When we were at Burnett Inlet living on the sail boat Kay was 3 and 4 and Christy 7 and 8. We had the CAAJACK, our sail boat tied on the inside of the hatcheries big float. Our boat was named CAAJACK because that was the first initial of each of our children in order of age: Cheryl, Asha, Anu, Jenny, Andy, Christy, and Kay. We had a ramp up to the bottom of the two stair wooden ladder that hung over the side of the boat. One Sunday afternoon we were all on the boat and Kay and Christy wanted to go out on the float. They loved to play there. Kay used to lay on the side of the float with her head and shoulders over the side and she fished stuff out of the water with her hands. One day she had several little clear jelly fish on the float beside her. If it floated buy she had it. Sometimes she had long pieces of kelp. And Christy had her fish pole and caught lots of fish from that float. I kept wondering if she was going to hook up a big halibut. She didn’t but she sure could have.
The hatchery manager’s son, Jason, was a year older than Christy so he spent a lot of time on the float too. He and Christy caught lots of sand sharks. They are about 2 to 3 feet long and had a really sharp set of teeth. The kids had been warned about them and never had an accident with them but they sure caught and killed a lot of them. Christy would haul one in and Jason would take it off the hook and he liked to stab them.
Anyway, this one Sunday afternoon the girls want out of the boat and on the float. They always had to put on their lifejackets anytime they got out of the inside of the boat. Christy climbed off the boat first and Kay was following. She didn’t turn around to go down the stairs backwards that time. Instead she went down facing out and slipped. She fell down between the boat and the ramp and landed in the water. We heard a splash and a scream so we both piled up and out of the boat. When Kay went down the edge of that ramp caught her right under the nose. She was in the water when I got there. I pulled her out and couldn’t believe what she looked like. It was absolutely heart breaking to see this beautiful little girl with her nose pushed half way to her left eye. Her whole nose was a half inch off center and ¼ to ½ inch higher than it was supposed to. Thank God she had her lifejacket on.
Sue brought up a towel and we got Kay dried off and we went up to the hatchery bunkhouse. We were going to call Ketchikan for a charter plane to come get us for a doctor, but Tod’s oldest son and his fiancé were there. When someone heard our story they told us that Tod’s son’s fiancé was a doctor. We called her and she examined Kay and with her fingers she pushed the nose around and decided that it wasn’t broken. Her upper lip was swollen way up with all black inside. And after that gal manipulated her nose a bit it was much straighter. She didn’t think that the doctor in town would be able to do anything more for Kay so we didn’t go. I remember saying that Kay didn’t even look like herself. Kay must have heard that said more than once. After about three days I remember her coming to me with tears asking, “Dad, when am I going to look like me again?” It was absolutely amazing to see how fast she healed up. Within 10 days you couldn’t tell that anything had happened.
We had lots of Chum and Pink salmon swimming around in the bay. That hatchery produced 40 million eggs of each type. The returning adults mill around the mouth of the creek for several days before starting up. During that time for about an acre of salt water around the mouth of the creek it just gets black with fish. It was fun to take a fish pole and catch some. Christy liked to go with dad and one day the two of us were in my little 12’ skiff fishing when I saw this pink salmon jumping across the water right at us. He kept coming and jumped right over the side of the boat and landed on my seat. I always sat sideways on the seat for running the outboard and that is how I was then, With one leg in front and the other behind the seat. The fish slid on that seat and hit me right in the you know whats. Then he fell in the back of the boat and splashed water all over me. I reached down and grabbed him just ahead of the tail and said, “I’m not ready for you yet!” as I threw him back in the water. Christy really laughed and over the years since we have looked at each other with a knowing look anytime someone says, “They were so thick they were jumping in the boat!” We really had that happen!
That sail boat we lived on had a ferro-cement hull. That is very solid stuff up to a point. The boat weighed 35 tons. The girls had their own stateroom amidships. Our stateroom was in the stern. We could talk back and fourth if we spoke up. But towards the middle of the run when there were lots of fish milling around we could actually hear fish swimming into, and hitting the boat hull. It took a while before we realized what it was that we were hearing. When we would hear one or two someone would say, “There goes another flat nosed fish!” I don’t remember who came up with that we all sure laughed. Sometimes we would hear a whole school hit the boat. We could even feel the boat move when a bunch of them hit and spooked and turned all at once. They would actually make that 35 ton boat rock a little. Then someone would say, “There is a whole school of flatnoses!”
Friday, February 26, 2010
Burnett Inlet Hatchery
I have been trying to decide if I should keep some organization to what stories I tell and it probably would make more sense if I did but I am not going to. It makes me give a little more background each time but I would still rather just talk about something when I am thinking about it.
Today I am going to talk about when I was working at Burnett Inlet Hatchery. I was on our sailboat project in California and I called Tod Jones, the boss at the hatchery. I called him hoping to get a job for Andy. He told me that he didn’t have anything for him right then but would in the summer if Andy was still interested. But he did have something for me. They had two big aluminum projects coming up and wanted to hire me as an independent contractor to come out and build two big raceways and a 260 foot fish ladder. I had been Mister Mom for 3 years and was definitely ready to get back to work. Not that I hadn’t been working. That sailboat project and two little kids were lots more work than most men do, and I wanted to get back to something easier.
I see that I have gotten a bit more technical than some of you might like. If so skip down to the last few paragraphs for the fish story.
Tod sent me the blueprints of the two raceways they wanted me to build. I was to decide how to make them and order the materials. As I was looking at the prints I thought that there was not nearly enough support for the sides of these tanks. I mentioned it to Todd and he felt the same thing and wanted me to talk to the engineers that had drawn the plans. I did and he told me that he had another engineering firm go over his stuff and told me that according to their figures the sides of those tanks should not bow out more than 1/8 of an inch when filled with water.
OK, they are the engineers. These raceways were tanks, open at the top, 12’ wide, 5’ deep and 48’ long they were made out of ¼” aluminum plate. I built them as specified and I bowed the sides in that 1/8th inch so they would be strait when full of water. Then I went about putting together the fish ladder. That consisted of both using used aluminum sections that they had on site and new material. It was an 8’wide, 4’ deep trough, 260’ long with several bends. There were baffles about every 6’ so that when this ladder was in operation it was full of water running down the hill in a series of 6’ by 8’ pools of water so that the fish could swim up.
We had about 60 feet of elevation we need the fish to swim up. It started down at the low water mark and then came up the hill and across and over to the hatchery building. It went back under the building, among the pilings that held the building up, and then up along side the raceways. This all had to be completed before the water was put in the raceways. For some reason I was not at the hatchery when they first filled it with water. But I sure heard about it!
When they had a foot of water in the raceways the sides were bowed out about 3 inches. They kept filling and by the time they had two and a half feet of water they were propping sides with boards and they were out about a foot and a half. They finally stopped filling because it was obvious that if they kept filling and their boards slipped the sides would go all the way to the deck. Why they didn’t quit at the first foot is beyond me.
I had two tracks that had to be perfectly strait and put down the sides of each raceway. This was for a crowder to travel back and fourth. The crowder was what they used to get all the salmon crowded up against the harvesting area. Anyway, I ordered enough big heavy aluminum channel to run down both sides of the raceway. When I got them, about 2 weeks later, I laid these 12” by 8” by 25’ long channels end to end and welded them together. Then I welded a ¼’ plate of aluminum the full length to make a box out of the channel. Then I pulled the stretched sides of the raceways into the inside and jacked up the boxes I had build and forcing the sides to the channel, welded it all together. That gave significantly more support than what the engineers had specified. I wanted to go back to the engineers but the boss didn’t.
Anyway, when we filled it this time the sides still bowed out about 3 inches but at least we could fill it. Then, with it full of water, I could weld the tracks on the sides for the crowders and they would be straight. We had lost 2 weeks waiting for the heavy channel and by this time we had fish coming up the ladder. I was welding on the top edge of the raceways for a day and a half with hundreds of fish just inches away. I thought we would have a bunch of blind fish but as far as I could tell it didn’t affect them. However, several times a fish would jump and knock my welding hood in the water.
I thought my job was about done but the boss said, “Oh, by the way, we want you to weld up some incubators for us. This was the first I had heard about this. When they told me what it was it sounded fine. They wanted tanks made that were 2’ by 2’ by 3’ that were constructed out of 3/16th aluminum with some plumbing parts and a removable screen on one side and a baffle. They had two already made that I could copy and they had already ordered the aluminum plate sheared to size. Great! Lets get to work. And then they told me how many they wanted made.
They wanted 250 of them and the fish were already there! I asked how long it took them to make the two first ones and it took them 2 days each to make them and I was suppose to make 250 in the next few weeks. Well, I worked up a system and working 10 hours a day I got between 6 and 8 per day. I did get that job done but they had about half of them filled with millions of fish eggs while I was still making more.
One Saturday we had a really nice sunny day and everyone at the hatchery went out fishing. They all stopped by to tell me where they were going and when they planned to be back because I was working. At about 10 o-clock I decided that I wanted a fish too. I normally took a coffee break about then so this day I went down to the boat (Sue and the girls and I were living on the sailboat then) and got a fish pole. I jigged up a scrap fish from under the float and filleted it and put a fillet on a hook that was attached to a string that was long enough to reach the bottom out in the middle of the channel in front of the hatchery. I had a short piece of chain for a sinker and a one gallon milk jug on the other end of the string. I took my skiff and put this out right in front of the hatchery. Then I went back to work.
Every few minutes I would just look up from my welding to see if my milk jug was still there. Pretty soon it disappeared. I put down my welding and got in my skiff. I chased down the milk jug and pulled in the string. Attached to the other end was a 200 pound halibut! I cleaned it and put it on the dock with the white side up and left it until the other fisherman came back. As it turned out I was the only one that caught a halibut that day and I worked a 10 hour day!
One of the girls that worked there laid down beside that fish so that she could have her picture taken with it. It was more than a foot longer than she was. I filleted the fish and we all shared it. I usually don’t like to keep fish that big because I don’t think they are as good as the smaller ones and only the females get that big. But we hadn’t had much fish and we all like it and I was really pretty busy. So that was fun.
Today I am going to talk about when I was working at Burnett Inlet Hatchery. I was on our sailboat project in California and I called Tod Jones, the boss at the hatchery. I called him hoping to get a job for Andy. He told me that he didn’t have anything for him right then but would in the summer if Andy was still interested. But he did have something for me. They had two big aluminum projects coming up and wanted to hire me as an independent contractor to come out and build two big raceways and a 260 foot fish ladder. I had been Mister Mom for 3 years and was definitely ready to get back to work. Not that I hadn’t been working. That sailboat project and two little kids were lots more work than most men do, and I wanted to get back to something easier.
I see that I have gotten a bit more technical than some of you might like. If so skip down to the last few paragraphs for the fish story.
Tod sent me the blueprints of the two raceways they wanted me to build. I was to decide how to make them and order the materials. As I was looking at the prints I thought that there was not nearly enough support for the sides of these tanks. I mentioned it to Todd and he felt the same thing and wanted me to talk to the engineers that had drawn the plans. I did and he told me that he had another engineering firm go over his stuff and told me that according to their figures the sides of those tanks should not bow out more than 1/8 of an inch when filled with water.
OK, they are the engineers. These raceways were tanks, open at the top, 12’ wide, 5’ deep and 48’ long they were made out of ¼” aluminum plate. I built them as specified and I bowed the sides in that 1/8th inch so they would be strait when full of water. Then I went about putting together the fish ladder. That consisted of both using used aluminum sections that they had on site and new material. It was an 8’wide, 4’ deep trough, 260’ long with several bends. There were baffles about every 6’ so that when this ladder was in operation it was full of water running down the hill in a series of 6’ by 8’ pools of water so that the fish could swim up.
We had about 60 feet of elevation we need the fish to swim up. It started down at the low water mark and then came up the hill and across and over to the hatchery building. It went back under the building, among the pilings that held the building up, and then up along side the raceways. This all had to be completed before the water was put in the raceways. For some reason I was not at the hatchery when they first filled it with water. But I sure heard about it!
When they had a foot of water in the raceways the sides were bowed out about 3 inches. They kept filling and by the time they had two and a half feet of water they were propping sides with boards and they were out about a foot and a half. They finally stopped filling because it was obvious that if they kept filling and their boards slipped the sides would go all the way to the deck. Why they didn’t quit at the first foot is beyond me.
I had two tracks that had to be perfectly strait and put down the sides of each raceway. This was for a crowder to travel back and fourth. The crowder was what they used to get all the salmon crowded up against the harvesting area. Anyway, I ordered enough big heavy aluminum channel to run down both sides of the raceway. When I got them, about 2 weeks later, I laid these 12” by 8” by 25’ long channels end to end and welded them together. Then I welded a ¼’ plate of aluminum the full length to make a box out of the channel. Then I pulled the stretched sides of the raceways into the inside and jacked up the boxes I had build and forcing the sides to the channel, welded it all together. That gave significantly more support than what the engineers had specified. I wanted to go back to the engineers but the boss didn’t.
Anyway, when we filled it this time the sides still bowed out about 3 inches but at least we could fill it. Then, with it full of water, I could weld the tracks on the sides for the crowders and they would be straight. We had lost 2 weeks waiting for the heavy channel and by this time we had fish coming up the ladder. I was welding on the top edge of the raceways for a day and a half with hundreds of fish just inches away. I thought we would have a bunch of blind fish but as far as I could tell it didn’t affect them. However, several times a fish would jump and knock my welding hood in the water.
I thought my job was about done but the boss said, “Oh, by the way, we want you to weld up some incubators for us. This was the first I had heard about this. When they told me what it was it sounded fine. They wanted tanks made that were 2’ by 2’ by 3’ that were constructed out of 3/16th aluminum with some plumbing parts and a removable screen on one side and a baffle. They had two already made that I could copy and they had already ordered the aluminum plate sheared to size. Great! Lets get to work. And then they told me how many they wanted made.
They wanted 250 of them and the fish were already there! I asked how long it took them to make the two first ones and it took them 2 days each to make them and I was suppose to make 250 in the next few weeks. Well, I worked up a system and working 10 hours a day I got between 6 and 8 per day. I did get that job done but they had about half of them filled with millions of fish eggs while I was still making more.
One Saturday we had a really nice sunny day and everyone at the hatchery went out fishing. They all stopped by to tell me where they were going and when they planned to be back because I was working. At about 10 o-clock I decided that I wanted a fish too. I normally took a coffee break about then so this day I went down to the boat (Sue and the girls and I were living on the sailboat then) and got a fish pole. I jigged up a scrap fish from under the float and filleted it and put a fillet on a hook that was attached to a string that was long enough to reach the bottom out in the middle of the channel in front of the hatchery. I had a short piece of chain for a sinker and a one gallon milk jug on the other end of the string. I took my skiff and put this out right in front of the hatchery. Then I went back to work.
Every few minutes I would just look up from my welding to see if my milk jug was still there. Pretty soon it disappeared. I put down my welding and got in my skiff. I chased down the milk jug and pulled in the string. Attached to the other end was a 200 pound halibut! I cleaned it and put it on the dock with the white side up and left it until the other fisherman came back. As it turned out I was the only one that caught a halibut that day and I worked a 10 hour day!
One of the girls that worked there laid down beside that fish so that she could have her picture taken with it. It was more than a foot longer than she was. I filleted the fish and we all shared it. I usually don’t like to keep fish that big because I don’t think they are as good as the smaller ones and only the females get that big. But we hadn’t had much fish and we all like it and I was really pretty busy. So that was fun.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Oyster Farm and big Trees
Sue and I started an oyster farm on the west side of Etolin Island. It was a little closer to Wrangell than Ketchikan. We spent a couple years getting all the permits in place and oysters up and growing and ready to sell. That was an interesting time in out lives. It was completely remote. There are no roads even close to us. It was only boats or airplanes to get around.
The method we were using to grow our oysters was floating rafts. I made rafts using 3” X 10” X 23’ cedar timbers. I put two of them parallel with two more just 4’ long across the ends and covered it with a plastic mesh. Then turned the raft over so that the mesh was on the bottom and we filled the inside with oysters. I was also building buildings on the permitted land. This all took lots of lumber.
In Alaska residents are allowed 10,000 board feet of timber from the US Forest Service each year. I went into the Wrangell Forest Service office to apply for a permit and was told that I could not use the timber for any commercial purposes. Well, that is what I wanted to do so what could I do? The forest Ranger told me that they had a program on the books for years and they were going to do away with it soon but it was just for this purpose. So he wrote me out a small timber sale. I bought 5 spruce trees and 25 cedar trees for $78. He gave me an area about 8 miles from our farm that was about a mile and a half along the water's edge and I was to stay within 200 feet of the beach. It was right up a pretty well protected beach so I could get back and fourth pretty easily.
I cut all five spruce. I dropped them in the water and limbed them when the tide was out. Then as the tide came in it floated the log, all but the butt. Those butts were all between 3 1/2’ and 5’ in diameter and after I topped them at about 18” in diameter the logs were still mostly about 90’ long. So they were big trees and sometimes took some coaxing to get them off the beach so that I could get them to our beach and cut them into lumber at home. Usually when I tied a rope to the small end and pulled it back and fourth a few times with the boat it would come loose.
I had cut 10 of the cedar trees, all about the same size. They were usually a bit larger on the butt but not as tall as the spruce. I cut one that I could not get into the water. I finally cut a 25 foot log off the bottom. My 42" bar would not go clear through where I cut it off. I had to finish the cut from the other side. So that 25 foot log was over 4 feet in diameter at the small end. I still got a good 65 foot log to take back and planned to come back later to cut the big log into boards where it was.
Those big trees are really something to fall. And I was getting to feel pretty confident. I had a book to tell me what to watch for and how to do things to make the tree go where you want it. I had been raining for a couple weeks so I had stayed home and cut lumber and made rafts then but one day the sun came out and looked like a good day to go back to cut another tree or two.
I took my skiff out to the area I was to take my trees and I went to a big cedar that I had been looking at for some time. It was only about 3 ½ feet but went up straight with no limbs for about 50 feet. It looked more like a spruce. But it was up a very steep hillside and about 100 back from the water. I had read that if you cut your notch right and then put a smaller piece of a limb in the notch in just such a way then you cut the tree loose from the back side the notch would close up pinching the limb and making it roll and the butt would jump in the same direction as the rest of the tree.
This hillside was steep enough that I thought if I tried this I could probably get the bottom almost to the waters edge. So I cleared out around the bottom of the tree and got myself an escape route so I could get away and started cutting. Everything went just as it was suppose to until the butt hit the hillside about half way down the hill. When the butt hit it dug in instead of sliding to the bottom as I had hoped. It hit with a tremendous thump that shook the entire hillside. Then the top fell down and hit the water but the bottom was still about 50 feet up the hill and the tree broke in the middle and when those pieces came down there was another big thump.
I heard something behind me and turned around to look up the hill and the trees were all waiving like the wind was blowing hard, but there was no wind. About that time a big long log, what had been a standing dead tree, came shooting down the hill about 15 feet from where I was standing. It had started quite a ways up and was really traveling when it went past me. It hit little ledge I was on which launched this 80’ long snag up and it hit another big cedar tree next to the water about 40 feet up. It hit that tree hard enough to break it in half and then all hell broke loose.
There must have been 50 big trees and all the little stuff and undergrowth that came sliding down off that hillside. When it started I jumped up on the stump of the tree I had cut and faced uphill. I figured I had only one jump because there was nowhere to run. The trees came down both sides of me and when it all stopped I was still standing on the stump looking up and shaking. There was a small outcropping of rock just above me that split the direction of all those trees coming down. God was looking after me that day. It sure wasn't my planning that saved me.
To get to that tree I had tied my skiff quite a ways off to the side and then worked my way under brush and undergrowth to get to the tree. Now all the undergrowth was gone! In fact to get back to my skiff I walked on top of the downed trees half way back. It was a completely different looking hillside. If I had tied my skiff 10 feet closer it would have been pushed under water by all the trees coming down.
I didn’t get any lumber out of that either. The tree I wanted broke and splintered and the others were all so tangled up with the tops in the water on that steep hill that I was afraid to work on them. I also never went on any hillside to cut trees after a good soaking rain again.
The method we were using to grow our oysters was floating rafts. I made rafts using 3” X 10” X 23’ cedar timbers. I put two of them parallel with two more just 4’ long across the ends and covered it with a plastic mesh. Then turned the raft over so that the mesh was on the bottom and we filled the inside with oysters. I was also building buildings on the permitted land. This all took lots of lumber.
In Alaska residents are allowed 10,000 board feet of timber from the US Forest Service each year. I went into the Wrangell Forest Service office to apply for a permit and was told that I could not use the timber for any commercial purposes. Well, that is what I wanted to do so what could I do? The forest Ranger told me that they had a program on the books for years and they were going to do away with it soon but it was just for this purpose. So he wrote me out a small timber sale. I bought 5 spruce trees and 25 cedar trees for $78. He gave me an area about 8 miles from our farm that was about a mile and a half along the water's edge and I was to stay within 200 feet of the beach. It was right up a pretty well protected beach so I could get back and fourth pretty easily.
I cut all five spruce. I dropped them in the water and limbed them when the tide was out. Then as the tide came in it floated the log, all but the butt. Those butts were all between 3 1/2’ and 5’ in diameter and after I topped them at about 18” in diameter the logs were still mostly about 90’ long. So they were big trees and sometimes took some coaxing to get them off the beach so that I could get them to our beach and cut them into lumber at home. Usually when I tied a rope to the small end and pulled it back and fourth a few times with the boat it would come loose.
I had cut 10 of the cedar trees, all about the same size. They were usually a bit larger on the butt but not as tall as the spruce. I cut one that I could not get into the water. I finally cut a 25 foot log off the bottom. My 42" bar would not go clear through where I cut it off. I had to finish the cut from the other side. So that 25 foot log was over 4 feet in diameter at the small end. I still got a good 65 foot log to take back and planned to come back later to cut the big log into boards where it was.
Those big trees are really something to fall. And I was getting to feel pretty confident. I had a book to tell me what to watch for and how to do things to make the tree go where you want it. I had been raining for a couple weeks so I had stayed home and cut lumber and made rafts then but one day the sun came out and looked like a good day to go back to cut another tree or two.
I took my skiff out to the area I was to take my trees and I went to a big cedar that I had been looking at for some time. It was only about 3 ½ feet but went up straight with no limbs for about 50 feet. It looked more like a spruce. But it was up a very steep hillside and about 100 back from the water. I had read that if you cut your notch right and then put a smaller piece of a limb in the notch in just such a way then you cut the tree loose from the back side the notch would close up pinching the limb and making it roll and the butt would jump in the same direction as the rest of the tree.
This hillside was steep enough that I thought if I tried this I could probably get the bottom almost to the waters edge. So I cleared out around the bottom of the tree and got myself an escape route so I could get away and started cutting. Everything went just as it was suppose to until the butt hit the hillside about half way down the hill. When the butt hit it dug in instead of sliding to the bottom as I had hoped. It hit with a tremendous thump that shook the entire hillside. Then the top fell down and hit the water but the bottom was still about 50 feet up the hill and the tree broke in the middle and when those pieces came down there was another big thump.
I heard something behind me and turned around to look up the hill and the trees were all waiving like the wind was blowing hard, but there was no wind. About that time a big long log, what had been a standing dead tree, came shooting down the hill about 15 feet from where I was standing. It had started quite a ways up and was really traveling when it went past me. It hit little ledge I was on which launched this 80’ long snag up and it hit another big cedar tree next to the water about 40 feet up. It hit that tree hard enough to break it in half and then all hell broke loose.
There must have been 50 big trees and all the little stuff and undergrowth that came sliding down off that hillside. When it started I jumped up on the stump of the tree I had cut and faced uphill. I figured I had only one jump because there was nowhere to run. The trees came down both sides of me and when it all stopped I was still standing on the stump looking up and shaking. There was a small outcropping of rock just above me that split the direction of all those trees coming down. God was looking after me that day. It sure wasn't my planning that saved me.
To get to that tree I had tied my skiff quite a ways off to the side and then worked my way under brush and undergrowth to get to the tree. Now all the undergrowth was gone! In fact to get back to my skiff I walked on top of the downed trees half way back. It was a completely different looking hillside. If I had tied my skiff 10 feet closer it would have been pushed under water by all the trees coming down.
I didn’t get any lumber out of that either. The tree I wanted broke and splintered and the others were all so tangled up with the tops in the water on that steep hill that I was afraid to work on them. I also never went on any hillside to cut trees after a good soaking rain again.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Kalinin Bay Part 2
Let’s see, where was I? Oh Yeah, we were in that pickle. My boat had just flipped over.
I started gathering floating stuff up to take to the beach. I couldn’t find the 50 Cal ammo can that I had my emergency stuff in. It had my hand held VHF radio, flares, a nice Colt Python .357 mag, and fire starting stuff. I would have thought it would float but I couldn’t see it so I dove under water looking. Without a mask you can’t see very far and after searching for several minutes I gave up. I was tired so I was floating on my back heading to the beach paddling with my swim fins when another wave broke just wrong right at my feet. It broke unexpectedly in just such a way that it sprained my right ankle. I had sprained that ankle before and usually could make out but this time it was pretty bad. I couldn’t step on it.
Skip gathered up the stuff on the beach and we started to set up a camp just behind the beach. I opened up my dry suit to get my lighter out of my pocket but it wasn’t there! In those days I smoked a pipe and always carried a lighter with me. I filled it with lighter fluid just before leaving but I over filled it so I set it on the cup holder right beside the stairs going into the fo’c’s’le where the wood stove was heating the front half of the boat. I didn’t want it leaking lighter fluid on my leg inside that dry suit. Well it didn’t leak on my leg, but I did forget it.
So by now we had some wood gathered up, thanks Skip, and about 8 gallons of gas but nothing to light it with. I used an oar as a crutch so I could get around a bit. There was snow on the ground and I knew that shortly after we stopped moving around we were going to get cold in those dry suits. They were much better than most clothing but still were only ¼ inch think. The days are pretty short that time of year there and I could see that we only had about another hour of daylight left.
I knew that it was only about a 2 mile hike over the mountain to Kalinin Bay. I had hiked it a couple times before and wasn’t too bad so I decided that we should go as far as we could to get back to the boat. One thing that kept us both going was that I had taken 2 moose steaks out of the freezer for dinner.
We started out and Skip left the net on the ground. I said that net was worth more than the boat we had just lost and 10% of it was his. So he went back and got it. Those dry suits only had thin rubber feet on them to go inside swim fins and we could feel every rock and stick. At least the snow was soft and there was pretty good insulation against the cold.
We hadn’t gotten very far into the timber when it started getting pretty dark. As it was getting darker we were getting into thinner timber and more snow so we could see a bit. There was a bright moon out and the moon lit up the snow enough so we could keep going. I never had any trouble know where Skip was because about every other step he took that wad of net would hang up on something and he came up with all sorts of different exclamations some of them were pretty unique.
We got back to Kalinin Bay at about 11 PM and walked about a half mile along the side the bay to about where the Taku, my fishing boat, was anchored. But about then we had a bit of cloud cover and I couldn’t see the gray boat. We had to wait about 20 minutes before enough moonlight came through to see it. When I knew where it was for sure we swam out to it. Boy those steaks were good that night!
That was a Friday and that government office, I still can’t remember their name, would not be open until Monday so we went fishing the next day. I went across Salisbury Sound and in behind Klokachef Island. Sometimes there are fish in there and it is pretty calm water. As we were trolling through I noticed another big wad of net on the beach on the back side of the island. We pulled the fishing gear and I anchored in front of the net.
Skip didn’t like the idea of swimming ashore to get it. He was afraid on not being able to get back to the boat with the net. I had a 100 fathom hank of 5/8” polly rope on board and he tied one end around his waist and I fed out rope as he went. He gathered up the net and tied it on the rope as well as himself and I pulled him back. Now we had about 40 pounds of net and it was only Saturday. That gave us all day Sunday to think up how we could get more of it. I have a pilot’s license and decided that I could go buy a Champ or something with the money we got from the net we already had. Then I could fly those beaches and find lots of it and then go get it. There are several thousand miles of outside shoreline and the airplane would be perfect.
Sunday afternoon we headed to town with our 2 or 3 fish and 40# of net. Monday morning I still felt uncomfortable about just hauling all that net into that government office so I went armed with the ATA bulletin. When I got there I got some mighty funny looks and when I showed them the bulletin the guy read it a couple times and then took it in the back room. Pretty soon he came back out and said that these were just proposals and were not in effect. We were sure disappointed but not terribly surprised. I promised Skip that if it did ever become effective I would send him his share. I hauled that stuff around on the roof of my boat for a couple years before finally putting it in a dumpster.
Skip wasn’t making enough money for his obligations so he quit then. Can you imagine anyone quitting such an adventurous job??? As I remember he flew south from Sitka. Maybe I took him back to Wrangell because I remember that I had my 17 foot Boston Whaler and I am pretty sure I wasn’t towing them both. Because after Skip left I went back out to Kalinin Bay and with the 17 footer and that long hank of 5/8 polly rope. The 13 footer that had flipped was now way up the sand beach still upside down.
I anchored the 17 well outside the breakers (I may be a slow learner but I am not stupid and I was alone now) and swam in with the end of that rope. I thought I could just pick up the side of the boat and tip it back over but that little 13 footer is still HEAVY. I couldn’t even start it up. I found a log about 4” in diameter and 15 or 20 feet long and some other smaller drift stuff that I could use as a fulcrum. With that and some of those new words I learned from Skip I was able to get it turned over. Now I tied the end of that 5/8 rope to the towing eye and swam back out to the 17 footer.
The 13 was about 50 yards up the sand from the water and when I pulled on it with the 90 HP on the 17 footer it didn’t move. So I backed up and got a run at it. That didn’t do it so I backed up some more and really hit it. This time it broke free and by the time it hit the water’s edge it was going fast enough to be planning. I kept on going and was back to Kalinin Bay in no time.
I started gathering floating stuff up to take to the beach. I couldn’t find the 50 Cal ammo can that I had my emergency stuff in. It had my hand held VHF radio, flares, a nice Colt Python .357 mag, and fire starting stuff. I would have thought it would float but I couldn’t see it so I dove under water looking. Without a mask you can’t see very far and after searching for several minutes I gave up. I was tired so I was floating on my back heading to the beach paddling with my swim fins when another wave broke just wrong right at my feet. It broke unexpectedly in just such a way that it sprained my right ankle. I had sprained that ankle before and usually could make out but this time it was pretty bad. I couldn’t step on it.
Skip gathered up the stuff on the beach and we started to set up a camp just behind the beach. I opened up my dry suit to get my lighter out of my pocket but it wasn’t there! In those days I smoked a pipe and always carried a lighter with me. I filled it with lighter fluid just before leaving but I over filled it so I set it on the cup holder right beside the stairs going into the fo’c’s’le where the wood stove was heating the front half of the boat. I didn’t want it leaking lighter fluid on my leg inside that dry suit. Well it didn’t leak on my leg, but I did forget it.
So by now we had some wood gathered up, thanks Skip, and about 8 gallons of gas but nothing to light it with. I used an oar as a crutch so I could get around a bit. There was snow on the ground and I knew that shortly after we stopped moving around we were going to get cold in those dry suits. They were much better than most clothing but still were only ¼ inch think. The days are pretty short that time of year there and I could see that we only had about another hour of daylight left.
I knew that it was only about a 2 mile hike over the mountain to Kalinin Bay. I had hiked it a couple times before and wasn’t too bad so I decided that we should go as far as we could to get back to the boat. One thing that kept us both going was that I had taken 2 moose steaks out of the freezer for dinner.
We started out and Skip left the net on the ground. I said that net was worth more than the boat we had just lost and 10% of it was his. So he went back and got it. Those dry suits only had thin rubber feet on them to go inside swim fins and we could feel every rock and stick. At least the snow was soft and there was pretty good insulation against the cold.
We hadn’t gotten very far into the timber when it started getting pretty dark. As it was getting darker we were getting into thinner timber and more snow so we could see a bit. There was a bright moon out and the moon lit up the snow enough so we could keep going. I never had any trouble know where Skip was because about every other step he took that wad of net would hang up on something and he came up with all sorts of different exclamations some of them were pretty unique.
We got back to Kalinin Bay at about 11 PM and walked about a half mile along the side the bay to about where the Taku, my fishing boat, was anchored. But about then we had a bit of cloud cover and I couldn’t see the gray boat. We had to wait about 20 minutes before enough moonlight came through to see it. When I knew where it was for sure we swam out to it. Boy those steaks were good that night!
That was a Friday and that government office, I still can’t remember their name, would not be open until Monday so we went fishing the next day. I went across Salisbury Sound and in behind Klokachef Island. Sometimes there are fish in there and it is pretty calm water. As we were trolling through I noticed another big wad of net on the beach on the back side of the island. We pulled the fishing gear and I anchored in front of the net.
Skip didn’t like the idea of swimming ashore to get it. He was afraid on not being able to get back to the boat with the net. I had a 100 fathom hank of 5/8” polly rope on board and he tied one end around his waist and I fed out rope as he went. He gathered up the net and tied it on the rope as well as himself and I pulled him back. Now we had about 40 pounds of net and it was only Saturday. That gave us all day Sunday to think up how we could get more of it. I have a pilot’s license and decided that I could go buy a Champ or something with the money we got from the net we already had. Then I could fly those beaches and find lots of it and then go get it. There are several thousand miles of outside shoreline and the airplane would be perfect.
Sunday afternoon we headed to town with our 2 or 3 fish and 40# of net. Monday morning I still felt uncomfortable about just hauling all that net into that government office so I went armed with the ATA bulletin. When I got there I got some mighty funny looks and when I showed them the bulletin the guy read it a couple times and then took it in the back room. Pretty soon he came back out and said that these were just proposals and were not in effect. We were sure disappointed but not terribly surprised. I promised Skip that if it did ever become effective I would send him his share. I hauled that stuff around on the roof of my boat for a couple years before finally putting it in a dumpster.
Skip wasn’t making enough money for his obligations so he quit then. Can you imagine anyone quitting such an adventurous job??? As I remember he flew south from Sitka. Maybe I took him back to Wrangell because I remember that I had my 17 foot Boston Whaler and I am pretty sure I wasn’t towing them both. Because after Skip left I went back out to Kalinin Bay and with the 17 footer and that long hank of 5/8 polly rope. The 13 footer that had flipped was now way up the sand beach still upside down.
I anchored the 17 well outside the breakers (I may be a slow learner but I am not stupid and I was alone now) and swam in with the end of that rope. I thought I could just pick up the side of the boat and tip it back over but that little 13 footer is still HEAVY. I couldn’t even start it up. I found a log about 4” in diameter and 15 or 20 feet long and some other smaller drift stuff that I could use as a fulcrum. With that and some of those new words I learned from Skip I was able to get it turned over. Now I tied the end of that 5/8 rope to the towing eye and swam back out to the 17 footer.
The 13 was about 50 yards up the sand from the water and when I pulled on it with the 90 HP on the 17 footer it didn’t move. So I backed up and got a run at it. That didn’t do it so I backed up some more and really hit it. This time it broke free and by the time it hit the water’s edge it was going fast enough to be planning. I kept on going and was back to Kalinin Bay in no time.
Kalinin Bay
I received some very sad news last night. My long time friend, Don Schirmer, has been struggling with cancer for several years. As he put it, and this sounds so much like him, he asks for prayers for comfort, not healing. He feels his expiration date is coming up and is ready to make the ultimate journey.
I have never been much for public prayers but God does say he wants them so please bear with me. If you know Jesus please pray with me.
Lord, You know Don Schirmer better than any man and I know Don better than most men. I have know him to be a man that has loved You for the 35 years that I have know him and I am sure much longer than that. You know that he is a good man, not perfect as none of us are, but with Your grace and the sacrifice Jesus made for us all Don is made perfect. He is ready to make the transition from the life we have known to being with you. I ask you to make him comfortable during this transition and let him know that many of us love him and are sorry to see him go. Harriet is going to have a huge empty place when Don goes. I ask you to somehow fill that emptiness in her with joy. Thank you Jesus.
Wow, I didn’t even short out the keyboard. As those of you that know me know my eyes get running much easier than I would like. But hay, that is just how God made me.
Well, Harriet mentioned the time with Skip. That was a good tale on me and should lighten up this post.
This story also took place in the BS days. (Before Sue days more than 25 years ago) Dean, my second wife, had left and left an emptiness in me. I was not willing to sit around all winter so I hired Skip, the son of a friend of mine, to go out winter king salmon fishing. He wasn’t busy so it sounded good to him. As I remember he was to get 10% of the gross of our catch. We headed to the Sitka area because I had heard that they sometimes have very good winter fishing. There are no buying scows on the fishing grounds in the winter so it is necessary to ice our fish. Then we go in about once a week to sell in town.
We had been fishing out of Salisbury Sound which is just northwest of Sitka. Kalinin Bay has been a favorite anchorage of mine for some time and that is where we had been anchoring at night. Our first two trips did little more than pay for the diesel fuel we used. When checking the mail in Sitka there was a bulletin from Alaska Troller’s Association. There had been lots of griping about the huge sections of gillnet from offshore fisherman getting away and drifting up on our shores. As long as those nets are floating in the water they continue to catch fish and birds. This bulletin was telling us that the government agency, the name slips me at the moment, was charging the foreign and domestic fisherman that fished the high seas a huge sum for all lost gillnet. They were paying anyone who found the net drifting or on our beaches $500 a pound for the clean net when it was brought in.
I read and re-read that several times and then handed it to Skip to read. He read it and said, “So.” Just a couple days before we had been fishing in front of Sealion Cove beach and I saw a huge wad of this netting on the beach. I said that if there were 20 pounds of that stuff that was $10,000! We both re-read that bulletin a couple times more and headed out after that netting.
We anchored in Kalinin Bay shortly before dark and first thing in the morning we put on the dry suits that I had from abalone diving and got in my 13’ Boston Whaler. We went out Salisbury Sound and around Cape Georgiana to Sealion Cove, a total of about 7 miles of which half is the outside ocean. The beach is about a mile wide and at the south end are some rocks that give a little protection from the ocean swell. We anchored outside where the waves were breaking and swam to the beach. The net was stuck on the rocks at the north end of the bay so we had to walk the full width of the beach. It was a beautiful day though and we were in no hurry. However, on out way back with the big wad of net I noticed that the waves were breaking much closer to the skiff. I gave the net to Skip and told him to take it out on the rocks and I would swim out to the skiff and then pick him and the net up from the rocks.
I ran down the last quarter mile of beach and swam out to the skiff. Just as I took hold of the transom a wave broke over the bow and washed everything out. The gas tank went right by me and I grabbed it and put it back in the boat. I was still in the water. I started to push the boat into deeper water when the next wave came over the bow. This time the gas tank went out the other side and when it came to the end of the hose it pulled off. I had pulled the plug out of the bottom to let the water out. Boston Whalers are unsinkable and when the plug is out the floor is higher than the water level so they drain. I needed that gas tank so I turned loose of the boat and swam after the tank. Just as I got to it I saw the boat, still walering in the water, turn sideways and the next wave flipped it upside down.
Now we are in a pickle! It was about the first of February and there was no one else around or knew where we were. That outboard was under water and would not run without much more help than we were going to be able to give it there.
Well, that is probably enough for today. You will just have to read again tomorrow to see if we lived or died!
I have never been much for public prayers but God does say he wants them so please bear with me. If you know Jesus please pray with me.
Lord, You know Don Schirmer better than any man and I know Don better than most men. I have know him to be a man that has loved You for the 35 years that I have know him and I am sure much longer than that. You know that he is a good man, not perfect as none of us are, but with Your grace and the sacrifice Jesus made for us all Don is made perfect. He is ready to make the transition from the life we have known to being with you. I ask you to make him comfortable during this transition and let him know that many of us love him and are sorry to see him go. Harriet is going to have a huge empty place when Don goes. I ask you to somehow fill that emptiness in her with joy. Thank you Jesus.
Wow, I didn’t even short out the keyboard. As those of you that know me know my eyes get running much easier than I would like. But hay, that is just how God made me.
Well, Harriet mentioned the time with Skip. That was a good tale on me and should lighten up this post.
This story also took place in the BS days. (Before Sue days more than 25 years ago) Dean, my second wife, had left and left an emptiness in me. I was not willing to sit around all winter so I hired Skip, the son of a friend of mine, to go out winter king salmon fishing. He wasn’t busy so it sounded good to him. As I remember he was to get 10% of the gross of our catch. We headed to the Sitka area because I had heard that they sometimes have very good winter fishing. There are no buying scows on the fishing grounds in the winter so it is necessary to ice our fish. Then we go in about once a week to sell in town.
We had been fishing out of Salisbury Sound which is just northwest of Sitka. Kalinin Bay has been a favorite anchorage of mine for some time and that is where we had been anchoring at night. Our first two trips did little more than pay for the diesel fuel we used. When checking the mail in Sitka there was a bulletin from Alaska Troller’s Association. There had been lots of griping about the huge sections of gillnet from offshore fisherman getting away and drifting up on our shores. As long as those nets are floating in the water they continue to catch fish and birds. This bulletin was telling us that the government agency, the name slips me at the moment, was charging the foreign and domestic fisherman that fished the high seas a huge sum for all lost gillnet. They were paying anyone who found the net drifting or on our beaches $500 a pound for the clean net when it was brought in.
I read and re-read that several times and then handed it to Skip to read. He read it and said, “So.” Just a couple days before we had been fishing in front of Sealion Cove beach and I saw a huge wad of this netting on the beach. I said that if there were 20 pounds of that stuff that was $10,000! We both re-read that bulletin a couple times more and headed out after that netting.
We anchored in Kalinin Bay shortly before dark and first thing in the morning we put on the dry suits that I had from abalone diving and got in my 13’ Boston Whaler. We went out Salisbury Sound and around Cape Georgiana to Sealion Cove, a total of about 7 miles of which half is the outside ocean. The beach is about a mile wide and at the south end are some rocks that give a little protection from the ocean swell. We anchored outside where the waves were breaking and swam to the beach. The net was stuck on the rocks at the north end of the bay so we had to walk the full width of the beach. It was a beautiful day though and we were in no hurry. However, on out way back with the big wad of net I noticed that the waves were breaking much closer to the skiff. I gave the net to Skip and told him to take it out on the rocks and I would swim out to the skiff and then pick him and the net up from the rocks.
I ran down the last quarter mile of beach and swam out to the skiff. Just as I took hold of the transom a wave broke over the bow and washed everything out. The gas tank went right by me and I grabbed it and put it back in the boat. I was still in the water. I started to push the boat into deeper water when the next wave came over the bow. This time the gas tank went out the other side and when it came to the end of the hose it pulled off. I had pulled the plug out of the bottom to let the water out. Boston Whalers are unsinkable and when the plug is out the floor is higher than the water level so they drain. I needed that gas tank so I turned loose of the boat and swam after the tank. Just as I got to it I saw the boat, still walering in the water, turn sideways and the next wave flipped it upside down.
Now we are in a pickle! It was about the first of February and there was no one else around or knew where we were. That outboard was under water and would not run without much more help than we were going to be able to give it there.
Well, that is probably enough for today. You will just have to read again tomorrow to see if we lived or died!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Homebuilt Airplane
About 2 ½ years ago I saw an ad for a partially done airplane kit. It was for a Searey. A Searey is an amphibious two place kit built airplane. After talking it over with Sue I decided to buy it and go to Little Rock, AR and finish the project and flying it home. So the day after my 65th birthday I got on an airplane and headed to Little Rock. I rented a car and got a room by the month at the Howard Johnson motel and headed for the North Little Rock airport.
This kit had been purchased by a someone in the Philippine Islands and before he finished it the government grounded all experimental aircraft and it didn’t look like they were ever going to get to fly in their airspace again so he put what he had done in a container and shipped it to the dealer in Little Rock. One wing got loose in the container during shipping and caused some minor damage that was easily repaired. It was all cosmetic and this airplane will never be a show plane but it flies fine.
I had to remove the front cowling so I could get to the frame where the rudder pedals attach. With my long legs I needed to move the peddles away from the seat because the seat doesn’t move. While I had the cowling off I changed much of the wiring. He had inline fuses all over the airplane. They work that way but are not easy to find when you have a problem so I put in a fuse panel. I cut out all the inline fuses and tossed them on the hanger floor as I worked. I had about 8 of them on the floor when Bill walked in. Bill is the owner of the Searey dealership and he is also an FAA inspector. He would be doing my final inspection of the airplane before certification.
Bill asked about the removed fuse holders and I couldn’t resist. I told him that if the fuse burned out what ever it was protection would quit and I didn’t want it to quit while I was in the air. I got the funniest look from him. For a second or two he believed me. He was much relieved when I showed him the fuse panel.
I repaired the damaged fabric on the wings and installed the engine and a new ground adjustable propeller. There was really much more I spent 6 days a week for 7 weeks on this project but finally finished it. Bill had been observing and suggesting all along, which was very helpful, so the final inspection went very well. Bill has many hours of flight time in Seareys so I asked him to make the first flight to make sure the thing would actually fly. It did just as it was suppose to. The FAA has lots of requirements for new home build airplanes, but one of them is that only one person it to be in the airplane for the first 40 hours of flight time on the plane. This meant that I could not take an instructor with me so I could learn how to fly this new plane.
A pilot’s license is issued for life after one has passed all the requirements. A private pilot is required to have a physical exam every two years to activate that license. I hadn’t flown for over 20 years! So I took some flight lessons in a Piper Tomahawk. I thought it would be like riding a bicycle but not so. It took about 7 hours of flights before we felt I was ready. However, my Searey is very different from the Tomahawk. My instructor suggested that I do some fast taxiing several times up and down the full length of the runway. It was good advice. The Searey is a tail wheel airplane and is very different than the nose wheel while on the ground. Imagine driving your car down the highway at 50 miles an hour in reverse. The steering wheels in the rear works really good at slow speeds but can get real exciting at 50.
I went back and fourth several times and things got easier. Then I thought it might be different with flaps. 20 degrees of flaps are suggested for take off so I put the flaps to 20 degrees. Then just all of a sudden I found myself about 50 feet in the air. At first I didn’t want to be up there and started to put it back on the taxiway. Then I decided that since I was up I should just fly around and set up for a normal landing. So my first take off was not from the runway but the taxiway.
Ervin, my long time friend from Montana wanted to come down and fly home with me in my new airplane so he flew commercial into Little Rock where I picked him up. I was delayed a couple days because of a tornado (Another story for another day) that came through the North Little Rock airport so Ervin had to just sit around and watch me fly off the required 40 hours. We planned to fly the southern route through Albuquerque, MN and then on to Reno, NV to visit my oldest daughter and her family, and then up the coast home.
We left bright and early in the morning into a brisk 35 knot head wind. When you only fly at 70 knots that is significant. When you are driving down the highway in a car and you have a head wind you burn a bit more gas per mile because if the added wind resistance. But your tires are pushing directly on the pavement so you are still going the same speed your speedometer says you are going. However, with an airplane the propeller is pulling at the air and the propeller doesn’t know what that air is doing. The airplane still goes 70 knots through the air but if the air is moving at 35 knots in the opposite direction thin you are only covering 35 knots over the ground. So it takes twice as long and you burn twice the amount of gas.
The wind didn’t let up during the day, in fact it got a bit stronger. I ended up spending the night where I had hoped to stop for my first gas stop. The next morning there was frost on the windshield but we could see it was not going to last long as soon as the sun came up. We had gassed up the night before so we loaded up and were off as soon as the frost was gone. We got up to about 3000 feet only to be back in that 35 knot headwind. I also wasn’t able to climb as high or as fast as I thought I should. The ground was getting higher and I was getting nervous. I stopped at an airport and mailed all extra stuff out of my baggage compartment. We got rid of 50 pounds but it took about 3 hours and during that time it warmed up and I couldn’t tell the difference. The next airport was at an altitude of 3700 feet and I was having trouble getting over 5000. Albuquerque is nearly 6000 feet with the surrounding ground between 6000 and 9000 so I just didn’t like what I was seeing. I told Ervin that I was going to have to put a stamp on his forehead and mail him home.
Well, we were already a day behind schedule so I decided that rather than send Ervin home I rented a U-Haul truck and we removed the wings and put the whole airplane in the U-Haul and drove on to Reno and home. We got right back on schedule and the airplane was going 70 MPN backwards right through Albuquerque.
This kit had been purchased by a someone in the Philippine Islands and before he finished it the government grounded all experimental aircraft and it didn’t look like they were ever going to get to fly in their airspace again so he put what he had done in a container and shipped it to the dealer in Little Rock. One wing got loose in the container during shipping and caused some minor damage that was easily repaired. It was all cosmetic and this airplane will never be a show plane but it flies fine.
I had to remove the front cowling so I could get to the frame where the rudder pedals attach. With my long legs I needed to move the peddles away from the seat because the seat doesn’t move. While I had the cowling off I changed much of the wiring. He had inline fuses all over the airplane. They work that way but are not easy to find when you have a problem so I put in a fuse panel. I cut out all the inline fuses and tossed them on the hanger floor as I worked. I had about 8 of them on the floor when Bill walked in. Bill is the owner of the Searey dealership and he is also an FAA inspector. He would be doing my final inspection of the airplane before certification.
Bill asked about the removed fuse holders and I couldn’t resist. I told him that if the fuse burned out what ever it was protection would quit and I didn’t want it to quit while I was in the air. I got the funniest look from him. For a second or two he believed me. He was much relieved when I showed him the fuse panel.
I repaired the damaged fabric on the wings and installed the engine and a new ground adjustable propeller. There was really much more I spent 6 days a week for 7 weeks on this project but finally finished it. Bill had been observing and suggesting all along, which was very helpful, so the final inspection went very well. Bill has many hours of flight time in Seareys so I asked him to make the first flight to make sure the thing would actually fly. It did just as it was suppose to. The FAA has lots of requirements for new home build airplanes, but one of them is that only one person it to be in the airplane for the first 40 hours of flight time on the plane. This meant that I could not take an instructor with me so I could learn how to fly this new plane.
A pilot’s license is issued for life after one has passed all the requirements. A private pilot is required to have a physical exam every two years to activate that license. I hadn’t flown for over 20 years! So I took some flight lessons in a Piper Tomahawk. I thought it would be like riding a bicycle but not so. It took about 7 hours of flights before we felt I was ready. However, my Searey is very different from the Tomahawk. My instructor suggested that I do some fast taxiing several times up and down the full length of the runway. It was good advice. The Searey is a tail wheel airplane and is very different than the nose wheel while on the ground. Imagine driving your car down the highway at 50 miles an hour in reverse. The steering wheels in the rear works really good at slow speeds but can get real exciting at 50.
I went back and fourth several times and things got easier. Then I thought it might be different with flaps. 20 degrees of flaps are suggested for take off so I put the flaps to 20 degrees. Then just all of a sudden I found myself about 50 feet in the air. At first I didn’t want to be up there and started to put it back on the taxiway. Then I decided that since I was up I should just fly around and set up for a normal landing. So my first take off was not from the runway but the taxiway.
Ervin, my long time friend from Montana wanted to come down and fly home with me in my new airplane so he flew commercial into Little Rock where I picked him up. I was delayed a couple days because of a tornado (Another story for another day) that came through the North Little Rock airport so Ervin had to just sit around and watch me fly off the required 40 hours. We planned to fly the southern route through Albuquerque, MN and then on to Reno, NV to visit my oldest daughter and her family, and then up the coast home.
We left bright and early in the morning into a brisk 35 knot head wind. When you only fly at 70 knots that is significant. When you are driving down the highway in a car and you have a head wind you burn a bit more gas per mile because if the added wind resistance. But your tires are pushing directly on the pavement so you are still going the same speed your speedometer says you are going. However, with an airplane the propeller is pulling at the air and the propeller doesn’t know what that air is doing. The airplane still goes 70 knots through the air but if the air is moving at 35 knots in the opposite direction thin you are only covering 35 knots over the ground. So it takes twice as long and you burn twice the amount of gas.
The wind didn’t let up during the day, in fact it got a bit stronger. I ended up spending the night where I had hoped to stop for my first gas stop. The next morning there was frost on the windshield but we could see it was not going to last long as soon as the sun came up. We had gassed up the night before so we loaded up and were off as soon as the frost was gone. We got up to about 3000 feet only to be back in that 35 knot headwind. I also wasn’t able to climb as high or as fast as I thought I should. The ground was getting higher and I was getting nervous. I stopped at an airport and mailed all extra stuff out of my baggage compartment. We got rid of 50 pounds but it took about 3 hours and during that time it warmed up and I couldn’t tell the difference. The next airport was at an altitude of 3700 feet and I was having trouble getting over 5000. Albuquerque is nearly 6000 feet with the surrounding ground between 6000 and 9000 so I just didn’t like what I was seeing. I told Ervin that I was going to have to put a stamp on his forehead and mail him home.
Well, we were already a day behind schedule so I decided that rather than send Ervin home I rented a U-Haul truck and we removed the wings and put the whole airplane in the U-Haul and drove on to Reno and home. We got right back on schedule and the airplane was going 70 MPN backwards right through Albuquerque.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Wood Stove
I am a jack of many trades. I used to weld for a living and I used to live on my commercial fishing boat. So it stands to reason that I would have a welder on the back deck of my wood fishing boat…Right?
Well about 35 years ago in the BS days (BS days are Before Sue days) I spent a month tied to an old trappers float about half way between Ketchikan and Wrangell. It was in the middle of winter and the fish weren’t biting and I had found a 4’X 10’ sheet of ¼ inch steel plate grown under a bush at a deserted logging camp. So I decided to build a wood stove to put in the fo’c’s’le of my boat. (What’s the fo’c’s’le you say??? That’s the pointy end of the boat below the deck. The old time sailors called it the fore castle and they shortened it to fo’c’s’le ‘cause they couldn’t speak so well)
I put my oxygen and acetylene bottles in my skiff to take to the beach so I could cut the steel plate into pieces I could handle. Then I got it all out to my boat so I could put it on the trappers float to work on it. When you are 50 miles from the nearest road with most of those miles salt water in the winter, you really don’t want to use the cutting torch on a wood boat. Better to light the float on fire than the boat. Fortunately neither happened.
An old fisherman told me that if you build a wood stove so that you can close a flap on the top of the stove that redirects most of the burning gasses back to the bottom of the fire in stead of it all going up the stack you get more heat out of the wood. Obviously this old fisherman had too much time to just think up stuff and I had too much time to think about his crazy idea. But anyway that is what I build. I had the materials and the time so why not try it?
I had a piece of 4’ pipe that I cut in half twice to make rounded corners. Anyway, to make a long story not so long, I made this stove with an air-tight door and double sides with a heavy flapper on the inside so that I could close that flapper when it was burning good to recirculate the air. The only part I bought for that stove was a small bi-metal coil, like an old choke coil. Blaze King used one for the air draft so that as the stove heated up the coil would close down the air going into the stove. That part worked perfectly. However I could never tell if my flapper ever did anything but make it smoke up the room if I forgot to open it before I opened the door. It finally rusted open and I couldn’t get inside with out a cutting torch so it was no longer a problem.
I spent about 3 weeks building the stove. It was only a two day job but I had books to read and it is so much fun watching the tide come up and eat the snow that had fallen since the tide went out. And did you ever watch the tide come up around the feet and legs of a seagull. It takes about 10 minutes from the time the water touches the bottom of their feet until it touches the underneath feathers. Then you can never tell whether they are going to fly off or swim off. These things take time you know.
In those days I was pretty strong, so I planned to just lift the stove up the 3 ½ feet to the deck of the boat and then carry or slide it across the pilot house floor, down the four steps into the fo’c’s’le and bolt it in place. (Yes, I bolted it in place. A boat sometimes moves around a bit out in the ocean and you don’t want a wood stove rolling around in your fo’c’s’le with a fire going in it now do you???)
That boat had about a 16 inch deck on the side with a sliding door on each side to enter the pilot house. You had to steep over a 6 inch threshold and down two stairs to the pilot house floor. I had the stove on the float right beside the open door and grabbed the stove. I got the side closest to me up where I wanted it so that I could just tip backwards and put the far legs on the deck. Well, no matter how hard I tried I could not get those back legs off the float. I figured that it only weighed about 250 pounds so I should have been able to lift it. It must have stuck out too far. It may have been then when I was deciding if the seagull would swim or fly.
I put my chain saw in the skiff and headed for the beach. I cut a tall tree with about a 6 inch butt and limbed it and towed it out to the boat. I put that on top of the pilot house roof with a big block of wood on the open door side so that end would be high enough above the door so that my come-along had room. Then I tied down the other end and picked up the stove with the come-along. This had the added benefit that then I could just lower the stove down onto the pilot house floor after swinging it through the door. I put the stove on a small piece of carpet so that I could slide it over the carpet on the floor. Going down the fo’c’s’le stairs was not too hard. I didn’t have to raise those stubborn back legs. They just followed down the stairs like they were suppose to. The platform I had beside the stairs for the stove was about a foot above the fo’c’s’le floor so I just made sure I didn’t go past the platform or I would have had to re-rig the come-along.
That stove had a fire in it continuously about 9 months out of the year for 8 years. It was great! With that thermostat controlled air inlet I could put wet wood on top of burning coals, (about 3 tines a day) open the air up and after a while the wood next to the coals would dry out enough to burn and in about half an hour it would be going good and the thermostat would shut down the air so it would not get too hot and burn up my boat. I burned beach wood, which was wood that had been in the salt water (sometimes for years) and drifted up on the beach. I liked mostly hemlock but hemlock soaks up water badly. I remember once when loading split hemlock from my skiff onto the deck a piece fell in the water and sank! I had to clean out the stove pipe 3 or 4 times a year because it would completely plug up but that stove made all that wood burn.
Well about 35 years ago in the BS days (BS days are Before Sue days) I spent a month tied to an old trappers float about half way between Ketchikan and Wrangell. It was in the middle of winter and the fish weren’t biting and I had found a 4’X 10’ sheet of ¼ inch steel plate grown under a bush at a deserted logging camp. So I decided to build a wood stove to put in the fo’c’s’le of my boat. (What’s the fo’c’s’le you say??? That’s the pointy end of the boat below the deck. The old time sailors called it the fore castle and they shortened it to fo’c’s’le ‘cause they couldn’t speak so well)
I put my oxygen and acetylene bottles in my skiff to take to the beach so I could cut the steel plate into pieces I could handle. Then I got it all out to my boat so I could put it on the trappers float to work on it. When you are 50 miles from the nearest road with most of those miles salt water in the winter, you really don’t want to use the cutting torch on a wood boat. Better to light the float on fire than the boat. Fortunately neither happened.
An old fisherman told me that if you build a wood stove so that you can close a flap on the top of the stove that redirects most of the burning gasses back to the bottom of the fire in stead of it all going up the stack you get more heat out of the wood. Obviously this old fisherman had too much time to just think up stuff and I had too much time to think about his crazy idea. But anyway that is what I build. I had the materials and the time so why not try it?
I had a piece of 4’ pipe that I cut in half twice to make rounded corners. Anyway, to make a long story not so long, I made this stove with an air-tight door and double sides with a heavy flapper on the inside so that I could close that flapper when it was burning good to recirculate the air. The only part I bought for that stove was a small bi-metal coil, like an old choke coil. Blaze King used one for the air draft so that as the stove heated up the coil would close down the air going into the stove. That part worked perfectly. However I could never tell if my flapper ever did anything but make it smoke up the room if I forgot to open it before I opened the door. It finally rusted open and I couldn’t get inside with out a cutting torch so it was no longer a problem.
I spent about 3 weeks building the stove. It was only a two day job but I had books to read and it is so much fun watching the tide come up and eat the snow that had fallen since the tide went out. And did you ever watch the tide come up around the feet and legs of a seagull. It takes about 10 minutes from the time the water touches the bottom of their feet until it touches the underneath feathers. Then you can never tell whether they are going to fly off or swim off. These things take time you know.
In those days I was pretty strong, so I planned to just lift the stove up the 3 ½ feet to the deck of the boat and then carry or slide it across the pilot house floor, down the four steps into the fo’c’s’le and bolt it in place. (Yes, I bolted it in place. A boat sometimes moves around a bit out in the ocean and you don’t want a wood stove rolling around in your fo’c’s’le with a fire going in it now do you???)
That boat had about a 16 inch deck on the side with a sliding door on each side to enter the pilot house. You had to steep over a 6 inch threshold and down two stairs to the pilot house floor. I had the stove on the float right beside the open door and grabbed the stove. I got the side closest to me up where I wanted it so that I could just tip backwards and put the far legs on the deck. Well, no matter how hard I tried I could not get those back legs off the float. I figured that it only weighed about 250 pounds so I should have been able to lift it. It must have stuck out too far. It may have been then when I was deciding if the seagull would swim or fly.
I put my chain saw in the skiff and headed for the beach. I cut a tall tree with about a 6 inch butt and limbed it and towed it out to the boat. I put that on top of the pilot house roof with a big block of wood on the open door side so that end would be high enough above the door so that my come-along had room. Then I tied down the other end and picked up the stove with the come-along. This had the added benefit that then I could just lower the stove down onto the pilot house floor after swinging it through the door. I put the stove on a small piece of carpet so that I could slide it over the carpet on the floor. Going down the fo’c’s’le stairs was not too hard. I didn’t have to raise those stubborn back legs. They just followed down the stairs like they were suppose to. The platform I had beside the stairs for the stove was about a foot above the fo’c’s’le floor so I just made sure I didn’t go past the platform or I would have had to re-rig the come-along.
That stove had a fire in it continuously about 9 months out of the year for 8 years. It was great! With that thermostat controlled air inlet I could put wet wood on top of burning coals, (about 3 tines a day) open the air up and after a while the wood next to the coals would dry out enough to burn and in about half an hour it would be going good and the thermostat would shut down the air so it would not get too hot and burn up my boat. I burned beach wood, which was wood that had been in the salt water (sometimes for years) and drifted up on the beach. I liked mostly hemlock but hemlock soaks up water badly. I remember once when loading split hemlock from my skiff onto the deck a piece fell in the water and sank! I had to clean out the stove pipe 3 or 4 times a year because it would completely plug up but that stove made all that wood burn.
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