Boating History Continued Chapter VIII 1973 During the summer in 1972, my father friend Jim Hicks sold his boat Kimcee to Harold Oatt of Owen Sound Die and Engineering. Harold never had the boat long before passing away in the late fall of 72. Over the 72-73 winter, Harold’s wife Mary was trying to clean out Harold’s shop in down town Owen Sound when she found she had no heat one Sunday morning. Mary called my father and he went to see if he could help. When he was there, he seen a 471 Detroit Diesel that Harold had intended to put in the Kimcee but never got the chance. Mary asked my father if he knew anyone who may want the engine and my father told her he needed an engine for the Rayn Bow II. At first she agreed to give the rebuilt engine to my father but he insisted on a sale. They came to the agreement of $200 but the engine had to go the next day. It was a great steal for my father; however after getting the engine to Sonny Redfern’s barn at East Linton, he found it was too high to go under the deck on the Rayn Bow II. It was really too bad because although a Detroit Diesel is loud, they make a great diesel engine in a wooden boat because they are two stroke and very little vibration. The temporary “Engine Weld” additive that my father put in the Rayn Bow II engine the summer before in Lions Head got us through the 72 season but now the problem was back with water in the oil again. This year my father had become bogged down with appliance repair contracts from Sears, Woolco and Inglis, and the year wasn’t looking like there would be much boating anyway. As I said in chapter III, my father left the Rayn Bow II in the water year round for almost five years after he bought it. After finally dry docking the boat for the winters, there was an abundance of overdue maintenance to be done a little each spring. The boat needed a new stern in the mid 60’s so John and Jim Hicks replaced the stern with steel framing and new planking. (See Picture #1) Then in the late 60’s the boat needed a new stem at the bow, so John Hicks replaced that with steel frame and wood cap. Then there was the regular maintenance of sanding and painting which my father was always a better supervisor then he was a worker when that needed to be done. The painting got done first by my father’s brother Dick and his wife Beth until they got busy and couldn’t do it anymore. After Dick and Beth didn’t do the work, the painting got passed on to my mother while my father would still supervise. Trust me, the quickest way to turn a woman off boating is to stand back and watch while she does the work. This is not highly recommended guys !! This just sickened any enjoyment of the boat that my mother had. She would still go on the boat in the summer because of me but she wasn’t working on it while he’d sit back and watch or socialize with his buddies. When my mother refused to do anymore work, he did nothing. The boat deteriorated until I was old enough to be sucked in to doing the work. I know I got sick of dark red anti-fouling paint and looking at the bottom of the Rayn Bow II year after year especially this year in 1973. The water was on the rise and it was wet right up the railway under the Rayn Bow II. To make matters worse, this was a particular bad year for the Alewife fish invasion. The Alewife’s would die off and smell of rotting fish. They would wash up dead on the shorelines by the thousands. To make matters worse, John Hicks had a cross breed German shepherd dog “Elmo” that was much like your average junk yard dog. While I’d be painting the boat bottom, Elmo figured it was time for a seafood lunch with the fish right under the boat. I remember gagging from the smell and sight. As like any boat, and especially a wooden boat, they need ongoing work if they’re neglected for any time. My father already had to repair the leaking aft cabin roof as well in the mid 60’s. Dirt is the worst enemy on a wooden boat because it holds moisture which causes rot; especially on canvas covered decks as they were in the old days. If my aunt, uncle or mother didn’t wash the boat then it never got done. As the canvas on the aft cabin roof started leaking onto the bunks, he knew it needed to be repaired or it would rot the rest of the structure. Jim Dowkes did teach him one thing, Jim always said, if you could keep the water from leaking topsides, the bottom would usually look after itself. This is very true. More wooden boats rot from leaking windows and decks running into dry areas below, next you have ribs and structure rotting in the inner hull as it doesn’t get the air ventilation to dry. When my father repaired the aft cabin roof, Ron Coates, owner of Nor-Var Paints in Owen Sound had just received a new product from his supplier Dow Chemicals and he wanted to try it. Nor-Var (Northern Paint and Varnish) was an Owen Sound based paint factory that Coates had built over the years. The product that Coates had was called “Silastic” (Silicone-Plastic) and it was a two part liquid that when after it was mixed would harden like fibreglass but still would flex with the movement of the boat. Using fibreglass mat for strength, Coates used five gallon of Silastic on the 8ft X 12 ft deck. The truth was, it proved to be a permanent repair and lasted great for 40 years! Ron Coates sold the product in the 60’S as Silastic , but we’ve got to know it today as Marine Epoxy. Marine epoxies have been around for years but it wasn’t thought of in the marine industry until the mid sixties. Port McNicol shipwright Vic Carpenter of Superior Sailboats used epoxies for the many high end sail boats that he built in the sixties and seventies including such boats as the 30ft “Spad” the 50 ft “Coffee Grinder” the 65 ft “Passing Wind” and Gordon Lightfoots 45 ft “Golden Goose” See Picture #2) just to name a few that were all built at Superior Sailboats at the end of the slip in Port McNicol. Vic invented a special blend of epoxy for high gloss finish that was more durable then varnish. During his career, three Michigan brothers apprenticed with Vic to learn the formula’s for his epoxies. They were Meade, Jan and Joel Gougeon and they went on to market what we know today as West System Epoxy. On the Rayn Bow II, many other parts of the cabin were starting to show signs of needing repairs as well. After I started working on the boat, my father was a great critic when he wasn’t doing the work himself. I was learning to paint and use automotive body filler and a sander to make it look good. Body filler works on a wood boat about as good as it works on a car. Moisture gets behind the filler, and next year you’re replacing the filler with twice as much until you have a boat full of filler and no strength. This was happening to the Rayn Bow II, and it was only a patch job, but it looked good for the present. As a kid, I didn’t know the water would get behind the body filler but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know it’s a quick fix when you need to do it again the following year. Although I couldn’t replace a plank, or a rail at that time, it was all a learning lessons about wooden boats and how fix them right. Looking back now I know that my attachment to the Rayn Bow II caused a lot of financial problems for my father. Once the boat wasn’t making money anymore, it was hard for him to raise a family, manage a house and keep up with the work on a large wooden boat. Any wood work to be done, my father still paid Albert Kaus, the shipwright to do it. Albert’s labour cost my father money that he sometimes never had. Albert was also busy on The Four Knotts and Jims Knott’s new project so he never knew the exact hours that Albert would spend on one job. He always had a feeling that Albert was double charging but didn’t have anyone else to turn to. The spring of 1973 was no different with lots of maintenance to be done. My father now had lots of work with the service contracts but he was running behind getting the boat ready for the water. He never got it in the water until June of that year and therefore the engine never got touched. The biggest problem with wintering on the Owen Sound Marina’s railway was other boaters with less maintenance were ready to be launched long before the Rayn Bow II was, but they couldn’t get in the water until the Rayn Bow II was in the water first as it sat on the main rails. When we finally were launched, my father couldn’t start the engine because of the water in the oil problem. After sitting on the Owen Sound Marina gas dock for a few days, John Hicks needed the boat moved so he could get other boats in the water. John had many boats of his own, but none of his own boats were in the water either. (Shoe maker’s kids go barefoot) John said he could use Bill Davey’s small open former lifeboat to tow the Rayn Bow II over to the yacht club. That night Carl McNaughton was around the yacht club and he told my father that he could tow the Rayn Bow II over to the club with the Donemar. My father accepted Carl’s offer and they got the boat to its dock. The next day John seen the boat was gone from his fuel dock. John had been drinking and he came to my father that night and asked how he got the boat moved. My father told John that Carl volunteered to tow the boat around. John Hicks didn’t have much use for Carl McNaughton and this made him mad. If you remember back in Chapter III, I mentioned that Carl was somewhat “thrifty” when it came to spending money on the Gracie IV or Donemar. (See #3 Picture Donemar) After buying the bare hull of the Donemar with cabins from Goodreau Boats in Tilbury, Carl hired John to put the stern tube for the drive shaft in the boat when Carl was finishing other things. John would plumb line the stern tube for the shaft with the keel and engine bed and Carl would come up the ladder jumping all over the boat and the whole boat would twist and shake. This would throw the plumb out if line and John would have to start all over. When Goodreau’s built the steel hull, they only put minimum framing in the hull as Carl had requested not to spend a lot of money. John told Carl the boat needed more strength and framing and Carl thought John was looking for more work. Finally after Carl jumping around on the boat while John was trying to line the stern tube, words were exchanged and John walked off the job, telling Carl not to be so cheap. Needless to say John had no use for Carl after that and the fact my father had got Carl to tow the Rayn Bow II to the yacht club made John mad. Like I said, John had been drinking, and he said to my father that if he wanted to get old “Baggie Pants” (which Sid Turner had nicked named Carl sum years before) to do things, then don’t ask him to do anything again. Now my father, not feeling that he’d done anything wrong wasn’t about to apologize to John either. My father’s best friend Jim Hicks wasn’t getting involved with the feud between his brother John and my father. By that time Jim had lost a lot of involvement in the Owen Sound Marina leaving most everything up to John. Jim being boat less now was negotiating with his brother John on the latest steel hull that John had built a couple of years before. Jim and Lola finally bought the hull from John and plans started immediately to design the cabin.. As a kid, I loved to draw detailed boat pictures after school and in the evenings before bed. Even in school, I’d be caught drawing pictures of boats. My grade school teacher told my mother that if you opened Ricky’s head, all that would come out was boats. One day while at Hicks’s, I went to drawing again while lying on their living room floor. As Jim guided me, I drew a picture of their new boat and the cabin style that Jim intended to put on the boat. When I was all finished drawing, I looked at the boat and said to Jim that it looks “Bow Heavy” Jim barked back saying “I hope not!” After the boat was launched in 1974, it sat bow down in the water and Jim put pig iron and a large fuel tank at the stern to try to correct the problem. I still have the original picture I drew and I admit, 40 years later, it was pretty detailed to how the boat turned out. Throughout the season, I bounced back and forth watching the construction on Hicks’s new boat over at the Owen Sound Marina which was now in the stages of adding decks and cabin framing. They were trying hard to have the cabin closed in by winter. It was a family affair with John Hicks and Bill Orr doing the welding and Jim, Lola, daughter Debbie and her boyfriend Ted scraping and painting bare steel, and cleaning up. My father also got Albert to do some other deck and cabin work on the Rayn Bow II that year. Albert removed the canvas on the leaking side decks and replaced it with a layer of plywood and fibreglass. Unfortunately Nor-Var’s price on Silastic had gone out of this world. (I figure it was product in demand when people discovered its uses) Albert said that polyester fibreglass was just as good and a lot cheaper. My father went for the idea only to find himself paying Albert to do the job again two years later. I did the decks one more time in the 80’s and patched them several times over the years after. I found out by experience that fibreglass can’t be put over wood unless the wood is completely enclosed in the fibreglass so no air or moisture can get in. Wood expands and contracts with moisture, however fibreglass does not and it will release from the wood eventually peeling right off the wood. On the Rayn Bow II decks, the plywood was exposed from the underside to ever so little moisture. The plywood would expand and contract ever so little but it was enough in time to break the bond of the fibreglass to the plywood. The fibreglass will then crack causing more water to enter during rain. As the plywood can’t properly dry, it will start to rot. Epoxy may be more money, however as the silastic did on the roof of the Rayn Bow II, it will expand and contract with the wood allowing it to stay bonded. On old style fibreglass boats, manufacturers would laminate layers upon layers of fibreglass to build a solid fibreglass stringer however on new style fibreglass boats, the stringers are wood to cut costs and wrapped in fibreglass, totally sealing the wood stringer. If a screw nail, bolt, fitting, wire strap etc is added without sealant, it causes a place for moisture to get in. Without knowledge, the moisture expands and starts to rot the wood stringer or core. Marine Surveyors now have moisture meters to show moisture inside the enclosed fibreglass areas and a survey will tell the owner when attention is needed as it can’t be seen inside the fibreglass. The worst ones for making mistakes are the manufactures themselves. Not only adding screws to hold wires, manufacturers will drill limber or drain holes thru stringers and bulkheads and not seal the inside of the hole. These are the places that surveyors look for most. Also that spring, I put my little “egg beater” motor on my boat only to find it wasn’t pumping water to cool it. Unsuccessful to find any parts for this 1940’s motor, it was back to rowing for me. I was sad to see it go but my little Water Witch egg beater did get a final burial in the foundation of my father’s new workshop and is still there. As we started into the summer, I found myself very bored as I had advanced past the rowing stages. If there were other kids around the yacht club it gave me something to do, but if there wasn’t, I had a hard time passing the time. One of the other kids around the club was sailor Harry Whale’s son Matt who had a Laser sailboat. Harry was an avid sailor who had several sailboats over the years. One boat Harry had was named “Mary Poppins” and it was a 36ft C&C sailboat that Harry sailed from Canada to England. I spent time with Matt out on the Laser giving me my first hand at sailing. This allowed me to take a lot of flak from the sailboat crowd in the club. I was a power boater and they were trying to convert me. John Armstrong who was a Scottish dentist in town teased me the most with his Scottish accent. John had a new 33 ft yellow C&C named “Drambuie” and he was always fun to be around. John took me on board often as crew during yacht club sail boat races and introduced me to sailing. As sailboat racing was for fun, this got me on racing as crew with many sail boaters including the professional team of Hubert Vandastadt & Frazer McGruer, designers and builders of the Sirus 17ft 21 ft and 28 ft sailboat. Unfortunately what I learned from all these professionals, I never retained. I’m the first to admit that I’m not a sailor. On the down side of 73, we were living on the boat during the summer months. My father had gone home to organize some service calls when an officer of the Owen Sound City Police came to the door. Of course when a cop comes to the door, it’s never a good thing. They were looking for my mother, but my father saved them breaking the news that my mother’s father (My Grandfather) had just been killed in an auto accident at 2nd Avenue West and 14th street West. The officer told my father that my Grandfather was pronounced dead on scene. He and my Grandmother were leaving on a trip to Nova Scotia with my aunt and uncle the next morning. He had dropped my grandmother at the beauty salon before heading to the doctor’s office at the Brook Medical for a check up. The dump truck that hit him said he’d made no attempt to stop at the intersection. It was later found that a major blood artery to his heart had broken and he was bleeding to death inside before even reaching the intersection. The autopsy showed he was likely dead before reaching the intersection. My father raced to the yacht club and told my mother. I remember being on The Four Knotts with the Knott girls when I seen my father race into the club. As my mother got into the truck, my father yelled at me to come. My father yelled over at Mable Franklin across the spit and said “Watch Him” I asked why? My mother was in the truck crying when my father said “Grandpa was just killed in an accident, and him and my mother left! They were on their way to pick up my grandmother at the hair salon as she was waiting and didn’t know yet. Between my grandfathers passing, the engine not running on the Rayn Bow II and my father’s work load, there was no boating that summer. As we were living on the boat, every month we’d have to walk the Rayn Bow II down to the pump out dock usually when the two boats ahead of us, the Brookholm and Donemar were gone. After summer vacation was over and we’d moved home, but I was still allowed to go to the boat on weekends and my father would stay on board with me over night. My father still had to work on Saturday’s but with Franklin’s around their boat, I was allowed to stay at the yacht club during the day. My father would stop in for lunch and throughout the day to make sure I was ok. I always had my life jacket on unless I was on the boat so it seemed that I could be trusted. My father felt bad that I didn’t have my motor to putt around with. The surprise came when he arrived one Saturday afternoon with a brand new 3 hp “Eska” outboard motor from Sears. When my father pulled in, I was visiting on Franklin’s boat. Mable always had lots of treats for me to eat and I was usually spoiled with treats from all the boaters. My father called me over to the boat and as he opened the back door of his van, I seen the new motor. I was excited as he carried it down the dock and lowered it onto the back of my boat. I tightened the clamps on it as he said “Tie a rope to the front of it and tie it too the seat.” This motor also had the fuel tank on top but spun around for reverse. I told him I didn’t have a rope and he told me to get one off the Rayn Bow II He had also picked up some gas and oil in the small can and poured it in the tank. The rules still stayed the same. “WEAR MY LIFE JACKET AND DON’T GO OUTSIDE THE BASIN.” This motor had a re-coil at least, so there was no more wrapping the pull cord around the flywheel to start it and 3 hp was also a little faster too. I ran around the yacht club making up for lost time over the summer. My father grabbed a bite to eat on the boat saying he had to go to Southampton on a service call but he’d be back to pick me up at supper time. After the van went up over the hill, I continued running around the basins before going out the mouth of the basin into open water and down the shore about a half mile. I knew I was breaking the rules, but after all, who would know? If the motor quit, I could paddle back before anyone noticed me gone for long. It’s a brand new motor, one hour old, so the chances of me getting into trouble were nil, right? Wrong... After making my way down the shore, I made a quick turn off the West Shore green houses to head back to the yacht club. As I made a sharp turn, the motor flipped up and off the back of the boat into the water and it was gone. The rope I was told to tie to the motor never got put on and I knew I was in trouble. I paddled to shore tying the boat to a big stone and ran back to the yacht club before I was missed by Mable Franklin. I walked around the yacht club from the north side heading towards Franklins boat and as I was crying. Mable heard me and came out on the deck of their boat saying “What’s wrong Ricky?” I said to Mable, “I lost my new motor” She said not to worry, we’ll find it. The water in the yacht club isn’t that deep, she said. By this time Fred Franklin had woke from a nap and caught part of the conversation. He asked where I lost it. I told him “off the green house” He said “What “Green” house” I said The Green House where they grow flowers. He asked what I was doing out there; because I wasn’t suppose to go out of the club. Then he asked where my boat was, I told him it was pulled up on the shore and he told me to walk back down and get it and he’d watch for me to row back. I sat on Franklin’s boat for the rest of the afternoon until my father came back. Shaking in my boots, he drove up to the boat and got out of the van. Mable yelled across “He’s over here Jack” My father walked across the spit to Franklin’s boat when I said, “He’s going to kill me” As he stepped aboard the Whistle Wing, Mable said “You have to tell him”, he said “Tell me what?” I said “I lost the motor” he said “What do you mean you lost it?” I said, “It fell off the back of the boat” He asked where, and I told him down the shore by the green house. Then it came “WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING DOWN BY THE GOD DAMN GREENHOUSE... YOU WERE TOLD NOT TO GO OUT OF THE BASIN. By this time I was crying again when he said “I PRESUME YOU DIDN’T PUT A ROPE ON IT LIKE YOU WERE ASKED TO DO EITHER !!!” I was told to get in the truck! It was loud trip going home but after we were home it was a quiet night. The next day he hired a diver and went back out to where I thought I’d lost the motor but I couldn’t remember the exact spot it fell off. There was no luck finding the motor that only ran one hour. Over the summer, things escalated throughout the few people who still used the Owen Sound Marina railway. My father was still not about to apologize to John Hicks for the argument in the spring. As E. C. King’s new 45 to crane could lift The Four Knotts, with ease, it could surly lift the Rayn Bow II and any other boats now. Without having to haul the Rayn Bow II anymore on the railway, any other boats could also be lifted with the crane as well, instead of the work involved to pull them on the railway. This included Dr. Doug Whiteside steel Russel Brothers boat “ Pijitic” Dr. JP Middlebro’s boat “Newash II”, and Tommy Earlls “Sea Witch” just to name a few. In the fall of 1973, the Rayn Bow II was lifted with the crane for the first time and swung on the gas dock pier next to The Four Knotts. (See Pictures # 4 & 5) It was the earliest the Rayn Bow II had ever come out of the water laying 2ft railway ties under the keel every six feet. After resting on the keel, a double crib set of six railway ties high on each side was built to support the boat from rolling before the crane let go.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 04:31:26 +0000
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