Getting my feet wet
While looking for ways to free up a little, I came across a story about a guy named Pop Nutrino. I have written on it a little in the past I believe, so I wont belabor the point here, but I thought this dude has it figured, and started to look into the way he was going about things. I read most of the stuff on his site and even followed a few of the links there. I went so far as to send an e-mail to one of the boats inspired by his design principles called Absolute Absolution, only to find out afterword ,on an update to their site, that due to a need for some family time by the skipper the boat was in "dry dock" somewhere. So my hopes to crew on that recycled floating "raft" were dashed.
There were other vessels I could have inquired about represented there, but most of them were a little too activistic for my tastes. Most of the other rafts seem to follow the pattern set forth by Pop in the sense that they looked like floating junk piles, where Absolute Absolution looked like a catamaran that wouldn't raise to many eyebrows (or unnecessary marine patrol boardings) in an unfamiliar port. I do like the concept of "protesting wastefulness", but I would rather be able pick my battles than develop to many faceless enemies.
I decided I would look into building my own "junk raft" but I wanted to use a little paint and may-be a builders square. (I would have used recycled paint...) But while considering locations to stock pile my materials and sourcing said materials. I started thinking about what would happen to the tons of Styrofoam when the pallets and found wood became un-repairable considering the notion all this stuff was going to be free sourced (gonna have to use whatever I could find) I had nightmares about my "green alternative boat", being covered with barnacles, sea grass, and whatever else found its way into the less-than-water-tight joints in the rig (hence the need for the styrofoam to start with) , and thought back about the time I left a little goo in my recyclables (one last minute mayo jar) and watched a whole pile of carefully collected and mostly clean plastic and glass get tossed into the landfill garbage line at the recycle center. I cant imagine how fast the guy on the sort line at the center would reject the load with dead and stinking sea life clinging to it. I had a hard time convincing myself this was a "green approach" after that. So I had to find another way.
I first considered a manufactured boat a long time before I ever heard about the Nutrino's but I was under the impression, like everyone else, that a boat was gonna put you back $1000 a foot. This is apparently the common misconception. But while I was looking on Craigslist in the free section I saw someone giving away a free boat. Now this boat didn't look cherry or anything but from the ad it sounded like the guy just bought a house and the boat was in the back yard. He didn't want it and just wanted it gone. Well this little post got me to thinking. If this guy was going to give a boat away without even knowing anything about it, may-be I could find one that wasn't yet beyond repair for myself. I didn't need it to be free just cheap.(screws and goo alone would cost me something even to assemble a junk raft) I found out about a magazine called Wooden Boat that had a free boats section. Now they even have a website dedicated to boat rescue.
Looking for A Boat
While looking for ways to free up a little, I came across a story about a guy named Pop Nutrino. I have written on it a little in the past I believe, so I wont belabor the point here, but I thought this dude has it figured, and started to look into the way he was going about things. I read most of the stuff on his site and even followed a few of the links there. I went so far as to send an e-mail to one of the boats inspired by his design principles called Absolute Absolution, only to find out afterword ,on an update to their site, that due to a need for some family time by the skipper the boat was in "dry dock" somewhere. So my hopes to crew on that recycled floating "raft" were dashed.
There were other vessels I could have inquired about represented there, but most of them were a little too activistic for my tastes. Most of the other rafts seem to follow the pattern set forth by Pop in the sense that they looked like floating junk piles, where Absolute Absolution looked like a catamaran that wouldn't raise to many eyebrows (or unnecessary marine patrol boardings) in an unfamiliar port. I do like the concept of "protesting wastefulness", but I would rather be able pick my battles than develop to many faceless enemies.
I decided I would look into building my own "junk raft" but I wanted to use a little paint and may-be a builders square. (I would have used recycled paint...) But while considering locations to stock pile my materials and sourcing said materials. I started thinking about what would happen to the tons of Styrofoam when the pallets and found wood became un-repairable considering the notion all this stuff was going to be free sourced (gonna have to use whatever I could find) I had nightmares about my "green alternative boat", being covered with barnacles, sea grass, and whatever else found its way into the less-than-water-tight joints in the rig (hence the need for the styrofoam to start with) , and thought back about the time I left a little goo in my recyclables (one last minute mayo jar) and watched a whole pile of carefully collected and mostly clean plastic and glass get tossed into the landfill garbage line at the recycle center. I cant imagine how fast the guy on the sort line at the center would reject the load with dead and stinking sea life clinging to it. I had a hard time convincing myself this was a "green approach" after that. So I had to find another way.
I first considered a manufactured boat a long time before I ever heard about the Nutrino's but I was under the impression, like everyone else, that a boat was gonna put you back $1000 a foot. This is apparently the common misconception. But while I was looking on Craigslist in the free section I saw someone giving away a free boat. Now this boat didn't look cherry or anything but from the ad it sounded like the guy just bought a house and the boat was in the back yard. He didn't want it and just wanted it gone. Well this little post got me to thinking. If this guy was going to give a boat away without even knowing anything about it, may-be I could find one that wasn't yet beyond repair for myself. I didn't need it to be free just cheap.(screws and goo alone would cost me something even to assemble a junk raft) I found out about a magazine called Wooden Boat that had a free boats section. Now they even have a website dedicated to boat rescue.
Looking for A Boat
After deciding a raft represented more of an ecological disaster than a low cost vehicle to freedom. The decision was pretty well made for me. I was destined to comb the internet for some poor soul with a broken dream who, for the sake of its survival, was willing to give up a recoverable boat.
So the quest began.
I tried every search term I could come up with, that's where I learned what little I do know about the advanced search on Google. I started off getting tons of results unfortunately not the one's I wanted.
To begin with I figured I would keep it simple with “free boat” but I got hits for free boat rides, free boat dock w apartment rental, free boat ads... well the free boat ads were a little bit of a help. At least here people could post their boats for sale without cost to themselves. I was sure to find a free/cheap boat here, as apposed to a pay site. It would seem though that the free ones are few and far between. In some cases I think the posters were affected by the other listings around them, they were asking for more than I wanted to pay, and the few that were free were well out of my reach geographically. So the search continued.
I found out about Craigslist some time before this so I decided it wouldn't hurt to look there but I soon realized how tiring it can be to look city by city for a needle in a haystack. When I first started I had some
wild ideas about just finding anything any where and traveling there to get it. Soon I realized it would be a little to difficult to get this thing to a place I could do the inevitable work necessary to make it functional.
I started looking in places I thought I may have some resource to outfit it.I actually grew up in Florida so I knew a few people still and hoped those connections may help. I concentrated my search there, I used Craigslist for the most part, but to make life a little easier I started using the advanced search option in Google and looked in the Craigslist domain so I could get results from more than one city at a time. Even that ended up being way to broad a search and I got more results than I wanted to process.
Eventually I randomly ran into this site called Crazedlist this thing was awesome I could search entire states at one time. I looked in the Florida ads and found several free boats. I also saw some for one or two thousand that would need little work if any. This seemed like a much more promising option than strapping garbage together and getting harassed by everyone with a badge that saw me (and rightfully so). Besides I found out there was a five hundred year life expectancy on one of these fiberglass hulls and I think its a much better idea to reuse something that is harder to recycle than something that already has a
high re-use rate like Styrofoam or at least the commercial option to recycle. Now these rigs aren’t really going to be serviceable for 500 years it's just estimated to take that long for the material they are made from to break down after creation. So there it was the vehicle to freedom was decided upon,
now all I needed to do was get my grubby little paws on one.
Going to the dock
I was seeing a lot of stuff online I wanted to get my hands on, but for some reason or another I never spotted one that I got the feeling I could handle. It always seemed like they needed to much work or they were too far away (and in someones back yard up on blocks). But what the internet searches did do was let me know where I could expect better odds of finding one in the real world. So although I was in Portland when I started this whole episode I now find myself in St Pete. I didn't come here for the weather or the sport fishing, I lived 45 min from here for 15 years. No I came for the boats, and I wasn't disappointed either.
They are all over. I already mentioned walking the sea walls at the local marina. But I didn't hook up till I got to the dingy dock. I saw all these guys coming and going on a daily basis while I would be out fishing at the local pier. I even talked to one that was on the fence about just giving up a 50ish footer and walking away. But he was having "girl problems" and I didn't want to push him into doing something he would regret later just because he was a little depressed right then. But I was defiantly getting warmer. To facilitate my meeting some of the live-aboard's I started walking down to the local dingy dock to smoke. After about a week of doing this I finally timed things out right and struck up a conversation with someone. Apparently this fella had picked up the boat he was on for a dollar. Yea a dollar. Can you believe that.
Show me any pile of junk that you can strap together for a buck and have yourself floating the next day. This was insane. He bought it at a marina too. A much smaller and less pretentious one than the one I was checking out. I guess it was just a matter of timing, as the story goes. They were gonna crush it and he was there to accept the responsibility for it, the dollar was just for the sake of making it a legal transaction I guess.
But the guy got sails, a dingy, and a paddle too I think. This was just the kind of deal I was looking for. Sure it was gutted but all the tanks were still there, and it even still had its VHF antenna. The only thing missing was a bit of cabinet work and the electronics to have a complete, sail-able boat. In fact this guy was sailing it on occasion just as it was. This was finally the place I needed to be.
Connections at the dock
Now that I had a contact, or at least knew someone who had a boat, to talk to, I started asking questions. The first being. " Do you know where I can get one, on the cheap?" Well from what I was gathering from my source ( the dollar boat guy) It was no difficult thing to find. I was told he had an "in" at the marina because he knew someone there. It was implied that they always had a few old boats lying around looking for a new home. He even went so far as to offer to escort me down there to introduce me and announce my intentions. So we set a tentative date to take a little trip to the city marina at the next available opportunity. ( I was in no mood for tentative anything. I had already been cooling my heels for too long. But I didn't let on.) Being it was only 3 blocks from where I was renting a place and where this guy came ashore every day, it seemed like an easy task.
I made an appearance at the tavern, his place of employ, 2-3 times to find out weather he was even around and to inquire as to when our trip would be. Each time I went I was treated like a customer until I asked about my contact, and mentioned my desire to speak with him, then I was summarily ignored, (which was fine with me) after so many visits and no results though I came to the conclusion I needed to become a little more of a presents there and just kind of hang out till the time was convenient, so I relented and began behaving as a patron. At least I knew the sight of me may invoke a response from the contact without my seeming too pushy. This only had to go on a couple times before a free moment presented itself and we made the trip.
We traveled on foot to the marina in question as my associate had no bicycle of his own and I didn't have a spare to lone him. Upon arriving, we approach the building set back from the road, far enough to have a generous parking lot facilitating the parking of trucks with empty boat trailers, while people were out enjoying their various motorized floatation devices, and several feet inside a chain link fence. While all this would have seemed quite normal to me in the past, while visiting similar places with friends putting boats in, all the fence and locking gates and such appeared uninviting to me now. I was glad to have an escort that had connections on the inside.
Upon entering the establishment, I took on a nonchalant appearance looking about with my hands in my pockets awaiting the much anticipated introduction to the man who would set me free. Well apparently gentleman behind the counter didn't know my acquaintance from Adam. Upon questioning though, I think the guy may have vaguely remembered him from when he had acquired his boat there. But that memory seemed to bring a slight change of continence to the face of this fellow, kind of a scowl in fact. It soon dawned on me what the nature of their "relationship" may have been when my contact inquired as to the number of boats lying about, and the response was ,"Nothing you can afford.". But my comrade seemed nonplussed in the least and told him he would be back to check again later. As we departed I inquired as to weather or not this was his "inside man" and he responded in the affirmative. I left the scene feeling I may have injured my reputability and impeded any effort to do any respectable business with the marina guy in the future, by declaring my acquaintance with the afore mentioned contact. But all taken in, I was in no position of favor with him to start with ether. So, no great loss.( I hope)
Finally, A boat for sale
The trip to the marina may not have been as productive as I would have liked but I was still on the make. I wasn't going to give up on the dollar guy yet either. So I pressed him for any other information he may have. I think he was under the impression we were just going to walk down there and walk out with a title in hand, or at least have a trail of breadcrumbs to follow to fulfill the intention, so he was a little disappointed too. In his defense he apparently knew about a guy who had a boat he had to rescue and was in possession of.
A couple days later he was pointed out to me at the dock, so I approached him. On first contact I just asked him if he knew about any boats for sale for around five hundred or so, being, that was a bit less than the rent I was paying and it would work out nicely if I could just pay the man instead of paying the rent. His reply to me was "Well I have a boat for sale, but I need twelve hundred for it."
Through my online experience I have found that to claim a salvage boat, or any boat that you would like to possess that you can't find the owner to, you have to go through a three step process that involves the DMV, Coast Guard, and the local court. You must also be willing to pony up around three hundred for court fees. Meanwhile you still have to wait 3 months for the government agency's to try to locate the owner and in the end you may have to hand over the object of your affection to its "former" owner. In the end the court may not even award you the title. The reason I bring this up is, I have seen a lot of ads where people apparently just pull a boat out of the water offer it for sale online, in some cases they tell you how easy it is to just get a "Sheriff's title" or track down an owner. I may not know much, but I do know better.
Soo... my first question for this fella was "Do you have a clean and transferable title?", and I was answered in the affirmative. I had approached him while he was unloading some supplies and was in the process of carrying them to the dock. It seemed it would be best to discuss the issue later. If at all. I was going to have a hard time coming up with that chunk of change.
The "captain"
I didn't really think about the boat the guy at the dingy dock had any more. After questioning my inside man I found out the boat was tied to a mooring somewhere "over there" and had been wrecked or something. Besides that I didn't see the other fella around much, I think he kind of hid out on his boat a lot. Apparently he didn't realize he was only 25 yards out or so. He looked sort of like what you would expect from someone who didn't come to shore much. From outward appearances, (and downwind funk) he was a couple days (a week?) behind on his hygiene and was rockin a mullet, yea a mullet. (in case you are reading this and think it may be a re-post from 1987 let me assure you it is, at the time of this writing, 7-30-2011) He even had teeth, I don't think it would be too generous to say he has at least 5-8 left and a couple of those are even in the front, albeit a light shade of brown. His complexion was that of a man who has seen many a summer without the benefit of sunscreen, dark, deeply furrowed, and leathery with the occasional melonomic distortion of his otherwise even "tan".
The voice was of the variety you would hear if you were a classic base singer with a severe case of laryngitis, you know just before it goes out completely, the 50 year smoker growl. This tidy little package of a man was held together with a tiny little tight pair of "girl's" shorts, as I was later to overhear him calling them himself. (Thats what he actually shops for at the thrift store, little girls shorts, and he's strait?)
Sooo needless to say, I was a bit hesitant to even talk to this guy too long much less do business. Upon reflection later though I had to scold myself for being so judgmental, maybe this was just a lonely old guy without a friend, detached, and unaware of his condition from the slow degradation he must have experienced to find himself in this current state. Maybe he just needed a friend?
Getting out on the water
I was still doing the rent thing and was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to see a deal at less than arms length. I was still in contact with my inside man and had come to learn he wasn't even staying out on his boat, regardless of his claims. With this knowledge in hand I began to hatch a plan.
I knew his state of employ was in question and he was cash poor, then one day he apparently was holding someone's money for some reason (It's not my place to speculate as to why) and he "lost" it. So I thought I would take this opportunity to offer him a little money in exchange for use of his boat for the rest of the month, giving me the opportunity to get off the rent treadmill long enough to get together a "grubstake" to get my own ball rolling. As the agreement went, I was to give him a hundred a month for anything past the end of the current month.
This little arrangement was intended to save us $500 a month, however it would have to be a month before we would realize any savings because we put ourselves out of $600 or so to get a motor for the dingy (his) and some basic necessities for this kind of effort. We brought the kind of things aboard to live on, as he had little more than a pillow and a sheet currently. We provided a grill, port-a-potty, cooler (on loan from my girlfriend's aunt), and a few other odds and ends. He thought the transformation was acceptable apparently. He wanted to actually spend time out on the boat now, and I felt it would be a little rude to try to exclude him, considering he was kicked out of his mothers house at this time.
Actually Floating
At long last we were finally living the life, albeit on someone else's boat. We spent a couple weeks out there and discovered we had little difficulty overcoming the various challenges. I was originally concerned we may have problems with sea sickness, or the constant motion of the boat, in general. But we had the opportunity to experience a couple pretty heavy storms seeing it was the end of hurricane season here in Florida, and we responded as well as could be expected.
Pretty soon while I am cleaning up our new environment a bit (mold), and making a few repairs, generally spending all the time I could out there during the day to try to determine weather or not we had made a serious error in the decision to float. I get word the "captain" wants to talk to be. I think the message was given to be a little begrudgingly because the topic of our meeting was to discuss the boat he had for sale. Apparently our new host was interested in the craft himself but had no money. But he had taken a shine to us and wanted to see us with a boat too.
After he delivered his message he followed it up with "Make sure you see the title." I asked him if there was something to worry about with this "captain" guy but his response was a little vague. He did remark, however, on the conditions of his boat, I believe he mentioned something about scrubbing my shoes down (which he made me swear to wear) personally with a steel pot scrubber upon my return, among other similar sanitation concerns (the author of these warnings was known to only clean himself whenever the waitstaff at the place of his employ informed him it was again necessary. He told me the girls "looked out " for him) At any rate I told him to tell the "captain" I was willing to meet with him at his earliest possible convenience.
I soon got word that the "captain" was ready to meet. I was to look for him on the dingy dock at a pre-appointed time. I made sure I was there at least 15 min early as is my custom. Soon I saw him motoring in from his boat and pull up to the dock. I had already satisfied myself that he had access to the title and a right to transfer it, by means of my original approach and the questions he answered then. So this meeting was to go see the sailboat and make arrangements for payment.
We motored for about 20 min to the place the boat was moored and as we approached I noticed it looked a little low in the water. Well when we boarded it there was about 4 inches of water in the floor. I wasn't to happy to see that, but I didn't feel it was cause for too much alarm. After all these things have small leaks intentionally in some cases (stuffing box for the drive shaft to go through the hull and form some kind of a seal) and I had no idea how long this boat had been fending for itself anyway.
It was a little smaller than the boat we had been residing on thus far, but my girlfriend and I had become accustom to living in tight quarters to pursue our passions in the past, after all it was just a place to sleep at this point. It needed some work for sure though I thought (in my ignorance) it had potential. I was looking for something to go over with a fine tooth comb to facilitate my education on the subject anyway. I think at this point my partner and I would have been happy if it was a turd as long as it floated and we could legally stay on it. We were getting a little frustrated at this point and had seriously considered just getting a row boat and squatting on the spoil islands (the place they put all the stuff in a pile when they dredge a channel for a marina or what-not) till we had a little cash put together to get something bigger. Highly illegal, but we would have practiced low impact principles. :-)
Gentleman's agreement
I was really a greenhorn at this whole boating thing, I had no idea what to look for in a boat. Needless to say there were several things I overlooked when I went for my initial inspection. All I could see was that this was a place to put our stuff and keep us dry till something better turned up. (considering the last 2 apartments we had been paying for had kitchens that flooded whenever it rained, and one of those "kitchens" was actually a screened porch, I was easily impressed ) The only thing I was interested in was the price and weather or not Holly and I would kill each other due to the close quarters.
I was a pretty easy sell. I decided it was time to work out the financials with the "captain" and started in. I let him know what our money situation was (that we had none), and hoped to negotiate a satisfactory arrangement for both parties. My offer was to pay him in installments of $200ish every two weeks till we had him payed off. Actually taking possession of the craft after the first installment, and allowing him to take the sails and hold the title till we made payment in full, to reassure him that we wouldn't be sailing off into the sunset without paying him off. After all he didn't know us and I was asking him to let me stay on the boat for a fraction of the asking price. I didn't know weather he would accept the terms or not, and I left room to renegotiate the payment amount if it would help complete the transaction.
We got back to shore and I let things stand, without really pressing for a firm commitment, doubting I had been successful in my negotiation. (first person to talk after the spiel looses, right?) I went back to the boat we were "renting" and went about my business making some minor improvements to help the owner. I wasn't to hear from the "captain" for a couple more days.
DO NOT HAVE DINNER WITH THE "captain"
Next time I saw the "captain" he invited us to dinner on his boat. I recalled the harsh conditions on board and resigned myself to the task of keeping and eye on the preparations. I didn't want to do anything to alienate our potential seller, so I had to, for that reason, accept the invitation. We ended up eating potatoes boiled in "raw water" aka. the stuff pumped through his less than clean deck hose form the less than clean gunk hole, back water location we were currently residing in. (The little beach about 3 miles from here was never open in the 8 months we lived there. The 8 months starting 2 weeks after our "dinner" with the "captain".) I questioned the use of said water and was told it was perfectly fine. I was also reassured he had been doing this for the 11 years he had been on his various boats and 2 of those were in the same bay we were currently in.
The Rub
I was later to find out upon asking the "captain" about the systems on a boat,( to draw on his 11 years experience), that I was to figure out how to take care of our waste tank myself, for he was not going to divulge his secret method. You see he has never been seen to go to the marina to pump out his poop tank, now it begs the question, where does it go? I deduced in my naive way that he must be pumping overboard. Then here it comes..... pumping it right back in, albeit a little more diluted, to cook his potatoes!!! This was of course several days later and I didn't let on the connection I had made. I thought to myself, and told Holly that "This depraved soul just needed some people to care about him". You see I thought it was just a kind of eccentric off-shoot of his lonely condition. Before I figured out the pumping out bit we had dinner there a few more times, luckily I only remember one more time with "raw water".
We did get a chance that night to hammer out the final agreement on the purchase of our new boat. Apparently he was under the impression we had already come to an understanding on the terms and he was happy to take payments for the boat. He said he was likely to spend the money on something stupid if he had it all at one time anyway, and he was sure enough about our character. So all we had to do was come up with our first payment and move aboard, or so I thought.
