'Seasmoke's' Last Stand . . .

[CharlieCobra]

As some of you know, probably most of ya, we lost the Seasmoke job. Here are some pictures of her in her current sad state.

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The ribs in the salon need R&R work at the Garboard turn but are solid elsewhere.

Four ribs starboard and forward need R&R, along with two plank sections.

The cockpit carlins need R&R and the cockpit rebuilt to specs. It had been modified badly by a PO. That's simple frame and plywood work.

The aft house bulkhead is toast but ready to R&R, also of veneered ply, an easy fix.

The interior (most of it) can go back in. A few pieces need replacing.

The side decks need work but I was going to do stairstep cuts for each 1/4 inch layer using 4" spacing for scarphing. That would preclude lifting the entire house.

The house is suffering from separation of the halves in the aft section. This was caused by those solid inserts holding the large opening ports you see in earlier photos.

We figured out how the good folks at Kettenburg joined the house sections and devised a simple way to fix the splitting and insure it doesn't happen again.

There are some gouges in the sidewalls of the house caused by removal of the inserts (which were epoxied in) which we will use dutchman's to fill. With some tedious fitment, you'd never notice.

I would suggest replacing both cockpit coamings with new Luan so they match, as one is badly split. The house front must be lifted about 1/2 inch to get the foredeck off as it needs replacing.

The quarterdecks and aft deck will need R&R. The decks are actually simple to do right. Kettenburg in their genius did 1/4 inch layers of plywood, offsetting any seams by feet where applicable. This and the practice of running the decking over the top of the sheer plank, rather then butting against it, made K-boats much less prone to the fresh water rot issues at the deck edges which kill most other wooden boats. The only way a Kettenburg deck gets compromised is by a bad hatch install or poor rebedding of the toerails, which happened with Seasmoke.

Right now, she's filthy from the demo, as you can see but her bones are good. I cannot afford to keep her where she is, not at $900 per month.

This is one boat that should not be left to die. However, if I cannot find a way to either store her or get her gone, she will surely die and I'll be the one forced to salvage her out.

That's not what I planned when we went down and saved her from the saws last year.

[bangkaboat]

It takes a lot of sense to know when you're licked & a lot of courage to walk away. I watched 2 consecutive owners of a Bruce Roberts/Shaler/Swain shell sink time & money into her, after I & others suggested they spend the effort elsewhere. In the end, each owner realized that the financial bleeding was less than comfortable & moved on. Having sold a few old cars & trucks (50s/60s) that I had wanted to breath life back into, I "get" how the afore-mentioned, and you, feel about having to back off. Tough one, but have a stiff one, or two, & let it be "the one that got away".

[SabreKai]

Sometimes you just have to know when to fold them, Charlie. It hurts to look at her but with the economy in the pits, not very many people have the coin to do up an old boat right, and even fewer of them have the coin and the inclination to do up a wood boat right. Sad but inevitable I think.

I just watched them saw up Irish Queen, Marilyn Bells' support boat when she swam Lake Ontario back in the 50s. Gorgeous cabin cruiser, but so poorly maintained that the last time she was in the water at our club, they needed to 120v sump pumps to keep her from going under. They sawzalled her to death last week.

But even in death there is life afterwards. Her fuel tanks, filter and one of her mufflers are going to have a new home aboard my boat.

[CharlieCobra]

We may have a stay of execution with some folks asking about setting up a raffle.

[tropicalescape]

Wooden boat magazine has a free boat classified section..I love old wooden boats and hate to see them go ..I bet she was a nice boat at one time..I have heard that some wood wright shops and tech.schools will take such projects and breath new life into them and then sell them off ..good luck with her ..DVC

[hummingway]

Originally Posted by CharlieCobra

We may have a stay of execution with some folks asking about setting up a raffle.

What a great idea. I hope it goes.

[CharlieCobra]

I don't see how we could get enough viewers for the raffle. i can post a free banner on Cruisers Forum because I have a free vendor thing going but I don't how to write the background code for one, nor do I know how to set up a Paypal donation button. I could make a Baggett and Sons "Friends of Seasmoke" page on our company site which we could get redirects from banners to. Putting this on multiple site such as here, Cruisers, SN, SA and others might generate enough traffic. We'd have to have a way to hold the funds in escrow, separate raffle from donations and be able to refund the raffle sales IF we didn't reach the full number of tickets sold. Any ideas?

[hummingway]

Originally Posted by CharlieCobra

I don't see how we could get enough viewers for the raffle. i can post a free banner on Cruisers Forum because I have a free vendor thing going but I don't how to write the background code for one, nor do I know how to set up a Paypal donation button. I could make a Baggett and Sons "Friends of Seasmoke" page on our company site which we could get redirects from banners to. Putting this on multiple site such as here, Cruisers, SN, SA and others might generate enough traffic. We'd have to have a way to hold the funds in escrow, separate raffle from donations and be able to refund the raffle sales IF we didn't reach the full number of tickets sold. Any ideas?

The banner and Paypal parts are pretty simple. I don't know how the banner rotation is handled but the banner is just a picture that links to a website. Paypal makes it very easy to set up a button that allows people to pay, neither of those things are much of a hurdle. You'd need a Paypal account linked to the escrow account for both types of transactions.

I've no idea of the legality of a raffle in your jurisdiction (or any really). Here are some questions that come up when I think of it. Do you have to apply for a special permit and if so is there a bureaucratic structure you have to set up? If you take the amount required to finish the boat and use a number that is reasonable so that people are willing to spend it on a chance to win, is the resulting number of "tickets" a number that can reasonably be sold? I suspect that the farther from Bellingham someone is the less likely to buy a ticket they'll be. If you don't reach the magic number someone will have to spend the time to return the funds and there may be a Paypal transaction fee that won't be recovered. I guess that could be paid out of donation money. I've never had to return money through Paypal but it does track transactions so reversing the money will mostly be difficult because of the time involved and the possibly transaction fees.

[CharlieCobra]

Yes, these are some of the questions I'm looking for answers on. With a raffle, I wouldn't allow any of the funds to be touched unless we hit that magic number and then only after the winning ticket was drawn. I would imagine that there would be costs incurred in refunding the tickets if we failed to sell enough.

[DaveC426913]

I just Googled "Irish Queen Marilyn Bells" and found post #3.

I found the Irish Queen's remains lying in state at my yacht club. The lumber is being repurposed in other boats, including mine!

I'm fascinated by her story, and will be very proud to have Irish Queen's spirit and rich history live on through my boat!

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, DaveC426913.