Part Four

                                  Building the Schooner “Pamela Ann”

                                                       Part Four

As I said in building the Schooner Pamela Ann, there was a lot more going on than just building the boat. Now looking back it was an adventure. There was much more going on building the boat it was just a small part of the adventure. As I have said before we wanted our boat we designed so bad. We still had our other modern sail boat. Worried about the officials coming after us if some one told them we were living out at the boat we were building somehow but we wanted to spend the night on the boat one night with most of he deck now on. We had a small truck by then but we road our rickshaws out there and covered it up so no one would maybe see us out there at night being there not working spending the night. We had a grill out there. We cooked us a steak mostly in the dark. Setting on the rusty cabin top with no cockpit yet with just a little ladder I built going down inside. Setting there eating it in the dark with just a candle between us dreaming some I guess about the adventures ahead of us if somehow if, we could ever get this built. As I have said before in our blogs about what most people miss a lot in life. The adventure was already there and going on and we didn’t realize it. Later after we ate our steaks we slipped inside and crawled in our make shift bed where we hoped our bed would some day be, with a flashed light near by. No floor of any kind made it hard to get around. I need a scale to compare thing to but what scale can you use for how happy you are at times like this. All I can say we were happy enough but still didn’t realize the adventure we were on. After midnight we heard load talking with a lot of cursing some where really close to the boat. Then it turned to yelling and gun shot rang out. Pam said, “What do we do?” I rolled over her to get between her and the gun shots to keep her safe as I could and said, “Nothing just stay here and stay quiet. Maybe this metal hull is thick enough to stop a bullet. We don’t need any one to know we’re here.” Minutes later the sound of a car leaving burning rubber. No ambulance coming or cops so we went back to sleep. We had already said if cops showed we are not going out there and let any one know we were there. This was poor neighbor hood back then on Jabbertown road and it is always best where ever you are to just mind your own business. Something we had to deal with most of the time building the boat. Someone always telling us what we were doing wrong. Asking us why we were even building a boat like this. Why, why, why, most of the time. I complain a lot about this but if you are paying attention to any of this, if you know someone building a space ship or a time travel machine do, you really needed to give them your opinion every time you see them and why would go where they are working to let them know what you think. This has been going on most of my life now I guess. Bought my first car, junk of coarse, and put it together at 14 years old. Working for neighbors hiding my money from my mother. I bought it with my own money. Got it running and was so proud of it but I soon found out not everyone in the community was. It was, “What you think you are going to with that?” It was a 1929 A model Ford that had been cut up to be used on a farm. We lived way out on a farm so I could drive it around out there an not worry about cops. It has never stopped even today. Ran away as people say and married Pam at 17 with her only 15 and this week a women heard about that. She came to me, remember that, came to me, to ask me if that was legal and me being me I said, “ I don’t care how we did it we went through the ceremony holding hands saying our vows to each other. Till death do we part. In a court house before a Justice of the Peace and that is all, we needed.” We lied about our age to make it happen and anyway you look at it trying to find fault with it now with us been married 61 years is just the way people are. I’ll say that again. The way people are. Things change in life with how you handle things sometimes too. In our early twenties Pam an I gave up on what we were being told we had to do and how to live. Quit our good jobs. Sold every thing we had like our nice house and ten acres of land bought a lot on Lake Greenwood and built us a log cabin. Living on the lake building our cabin people would come by to tell us what we were doing wrong. Remember we built our log cabin this meant being creative getting the logs to our place that we cut ourselves. What was different with this than building our boat and people coming by to tell us what we were doing wrong I still liked to drink beer at that time and Pam a little wine when we were building our log cabin. If someone came down the drive way I would say if you come to talk go get beer and they would. By the time we were building the boat we had quit drinking so this would not work with people coming out there to tell us what we were doing wrong. I guess we still felt like building the boat as hard as it turned out to be and slow as it was with all this talk we needed to keep our sailboat to live on that we came to Southport on, just in case we couldn’t do this. This meant we were still making a boat payment and a slip fee. At this time we still were living mostly on our sailboat. This changed with us building the cockpit. A man we knew was building a boat from Robert Bruce plans and had changed it some. He had a crew and with in a few weeks they had it all tacked up and over a weekend they welded it up. He was bragging about having six welders working at one time and was promising a bonus to the man that burnt the most rods. When I saw it I couldn’t believe it. Everything was warped up. It looked like they built it from metal that was wrinkled up to start with with all the heat from welding it up this fast. I looked at the cockpit and the seats were made by splitting a pipe to make the round parts. I said nothing to anybody about what I thought about what it look like. None of my business. The diver that delivered metal from Queensbour Steel told me to go look at it. I told him I had. He said, “You know they can bend the metal for the seat in your cock pit back in our shop and it doesn’t cost that much. All you need is a drawing to scale and you may have to pay for a whole sheet of metal. Going to Queensbour Steel with the drawing and Pam in the office with the good looking blond headed women arguing, about the price. Back at the boat I was working on the seat that would be behind the steering wheel. In the old days the steering wheel was something boat builders took pride in building. By this time in life, I had been on lots of boats and to me where you set steering the boat was important. A lot of boats there is not really a seat just to set in so being our boat I built a seat just for steering the boat. Working in that tin shop early in my life I learned to bend metal to look like roll and pelleted upholstery. You bend it in equal spaces then try to straighten it back out. When the driver delivered our bent metal for the seats in the cockpit the driver helped get them to the boat with us dragging them. Before dark I had them tacked in place and and now most of the metal was tacked in place on the whole boat. The boat hull now looked like a boat. We decided to sale our boat we came to Southport on, and was mostly living on. Somehow now we felt we could and would finish the hull somehow and somehow live on it if we had to. I now was welding up all the seams. Now welding only two inches at a time and going some where else to weld so the heat of welding wouldn’t warp up the hull. Slow but so far not a wrinkle in the hull. I ask Mr. Harper that owned the news paper and the lot we built the boat on to put an add the the paper for us to sale our boat we were living on. With in minutes of the paper coming out we got a call. It was a boat broker on the beach road telling us we could not sale our boat ourselves. We needed help and he was it. By the time the call ended I was telling him to leave us alone. He would call every day and say, “You sold it yet. I know you can’t with out help.” After about a month a man showed up looking at the boat and said. “I have one problem with buying this boat. I needed it delivered to Florida.” He said he own a trucking company so we made a deal if he bought the boat we would delivered it to Florida if he would move our boat we were building to where it could be put in the water if and when we got it ready to move. With him buying the boat I called the broker and told him stop calling us every day, “Ass hole, and leave us alone. We made a better deal that you could ever make.” What a deal it was to us making another trip down the ICW and him paying our expenses. On the way we did the varnish with out telling him and there we left the boat clean and looking good. There at the bus station waiting on the bus back we saw four antique bronze winches in the window of an antique, store that, was not open. Back in Southport he called thanking us for getting the boat there in good shape and Pam ask him to check on the winches we were looking at there. A few days later UPS delivered the winches to the little house we were living in now. Not a word from him. This was not just a surprise it was just what we wanted for our boat. Antique winches. This was where a lot of criticism came from. Why would you install a wench that is not modern self-telling. This would have been just right for a boat a hundred years ago. This was closes to the the biggest problem with this boat the way the people giving us the most problem saw it. Why would you even build a boat that went out of style with horses and buggies but the biggest problem was me designing all this. But now thing were happening. People were now bring us stuff they thought we may need. Some was just junk but some was just a treasure to us. This meant now just see what they wanted or was bringing and not just tell people showing up to leave and just leave us the hell alone like Pam wanted. Some one showing up she would just go some where and find something to do somewhere else.

                                          The Adventure of Life Goes On

Our cockpit seats

The seat at the steering wheel

Our antique winches one each side of the steering seat.

Part Three

                                  Building the Schooner Pamela Ann

                                                     Part Three

After the frame’s some people call ribs we up and welded to the keel and the chime bars were in place now I felt it was time to start laying up the metal for the bottom and the sides. Building the hull but before the metal was to go on the next step was lay up the pier-lines so the metal would lay up and keep the metal smoother as it came around the hull. Problem with this is laid up in one inch flat bar. Easy to bend flat bar from the wide side almost impossible bending it to the other side. When I was young starting to work most people had just a heater in there houses and furnaces were just starting to be built in new houses. I worked for sometime in what they called back then a ten shop. These shops were starting to make duck work but were still making things like caps for chimneys are something out of ten. Maybe a chute for something down on the farm for loading a truck. There I watched and learned all I could. There I learned how to make a homemade flat bar bender. Slow but it works. The bender keeps the metal from bending side ways with metal on both side and you push it down over a round surface with something in the back to hold it so you can bend it. The problem is you need to mark your flat bar and bend it just a little every two inches as it comes around. Then you check how much more you bend it as you run it back through your bender. This is slow but a hydraulic one for a shop is lot of money, money we never have. With this in place the hull had a frame. With me not being a professional welder I had worked with metal and could weld okay maybe. I talked to about anyone that did welding. I had bought Tom Covlin book on boat building in steel. It seemed like all the plans for all, his boats” were to keep old design boats alive and a lot of his designs were like talking to old time wooden boat builders. Talking to some of these old time boat builders you start hearing they think modern boats are all designed wrong. Asking them to give me the math they were using as to why these modern boat were designed wrong I understood it was just their way of building. No math to it. Just their way they had been doing it. Remember I wanted a fully rigged top mast schooner. A traditional boat but in designing it myself I wanted some math to work with in what I thought would work for us. Like the keel I knew being on a traditional schooner a wing keel was out. Maybe a wedged kill would be best not if but when I ran her aground. Maybe I could manage to back her off and not damage the kill. Now with her framed up nothing to do but try to lay the metal up from the bottom up. Maybe get some experience starting with working the metal that would be under water. By now it had been over a year and this was all I had done. Had no idea it would take this long working with no money to start with. No real tools I needed that I had now. Working as hard as we could taking all the money left after what it took to live. Them working as much as we could building the boat. Always dealing with the criticism that I didn’t know what I was doing. Pam was back dealing with the pretty blond headed woman at Queensbour Steel. When the first metal was delivered the driver and I slid it off best we could on the side of the road. Cheep beer and commercial fishermen that after noon it was where I needed it in the yard. Now to fit it. I made a jig to jack the long metal pieces up to the frame and the kill where I could scribe it. With the help of men I knew like cheep beer helping me getting the metal on the jig. The first piece was cut and tacked in place. One of the old wooden boat builder I like to talk to was always saying building a boat always show her the same love. Don’t do for one side with out showing her other side the same love. So now I had one peace of metal on each side. As I have been saying the criticism was all way there. I was working out at the boat when a man road up on a bicycle telling me he was a boat builder and people at the bar down town had sent him out there. You could tell from the way he was talking he had come from a bar. He looked around at what I was doing and said. You know how to make a spider template. I didn’t say anything. He said, “Can I use some of that old plywood over there?” I shock my head and he went at it. Went in my little shop and stared running plywood on my old table saw I got running cutting out strips plywood. Stared hunting clamps and screws. Went over and clamped a piece of plywood the the chime bar and scribbled it with a block of wood. Back in the shop to the band saw a woman gave me cleaning out her garage that was broke that I fixed, Cut the wood complaining about needed another beer. Came back and clamped it to the frame at the chime bar. Back to get a straight piece and camped it the the metal I had tacked up. I was just watching wondering if I needed to just tell him to leave. He put strips between the two pieces and two pieces like an X. Me still just watching he said, “Help me take this down.” We did and he placed on the metal l had laying on the ground. Got some soap stone and market it telling me no matter how much bend you have when you lay this on your metal it will bend back in place. Still complaining about needed a beer we cut it and when we put it in place it fit. I told him we needed to go back to Provision Company Restaurant and I would buy him a beer. We didn’t need to go get beer and him set out and drink that even riding a bicycle if the law stop him he could be charged with DUI there in Southport. Then, he told me he had been building metal boats for years working in a boat yard in Florida and designed to try commercial fishing. Designed him self a sailing fishing boat. Hadn’t worked out that well. This had stared in Jimmy Carter days with getting away from burning oil. Going back to sailing ships and bicycles. What he showed me was a big help but how do you know what the next fool coming out there is going to be doing. Never living in a town with all these people it was a never ending thing with how people think. When I say the metal was going on slow was now the the talk around town how slow I was. No one considered we had to make the money to buy what we needed and live. This was not a hard time living like this with us living on our sail boat we came there on and staying at the little house some time one house back from the river there in Southport we had fixed up. Watching ships coming in. On foggy night hearing the horns as they past slowly by out there some where in the fog. Before I knew it several years had past by. The hull was taking shape but no where near finished. Being raised on a farm and always living out in the country even on the jobs we had worked I stayed away from other people lives as far I could but here other people lives was just there and you had to deal with it. There in the little house next to our boat the man moved out and a family moved in. They had a little boy maybe four years old that cried a lot. I stared buying little toys and taking him with me some. Now I was in a relationship with this kid taking care of him a lot. He was a cute kid. Really smart and all boy. Impossible to just mind my on business with this kid there. Even though we still had our sailboat and the little house down town it was just too much always dreaming about sailing away. When the deck frames were mostly there we would throw a tarp over the bow, make us a bed on a sheet of plywood and a piece of foam and slip out there and sleep on our boat and dream. Dream about how she would handle and where we could go. Dream and worry how we could just get her in the water. With us slipping out there we were worried that someone that was against us would find out we was sleeping out there some and get the law involved. As the deck went on it was finely looking like a boat. I climbed the tree beside the boat are on top of the building to look every day. It was taking so long to build the boat that boat builder that showed me how to make a spider template told me let her rust . The rust will take the mill scale of but when it get a little rust on her paint it with cheap oil base paint. This will stop the rust long enough to work on her. Doing all this I had a couple of people that wanted to weld some to keep there hand in to it. This was great but hard to get them to weld it the way the boat builder said it had to be welded. No weld over two inches and move to another place preferably on the other side of the boat. They said this was crazy. Several other welders said this was to keep the metal from warping. I told them I needed help but my way are the high way. I finely won and she was slowly taking shape as time was passing by. Taking care of the kid next door buying him his first bicycle. Arguing with me he needed training wheel. Me saying, no you can set on the seat and hold it up. With in a few days he us cranking away. Always telling his grandmother I was messing with him with me having him feeling to see if he was growing a tail he like to climb trees so much and he would feel himself before he thought about it to see. One of the cute thing about this kid, and if I was taking care of him and needed to go the the marina to look at a job or do something, I would get a small jar of latex paint and a small brush and there tell him go find you a rock. He would sat there and paint a rock till I was through. There may still be painted rocks there with, people wondering why anyone would want to paint a rock. I’m sure they never think about it being a Cute kid that loved doing things.

                                       The Adventure of Life Goes On

This is when the hull was beginning to look like a boat.