no matter how noble the*North Pacific fisherman might seem on television, he will fight to the death to take the last fish from the sea and do whatever needs doing to keep his boat afloat long enough to find it.*

*

Rick,
You are so right on with your comments. I have seen*so many things*happen with the cruise lines up here.
*They do bully. The cruise lines once had a port of call in Seward Ak untill regulations were imposed simple things like dumping wast water and taxes to support the industry in Seward. They offered the city of Whittier (Population 180) the chance for a port of call.
The powers that be snapped it up like a hungry dog. Signing a deal that permitted no tax and the abillity to take on all the water it needed from the resevore at Whittier.( in Seward they had to pay for water) Whittier has*Some of the finest tasting water to be had. *Pure glacier melt.
The city assumed they would be able to generate income from a cruise ship dock in the town. The cruise co's. dumped Seward and built a nice new dock in Whittier. Now the ships come in and the cruisers are offloaded and loaded onto rail cars* and busses*to be hauled off to pre set destinations on a schedule that does not permit anyone a moment in Whittier.
*Alaska has 3 industries Oil, Tourism And fishing.
Show me the money.*That's what it's all about. The cruise ships threaten to slow down and the state caves. Cutting taxes and reducing regulations.
It's all about the bottom line.
A steep price indeed.
Alaska is remote. South east is the only part that can be reached by the lower 48*boaters. The rest of the state is the Alcan,*air or sea.*
The whole state only has 3 highways The Seward the Parks and the Glenn. 698,000*people in a state half the size of the lower 48.

That is why we still have tide grids.
*I for one will not abuse it. I just want to change my zincs.

SD

Back to the topic of the GRID!* There are two grid in the Everett Area, Marysville, a friend uses every year and one on the Snohomish river the commercial use.* Both have poles you tie you boat to, and as the boat comes out of the water they block the hull. *Since we are planning to head up to Alaska the chances are we may have to use a grid.* That is why I want to added twin bilge keels so the boat can sit flat on the hard.

Also, trim the boat to the side with the support to make sure the boat leans against the supports, and block as the tide goes*out.***Make sure you bring you high top boots. My freinds boat has a fat stern so it sits on the grid*but we have make sure the props and rudder *are between the beams.*

So why not hire a diver to change the zincs?*******



*

Divers cost $180.00.
The harbor charges a buck a foot.
Plus not many divers around that will dive in the harbor. Or any divers at all for that matter.
There is only 4 marinas that can be accessed by road. Whittier, Valdez, Seward and Homer all are at least 200 miles apart. Anchorage doesn't have a Marina. Valdez is 8 hours by road
Seward is 2 hours from Whittier. Homer is 4 hours.

Oil, (Messes with the dry suit a must have in Alaskan waters) Stray current, sewage. So it's the Tide grid. I could have her hauled for about $600.00
Call me cheep.**
Last year I floated her in a shallow bay let the tide go out and she just layed on her side. That worked but I couldn't get to the zincs on the bilge keels on the side she lay on. Plus that takes a whole weekend to get to where the bay is and back. The grid only take high to high.

SD

-- Edited by skipperdude on Friday 16th of July 2010 11:27:16 AM

FF wrote:

It's easy to pooh-pooh regulations when all they do from your point of view is make your life seem harder. But if you put yourself in the shoes of the people the reguations are intended to help, the picture changes a bit.

So you are in favor of Mrs Obummer deciding on your DIET?

Click to expand...

You have to apply regulations with common sense.* Buying into every regulation or proposed regulation just because someone higher up the ladder than you thought of it is as senseless as having no reguations at all.* In the case of a lot of the environmental regulations, they make sense because what happens without them--- people acting out of greed and water quality, errosion, air pollution, etc. be damned-- is very obviously detrimental.

Regulations to control what we do simply for the sake of controlling us, or to trying to impose a "mother knows best" rule on people who can make their own choices--- whether or not to eat a Big Mac, for example--- are another matter.

I suppose one could step WAY back and look at the really big picture and make the case that eating junk food or low-nutrition food causes an increase in health problems which in turn causes private and government health care costs to go up which hits all of us in the pocket book, contributes to the national debt, etc.

But I think that's a harder or at least less obvious*connection to make than the one where dumping chemicals and copper paint and oil and other crap into the water kills the fish and shellfish and puts the people who's living depends on them out of work.

*

I'm in Alaska now. the only grid I've seen in use is at Juneau, even though they are all over the place.* The commercial guys need to do a more time intensive effort so use the yards. The notion that AK has sold out more than any other state is just a political view and statement. The fight for funds happens in every state. Name me a state and I will give you a bunch of pandering politicos. I've had the opportunity to spend time with some people who take commerical fishing very seriously and clearly understand the relationship between overfishing, the environment and sustainable profits. - this trip has been a real eye opener in that respect. I've yet to see where the cruise ships are controlling the locals. just the reverse in fact with the various Indian groups doing quite well.

Bottom line, the locals as usual know a lot more about what is going here than a*bunch of eastern liberals.

So back to the grids, use them Dude and work fast!

sunchaser wrote:

Bottom line, the locals as usual know a lot more about what is going here than a*bunch of eastern liberals.

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Anyone read any comments on this topic from "eastern liberals"?


-- Edited by RickB on Saturday 17th of July 2010 11:48:34 AM

sunchaser wrote:

Bottom line, the locals as usual know a lot more about what is going here than a*bunch of eastern liberals.

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I don't argue with the notion that locals generally know more about what's going on in their own neighborhoods than people outside the areas, but I'm curious as to how eastern liberals are different than Washington (state) liberals, Calfornia liberals, or Hawaii liberals.

And how do you define "eastern?"* Europe is east of us, so are we talking about German liberals, French liberals, and British liberals?*** Or are you using "eastern" in its more global nature, so you're talking about Indian (from India) liberals, Pakistani liberals, and Sri Lankan liberals.* And it that is what you mean, is it proper to exclude Chinese liberals, Japanese liberals, and Korean liberals from the "eastern" liberal crowd?

So you need to be a more specific when you compare people in Alaska to "eastern" liberals because we might draw the wrong conclusions.* Are you denigrating the people in Boston, the people in Stoke-on-Trent, the people in Mumbai, or the people in Xiamen?

See the problem?

What is it George Bernard Shaw said--- "The single greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."* So be clear in your meaning.



*

You've got a point there, Marin. When I was working on processors in the Bering Sea and Bristol Bay and on tugs and coastal freighters in the Aleutians, we sure got tired of those eastern liberals from Prince William Sound and Southeast butting in.

Hey Skipperdude, are you one of those "easten liberals" because you are east of
Anchorage and Dutch or are you OK because you're west of Juneau? Whenever I was in Sitka the locals sure didn't like the libs from Ketchikan either ... it's getting so you don't know whether to box the compass or a liberal tree hugger.

So Sunchaser, how long have you been subsistence fishing and cashing your permanent fund check?

Eastern liberals are those who*eat quiche and enjoy it. God you liberals are sensitive!

I love quiche.

Some of the best I've ever had was made with salmon netted only minutes before in Bristol Bay. The native Alaskan liberal cooks (from SE Alaska though) on the Alaska ferries also made some pretty darn good quiche too. They made it with local seafood and Matanuska Valley cheese.

While you are playing sailorman up there you should ask Sarah for her rhubarb moose quiche recipe.





-- Edited by RickB on Saturday 17th of July 2010 07:51:18 PM

RickI try to convince myself that all of us who enjoy this special resource are of the same mind when it comes to protecting that which we love. But... you remind me that I am as always naive. So many of my avid fishermen friends are also fish hogs, taking more than their share, just because they can. It's the same old mindset that my little transgression is nothing in the big picture. Thanks for the reminder Rick.
Carey

sunchaser wrote:

*

Eastern liberals are those who*eat quiche and enjoy it. God you liberals are sensitive!

*

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Okay, that's cool.* But what defines a western liberal?

*