[Public-List] Things found in bilge.

[Gordon Laco via Public-List]

Haha - what fun... Here's what I've found...

In my wooden Folkboat, there was a place aft of the last big floor timber in
her stern under the cockpit that was quite inaccessible.  (a 'floor' in a
wooden ship or yacht is a transvers timber of heavy purportions which
besides marrying the portside with the starboard, transfers the loads of the
keel bolts up into the hull)

That area was often full of dammed up water which couldn't drain forward to
the bilge suction.  One day I got fed up with it and decided to clean it out
in hopes of freeing the limber holes so it would drain properly.  So up came
the cockpit gratings and by laying down and extending my arm as far down as
I could reach, I began scraping up gunk with an old soup spoon.

Aside from black goo, I found MANY beer caps, a hose clamp... And a military
issue .303 British rifle cartridge made in 1940.  My boat was built in
Denmark and launched in '47... Who knows how that rifle cartridge came to be
there...

Many years later in 2009 when I got the boat back and began the current
massive rebuild, I took her garboard planks off and exposed her insides as
the first step of the project.   Out of that same compartment came the same
black gunk and a little Lego figure my elder son lost in the 1990's when he
was small (oh what sorrow over that)...and the set of keys I'd lost back in
1982.   I remember I looked all over for those keys; at work, at home,
everywhere... Because I'd lost my work key on it, the company had to change
the locks.  What an embarrassment.   Well now I've got them back and Peter,
who is now 25, has his Lego man.

Gord #426 Surprise




On 24/07/15 9:20 AM, "Jonathan Bresler via Public-List"
<public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:

> Before last night's sail, I took the plunge into the bilge.  Laying down on
> the cabin sole, I was able to reach the bottom of the bilge.  My reach
> covered the forward one foot or so of the bottom of the bilge.  Among the
> items fished out of that stinky water:
> 
>    - two hose clamps,
>    - various screws and bolts,
>    - bits of wood construction debris,
>    - plastic and metal plates about 4" x 2.5" with two well spaced slots
>    most of the way across the width of the plates that may have been part of
>    the previous engine mounts (?),
>    - various bits of wire,
>    - cut of ends of zip ties, and
>    - a pair of eyeglasses!
> 
> Guess the eyeglasses must have jumped off the shelf above the ice box.
> 
> What have other folks found that is interesting or surprising or unusual ?
> 
> 
> Strange goings on down there in the depths!