What is this ?

I bought a 1988 40' sundeck trawler and found this in the v-berth.
It's nicely finished in thick teak ply and is 8 feet long when the two parts are bolted together.

you could scare people with it. Looks like a pacific island war club. Haa Haa

If not I have no idea

SD

It looks like a kid's project, judging from the way the joint was made.
Give it back to the previous owner, the kid may be 30 by now!

-- Edited by Marc1 on Wednesday 4th of November 2009 06:33:00 PM

Might it be a template. Does it fit the curvature of some place in the interior of the hull?

I can't believe you found this on your boat! It's a 5th century Fanerisis (probably a copy) that is inserted into the Wingwam Spider on reed boats. These boats were made along the shores of Lake Titicaca, in Peru, about 1600 years ago and continue to be made today by the Indian inhabitants. Balsa is the material of choice and I believe Thor Heyerdahl* had one on his raft, Kon Tiki.

Why the Fanerisis would find its way to your boat is a mystery. Was the original owner of your boat an archaeologist?

No, a Fanerisis has a much larger hook on the blade and the connecting block is on the other side of the handle and was much more sophisticated in design. Plus a Fanerisis always has a carved image of the water god on the blade and a geometric symbol an the shaft designating whether it's made for a right-hand or left-hand Wingwam Spider. This is really basic stuff, Walt. I can't believe you didn't know it.

The device is clearly a pultuk, in essence a sort of hockey stick, used by the Seminole Indians in what is now Florida. After they acquired horses from the Spanish, they developed a game very simliar to polo but played on horseback since the only relatively open spaces they had were flooded grasslands. The grass was cut back by the women to make an oval playing area about 200 yards long and 100 yards wide. The ball was about the size of a basketball but woven from reeds and sticks so it would float. The hook on the blade of the pultuk was slid into a thong loop around the horse's head to make it easier to transport.

The pultuk you found on your boat is a very crude copy. The originals were made of a single piece of wood and rather heavy, hence the need to hang one end of it from the horse on the way to and from the playing "field."

I had 3 of them on my old 1971 Trojan 36 woodie. One was a spare and the other 2 were used to support the freaxis pipe leading from the engine room to the Raritan electric head outlet. The engines ingested the Raritan solid waste from the effluent flowing through the freaxis pipe reactor.* Once holding tanks were mandated I threw out the freaxis pipe and the teak supports with resultant improved engine performance.

Looks like a brace of some type. Does the lid over the sundeck flex with a dingy on top? or a sunbather? The little lip catch looks like it fits onto something with a fiberglass edge.

It looks like a prop for something. I had something similar made to keep the fwd berth on Play d'eau in its lifetd position when opened up.

You should know better than to post something like this. It is a device that causes idle minds to go into all kinds of contortions!

Moonstruck

Don - The only minds perusing the boating sites are indeed idle, now I gotta get back to work!

Im not sure what it is but I do see similar items from time to time in Taiwan, we use them to push electrcal wires out of the way when we take the boats to the harbor for shipping

Steve

oh come on people........

its the insert to form the keel on a inflatable dinghy... goes under the floor boards.

I'll buy that !
Thank you.