First day of work on the 'Miss Ellie'

Saturday, March 15, 2014

I was heading for the woods to do a workout when I received a call from my nephew, Nathan.  “Hey Uncle John.  I can be there in 30 minutes if you’re ready to head down to the boat to do some work,” he said.

He’d texted me the previous evening that today was the day we could get title to the ‘Miss Ellie’, the name my dad had given his 1968 Chris Craft Sun Skiff, after my mom.  “Sure…I’m ready now,” I said.

We drove to Eastlake and the Captains stadium where the current title holder of the boat was working.  After walking around the stadium and smelling hot dogs being prepared for season ticket holders and those there to buy tickets (it was the first day for ticket sales), we found him, picked up all the information on boat maintenance that my dad had saved over the years, as well as some old pictures of the boat, and headed off to Fairport Harbor.

I’d brought along rubber gloves and a box of heavy duty garbage bags.  We’d been inside a month earlier and knew the condition of the interior and that we’d be filling a couple of dumpsters with the garbage.  We drove across the open, muddy field; the boat graveyard, and pulled alongside our boat.  Dakota had come along for the ride and bound from the truck to explore the surroundings.  We climbed the step ladder we’d acquired through eminent domain; it had been laying under the boat in the grave site next to ours, and hopped aboard.

I climbed down into the hold beneath the deck that housed the fuel tanks and started hauling miscellaneous shit out.  There was almost nothing of value.  

The pattern continued in the quarters and we quickly filled 6 large garbage bags.  We could see that there was very little that we would be salvaging.  The deck’s integrity was sketchy and water had infiltrated most spots in the cabin, rotting out wood and soaking all cushions, fixtures, flooring and basically everything.  We pulled down the stretched ceiling material that covered the cross beams supporting the deck above and decided it wasn’t going back.  I could strip and sand the beams and leave the natural wood exposed while painting the ceiling panels in between.  We decided we might do the same with the wall panels, giving it more of a rustic look and feel.  After stripping off the cushions glued to the sofa/bunk bed (the back of the sofa released and swung up to become the base of the overhead bunk for sleeping), I realized I may as well just disassemble the upper and lower sections and take it home to use as a template to make new ones since they both had water damage.  I also took a table top and a drawer with chrome trim home so I could begin remaking a table top and to figure out how to remove the trim so I could refinish all the cabinet wood work.

My sister stopped by with sandwiches and pea soup, which I devoured.  I discovered that Dakota had found a dead animal to roll in while we’d been working and the smell added a special dimension to the work we were doing.  We loaded Nathan’s pick-up to overflowing and drove our debris to the marina’s dumpsters, filling two.  With the windows down to protect ourselves from whatever Dakota had rolled in, we drove home and washed everything, including Dakota.

It had been a full day and I had plans for dinner and a movie at my sister’s place.  I took a hot shower to wash off the mold and try to warm up from working outdoors all day in freezing temperatures.  Though not a workout in the true sense, I probably burned more calories through the day than I could have in a 60-minute ride on the trainer.  It was good work and offered us both a great deal of satisfaction in the knowledge that we had a truly worthwhile project that would someday garner big results.