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  #31  
Old 02-28-2013, 09:43 AM
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Originally Posted by barry12345 View Post
That is about seven miles further east than Port Hope. Unless there have been massive improvements and there may have been. Stay out of there in bad weather conditions. If you have to choose a place and have the time. Port Hope was really a good place by comparison in bad weather.

I did not want to drone on earlier but there was more to the alberg story that time. Got a call early in the following week from one of the guys.

Said him and his son had gone out to clean the boat up a bit one evening. We used to anchor our boats out in the harbour with larger permanent concrete weights connected to floats. No dockside mooring was used although the concrete sidewalls were in great shape.

Historically it was the home of eldorado a crown corporation uranium processing place beside the harbour. The harbour was dredged and the product went to the states during the war and well before the atomic bombs where dropped on Japan. This plant at one time dealt in radium for watch hands etc. So whatever the by products on the bottom of that harbour there. They were seriously needed that long ago time.

Well anyways back to the alberg. I got a call monday or tues or even wednesday as I do not remember at work. Could I get off as the alberg was sitting on the bottom of the harbour. I asked if it was sunk for certain and he verified part of the mast was sticking out as the boat had settled vertically on the bottom.

I remember thinking that this was just great. Since I worked in a town further away by the time I got there he had gotten a towtruck. Dove down and secured the pull and dragged the hull over to a sidewall.

The uranium plant lent us a moderate heavy lifter and we got the boat up to deck level and pumped it out. What a mess but the insurance company paid to recondition the boat and it went back into service. We felt his son being quite young had tampered with the head that was below the waterline when his dad was working somewhere else cleaning up and he missed the sons activity.

When we got the boat high and pumped out we had quite a discussion of who was going to call the owner. Neither of us where really wanting to but someone had to. How do you tell a guy we sank his boat and even if only submerged for as short a time as it was. Especially if he thinks you might have tried to kill him only a few days ago. The boat was was so dirty it was hard to imagine that it could be as bad .

I sailed my thunderbird out of Port Hope for several years.. We had quite a few characters in the club way back then. There was a cross section of individuals the likes of them probably not possible today. Many had obscure claims to fame so to speak. Enough in my opinion that someone in hindsight should have written a book. The dynamics of the group where highly unusual.

Incidentally his boat being sunk did not phase the owner of the alberg at all. I felt he was still recovering mentally from the interesting sail through the storm may have been the reason. Our little excusion really was more than he could manage mentally at the time.

I sailed my thunderbird out of that port for a few years. Eventually the media got hold of our various odd exploits. Actually part of the reason to suspend rescue runs is when I was involved in rescuing the concrete sidewalk as the media called the forty foot ferro cement sail boat.

If you have never tried to start a lister hand crank diesel like that ferro cement hull had in cold conditions you have never lived. The concept of using cement to build boats was pretty much new back then. I became the subject of poety in the media. They put spins on the story that in hindsite where hillarious. It did not help my cause the the boat had also been illegally taken it turned out. This episode occured very, very late in the year and the guy on the boat when I got there dissapeared fast once I got him ashore.

We used to have breakfast quite often on Farley Mowats old newfoundland schooner as kind of a regular thing. He wrote the well selling book the boat that would not float. Of course it was exagerated but there was more than a grain of truth in it as well.

Plus there was a major ongoing story about the converted into a sailboat from a german patrol vessel north sea trawler. One of our members owned. Complete with it's old mercedes diesel engine. Probably the original installed by the germans to patrol the fiords of norway as I think they confiscated the trawler early in the war.

More hilarious things happened about and with that boat and it's owner over time as any. It was almost endless events there so the media decided we were worth following. Now as I sail out at the cottage in our little albacore or even smaller planning inland scow. I ocasionally wonder about living through those many times and events.

At the same time realising this is brought forward in my memory. As the great sailing abilities and skill I had back then are now gone. I intuitvly know I am not making those small boats perform as good as I could at one time.The edge is just gone.

Racing as much as we did took away the pleasures of just plain pleasure sailing unfortunatly. I have always regretted that loss. The media put me on the front page for the last sailboat race I won. I guess I had become somewhat notorious by then.

I was not kidding when stating someone should have written a book. I have been a member of other yacht clubs but they were sterile compared to the events and episodes that occured at that small Port Hope club.

.I actually brought my first mercedes from a member and it was a nice fintail. There is another story there as well. The owner was far too wealthy for being a post office employee. He used to sail with me every wednesday afternoon if the weather was decent. I always took wednesday afternoon off work in the summer. His fairly large motor cruiser was built from all stainless steel. He was also well advanced in age. He made his money boot legging across lake ontario during prohibition I eventually found out and lived in Coburg.

If Kerry was not aware . Famous rich americans built mansions in Coburg. For years there was a ferry service across lake ontario terminating there. They commited their indescressions well out of americans view. Names you probably would still be familiar with if I could remember them. As the expression goes money has it's privlages I suppose.

Some of the ladies even had a few stableboys. Well my sailing wedneday afternoons friend had aquired one of those large mansions as when the boat service ceased running. They were white elephants and very large. I suspect built prior to income tax came into being as well. The first time I was at his home it staggered me.

It was too far a run around the lake by car on the poorer roads back then I suppose to continue using them by the americans. Over a few summers sailing together his whole story came out. For a postal clerk he had had an amazing life. Still just more or less typical of a member of that yacht club. Old George Pierce will have expired long ago now. So will the majority of the other menbers of my time by now. A mixture of people like that occuring is no longer probable today.
Much of Cobourg harbor is better now but I was once tied up on the western side of the pier during a western blow. I didn't get much sleep that night.

In about 1997 or so I met a man in his late 80's sailing a ferro cement boat out of a harbor west of Port Hope. I can't remember the name of it. Very small with a narrow winding channel into it. He was almost blind and needed help to operate the vessel but still had enough left to enjoy sailing. It was a nice boat.

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  #32  
Old 02-28-2013, 02:32 PM
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My prime time sailing was when a lot of people built their own boats. Plastic boats when first becoming common where quite expensive. I drive past one sitting on an empty lot that has been there for years about once every two months now.

I knocked at the nearby house door some time ago and asked a few questions. I figured it was probably their boat. Aparently there had been a house closer to the boat that burnt down and the boats owner went back to germany and never returned.

I toyed with contacting him and getting the boat out of there. If there were better anchorage near the cottage I might have taken it on. Superficially it still looks pretty good. Still has american registration numbers and feel it could be had for a song. Put it around thirty feet as well with a conventional keel and inboard.

People felt initially that plastic or fibreglass boats would last indefinatly. This unfortunally did not turn out to be the case. They are subject to serious issues over time. Saw that the mast and rigging were still there but the sails may have gone in that house fire.

A firm in england called hamilton brothers and maybe defunct by now was the best sailmaker I ever used. We never knew what prices would escalate to back then but safe to say they are a total joke in comaparison now. . The last time I was into a canadian sailmaker. They now produce garbage in comparison or at least that one did.

Just had a few repairs done when in Toronto on the racing scows mainsail. The scow carries a lot of sail area high by design. Tends to be high maintenance because of it. The batttens are very long. I also needed a couple of stays repaired. Someone had trailored the boat with them dragging on the ground behind at one time I think.

Another thing about that abandoned I believe fibreglass hull is it is going to be hard to extract it from it's current position. It does not have any form of cradle strong enough to keep it upward on a large truck. Not difficult to build one. currently it is just sitting on four steel extension pads to the ground.

There is no local mobile crane that can pick it up either. So it would have to be installed in a strong cradle and pulled out and up on to a flatbed. Or jacking the cradle up and driving the flatbed under it. Finding the boats owner would not be that difficult or the lot would have been seized for no property tax paid long ago. The keel is siting on the ground so the boat has to be elevated to even get a transfer crib under it. With no crane access somewhat difficult but far from impossible.

Or maybe it has been and that would further increase the difficulty as the neighbour told me that to her knowledge no one knew where he was. Except they thought germany. For a young guy interesting in sailing that could be a decent start if the boat still surveys well. As I was typing this I was trying to remember what the prime destructor of fibreglass boats was.

In the boat area it is Water absorption by osmosis I think. Delamination could probably occur or severe weakening. The same reason you should not use polyester resins with fillers or normal auto body fillers extensivly on cars as they will absorb water. Products like mar glass and others with simular names are much harder to work but have a far greater waterproof rating. Still bringing the repair level up as high as you can with them and then finishing it off with a skim coat of the normal types of body filler will give a much better end repair product.

The space to post notes like this does not seriously impact anything I can think of. So no harm is done. There is far more sailing done on the great lakes than our current maritime ocean location. Part of the reason is dealing with the tides. Sailing can be a lot of fun and it if nothing else is energy efficient. It all started for me with a seven foot sail boat plan in some periodical like popular mechanics when I was about nine years old and built it at that age. My grandmother even made the sail for it out of bleached muslim for me.

I will finish with another short story. We had an american member with a 26-28 foot double ended hershoff type design. Maybe a friendship sloop.Other than a compass he carried no instrumentation. So whenever he approached shore eventually he usually was not quite sure where he was.

Used to go on weeklong excursions quite often. Well anyways as always they made landfall on the american side but did not know exactly where they where. Still knowing where they wanted to be. Saw a large bonfire down by the waters edge and it was well after dark. So they ran the boat in as far as they could and he donned a red plastic rainsuit jumped in and got ashore.

I would assume the people around the bonfire had not noticed his boat closing the shore. Anyways when he walked up out of the water he was noticed. He thought the people had a strange way of looking at him so he looked down. He only had the plastic rainsuit on and when wet it was pretty well transparent.

So thinking what the hell anyways now that he was a pretty well nude apparation walking out of the water seemingly from nowhere. He would ask his question.

What direction down the shore was the town or city he was looking for? Now it was his turn to be shocked. No one present knew the direction and he could not get any other useful information out of them. Aparently they did not even know where they really where either. So he just turned around and walked back into the water muttering to himself something like unbelievable back to his boat as he had come. He did have a tendancy to mutter things to himself sometimes. We got told the content of that event from the person with him.

I should have called him an ex american as few there would do this. He logged a lot of milage on that boat over time. I felt he may have been the clubs only really eccentric member or that being too generous held the crown.

Canada was probably safe though as he probably did not identify himself as being from either side. Some of our members may have made a sizable contribution to the expression of those crazy canadians.

I was always more than welcome on the american side at a couple of places. One of their popular members had hit some rocks with his power boat on our side. They pulled the shaft after getting the boat out of the water and arranged ground transportation home. Taking the bent shaft with them.

I had a look at the damage in the strut area and knew they could not repair it without equipment they probably did not have. So I thought if i made a competant repair with them not even knowing who did it there would be no harm before they returned. Otherwise I thought they may have just tried to straighten the strut with nothing to guide them much and tried for home.

They basically hunted me down after arriving and finding the repair was done. When I absolutly refused payment for the gesture they found it incredable. I simply told them there where no facilities locally to do the repair and I felt they would lack the equipment required to do it when they returned. It had only taken a couple of evenings through the week to do it.

It was somewhat of a complex repair to get it stronger than when the hull was new. The end of the story was they told me that when over on their side of the lake they would make it known to give me a car to use or whatever I desired there with no questions asked. I thought that was just extending good will but found that they really meant it. They just slipped the shaft back in got the boat lifted back into the water and returned home.

There were literally hundreds of strange events that occured there. The stories of Ted Lukeman a graphic artist of some ability went well past the norm. Fuelled mostly by his artistic temperment. He was the owner of the converted north sea trawler. I could probably post one item a day when I think about it for months if I set my mind to it.

Ever have your spinnaker go out of your posession when racing and they refused to return it during the race? I still prevailed in that race though yet still further antagonizing the guilty party. In hindsight I should have let them win. They had tried so hard over a long time to get me at least once might have helped. It was driving them crazy.

Most members had become somewhat amused in their hilarious tactics in an attempt to prevail. My pre race inpection of the boat was extra concientciously done. Not that the thought was not there that they might tamper with something. They never did.
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  #33  
Old 03-01-2013, 07:20 AM
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You have some wonderful stories Barry!

Thanks for sharing with us!


Sounds like you should find a struggling author and write a book about it.
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  #34  
Old 03-01-2013, 10:38 AM
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Well one more small one and I will leave it alone. This north sea trawler was a work of art but kept Ted busy maintaining it in that condition. no paint at all except perhaps below the waterline. All brightwork otherwise.

Had pretty well a flush deck and features like prisims in the deck for additional passageway and cabin lighting. As a younger guy him and his girlfriend/wife went to europe for a few years. They brought it as a trawler.

I have no ideal of where they had the conversion done but it was done very well probably by some smaller yard over there. They took a few years touring the european scene with it when the conversion was complete.

Eventually they came back to Canada. That boat in my opinion could have made the passage back across the atlantic but they had it shipped. When transfering it to a flatbed at the end of the voyage someone had dropped it. How far it fell and how much damage I have no ideal. Other than it could not be fixed by canadian boatbuilders at the time. So the insurance company brought in a small crew from europe to do it.

Well Ted as I had mentioned was a good graphic artist and had a lot of commitments. They had reciently purchased an older classical type house. So with this artistic tempernment of his decided to save some bucks and learn plumming by doing his recent older home aquisition over himself.

He got into it anyways and set his house on fire. Repaired the damage that was not too great and repeated it again. We felt that after fire number two he might get a plummer or be really a lot more careful. The temperment unfortunatly also made him stubborn so he lit the house off for the third time.

Someone then adressed him as torchy at the club and the nickname grabbed on instantly. I did not use it as I felt that temperment might flare and we talked quite often in a friendly fashion.

I was right and did not fully realise it at the time in that it was really bothering him. Then one day he appeared at the club with a t shirt that had torchy done well front and back on his body. Being a graphic artist he had incorporated flames, Plumbing torch etc into the design as well as the script.

Besides me finding it creative and really funny personally. The nickname fell into disfavour as quickly as it had started. People can get the message.

I think that was also the year he did not sail the distance to the usual place and have the boat taken out of the water for winter. It was too heavy for local lifting. He felt the ice conditions where not that bad so he left it moored in the harbour for the winter. At some point the ice had managed to break it loose from the mooring and the boat was found to be grinding itself against a concrete wall almost out of the harbour. I think if his original intent was to save a few bucks it flopped.

He was forced to bring in one of the larger mobile cranes to get it out of the water. They had to be expensive even back then with transit costs. Every winter after that one as before it was pulled out.

The much smaller but largest local mobile crane we normally used had his boom out a little too far one year when lifting even my light boat and was starting to go over as he was letting the boat back into the water. This as soon as he detected the movement. Still I thought it was close. Just repositoned the crane giving a more acute boom angle and all went well.


Last edited by barry12345; 03-01-2013 at 10:54 AM.
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