Timewarp’n and Tek-knuckle stuff

First off, Lets take a trip back to the 70’s

Ok, Mayyybeee that was a little outta line, but look at that vid and look around the news cycles and see if what you see there isn’t a leetle familiar,,,,

another shift in time, one that means quite a bit more to me on a personal level, ( I got to mix these guys back in 2006. I was blown away by them as a teenager when I saw them at the WEBN Fireworks many many years prior to that, and getting to mix them was a thrill and a half.)

And one more, a little closer to our time,,,

Damn, that one was from the NINETIES!!! And yet, here we are, and the hits just keep on a comin’,,,,

But I am at that point of “my give a damn is broken”. I see the complete incompetence of those that are wildly swinging the levers of power around, trying everything they can to get this “Great Reset” thing in motion, and I know that we are all gonna suffer painfully as they FAIL dramatically, but in the end, they can’t win. Let me restate that,,,,, THEY CAN’T WIN. Did you understand that part? The reason is quite simple; they have no basis in reality in their judgment: NONE. And reality is that stone cold bitch that ALWAYS wins. They are pushing this agenda on the idea that we are all widgets or cogs that they can just stuff into some wild idea of a machine that will make life a Utopia for all. Problem with that is, even the dumbest sumbich on the street corner begging for change is NO WIDGET or COG. He may be dumber than a box of hammers, but he has self determination and free-will, and those two things never quite meet the expectations of what our self-elected FRAUD have.

SO,,,, I do other stuff. Today was making a downpayment on my heating bills for this upcoming winter. I was hoping like hell to have made a move before then, but Da wants to stick for ‘reasons’, and I abide by his wishes.

But that didn’t take near as long as I had planned since Da decided he wanted to be a little more laid back than he had thought he would be. We didn’t split anything, but I did manage to get my woodshed restacked from all the end-cuts that have been piling up this year. Nice and organized and now I can start getting the split wood in there and get it stacked, nice and neat, so it can season up over the warm months ahead.

And because it didn’t take near as long, I was able to hit the lake again today. Not as much water time as I would have like at the Church of the Two Bladed Paddle, but then, the recent additions of congregation at the lake made the temple a little less attractive today. I hate seeing the trash that dead beats leave behind, and seeing how its Memorial Day weekend, every body has this Holiday spirit thing going on, and every single spot that could support a fishing pole had been trashed. Litter everywhere, EXCEPT in the trash cans provided at the boat ramp.

And there was a group of deadbeats afloat in the middle of the lake with a boombox or something, and had some shitty rap cranked to unDawgly levels. I know people like their music: Hell, I like my music, but I don’t force it down anyones throats in the middle of a public area, and especially not one so small that no one can get away from the noise.

Least to say, I didn’t stick around long. I spent a little time playing and then saw the most horrible sight: A 400# woman squeeze her body into a Wally-world milk jug boat, and seal launch. No freeboard showing but she filled the cockpit so completely, she may as well have had a quality sprayskirt in place.

I don’t have much of an appetite right now thanks to that sight. What has been seen cannot be unseen, and no amount of eye-bleach will help me.

And onto the Tek-Knuckle stuff. I did a little digging around in old reviews of my Sealution (whom has been christened “Blue Jean” with a hat tip to ZZTopp). Every review talked about ‘incredible tracking’ this, ‘ease of edging’ that, etc etc. Now, she does edge, hell, I can Lean over the gunwales and she edges and the secondary is phenomenal!!! But tracking,,,, Only under power, then she starts to veer and its not predictable. Just like a white water boat with a ton of rocker in the hull. Well, not ‘just like’ but there is that similarity in how it happens. And the poor boat does have a ton of rocker induced that was not from the mold. I think she spent many a year hanging by her handles on bow and stern and she started to banana from the loads. Those points are for portaging, not long term storage. Proper storage long term (say you aren’t going to use the boat but once a year, maybe, maybe next year,,,_) is to lift the boat by straps, located at the points where the bulkheads are. The bulkheads maintain the hull shape and the weight is evenly distributed, unlike the other method where all the weight is dead center and gravity is working overtime there.

So, how to fix that? Well, I spent some time thinking on what would work, with what I have available, and decided that I was going to let gravity and mama-nature give me a hand this time. I loaded BlueJean onto the horses, made sure that the straps are under her bulkheads, then filled both stern and fore hatch with water until they were overflowing. (and crossed my fingers that a 26 year old boat had solid seals at the bulkheads. She does and I am blown away by that). That helps me with added weight on the ends for the next part. She had a small amount of oil canning in the hull under the cockpit area, and that needed addressed as well; so I rigged up a screw-jack and some wood strips to apply pressure to the keel area inside the cockpit and forced that ‘canning’ back out to normal range. Then I poured in, slowly to spread things around evenly, 5 gallons of boiling water. I let that sit until the water was tepid, siphoned it out and did it again.

Now its a waiting game. I am leaving all that water in the bow and stern cargo holds for a few days and I set up some reflectors to get sunlight on the hull to help relieve that banana boat problem. Probably won’t be all that effective, since what caused the issue was more time than exposure, but seeing how much I removed just by adding the weight, I have hopes. I won’t know until such time as I get back out on water with her, and that will be next weekend, no sooner.

And if it doesn’t work, I have the alternative of adding a drop-down skeg. That will fix the issue, but it means cutting the hull below the waterline, and that is always a tricky situation. It also means less cargo volume in the back hatch, but I can live with that seeing how I have no intention of using this boat for expeditions.

And its back to the J.O.B. tomorrow. I will let the boat sit in the horses for the next three days and let gravity and sunlight do the work I need done on BlueJean in the meantime. Five days to go until I can head to Fosters Freehold for a weekend of decompression and sanity. Along with good people, good conversation, good paddling times, and damned good food,,,, And just typing that made the next five days feel like twenty,,,,,

Yeah, no real point to this post, Oh well. Maybe someone will get some insight from the music, if nothing else,,,,