Gunnel/Rub Rail rebuild

I neglected the boat outside without a cover. The gunnel's were ruined.  They were teak, and I really hate that.  They were 10mm boards laminated with sealant of some kind.  The middle board was too rotted to restore. 

Here is a scarf joint that failed.  The standard is 12:1 and this one was less than half that.  I don't know the glue used, but I will epoxy mine. They will be about 10 or 11:1.

I searched Nashville for some hardwood and found some Ash at a reasonable price in the size I think I want.  It may be a little thick, but we'll see how that works out in a few days.

The boards were unfinished on one side, and 4.5" to 5.25" wide and 12 feet long, ready to rip to the width I wanted.




I borrowed Jakob's table saw and started ripping.  I made a big pile of sawdust in short order.  I ended up with two boards 2" wide and six 2.25" wide.  Very observant people will notice that one of the rails is narrower than the rest, and I'll have to have make up a story about how the dog ate one of the boards, or something.  Your creative ideas are appreciated.  LOL




I started making the scarf joints with Dad's radial arm saw.  Oops, it wasn't powerful enough and I ruined the motor - amid lots of smoke from the lumber.  Maybe it needed a new blade as it seemed to be burning through the lumber more than sawing it.

No problems, Charlie Jones, a professional furniture and boat builder from the Trailer Sailor Bulletin Board showed me how to make a jig for the table saw.  

After a few tries, I got an angle I thought was acceptable and started cutting the scarf joints.

More sawdust!  The clamp made a pretty handy handle.  I was working on the ground and had a fancy work table fixed up with milk crates, a battery box and anything else I could find that fit the height requirements the jobs demanded.  

Now I have all the boards with scarf joints on both ends waiting for me to cut and glue them.  That will be a job for tomorrow.  

I'll use the little scrap left over pieces to make an inner and outer template for the gunnels, so I can cut them to length.  

After I cut them to the approximate length, I'll groove them on the bottom side to make a relief for the fiberglass hull to fit into.


Yeah the scarf joints aren't perfect.  But these are the first I've ever made, so they'll have to do.  I have plenty of sawdust to mix with epoxy to make my inadequacies disappear. Well... and varnish!  You know, I like to make my own dock lines.  They aren't perfect. They look hand made.  "Yes.  That's right Mr. Mariner.  I did make my own dock lines.  Thank you."  And so with these gunnels...   Besides, I have 2 scarfs on each board and only need one.  So I'll just choose the best one.  :)

I finally got some decent weather to glue my scarf joints.  I put some neat epoxy (unthinned) on the wood, let it soak in a few minutes, then added some colloidal silica to some epoxy for strength and clamped them together between two 2x4's.

I put wax paper between the pieces of wood to keep them from sticking together.  I have to say it worked better than I thought it would!  Just a little sanding was required to get the wax paper off the glue.  

This is the first time I've done anything like this, so I'm pretty happy with the results.  I have some saw dust I can mix with epoxy to fill in the low spots and make it prettier.  Of course I can select the prettiest side to put on the outside.

I now have 4 pieces that are 23' long.  I the outer gunnel pieces need to be 18' 4" and the inners a little shorter.  

Why is Urine a pollutant?

I will be collecting urine in my compost toilet.

I don't know if I want to collect gallons of the stuff on the boat waiting till I get to a park or campground to dispose of it in their bathrooms or pumpout station.  It is most likely illegal for me to dump it in the river, and not exactly a zero footprint idea.

In questioning, why urine is harmful, my initial research lead me to this article:  Controlling Water Pollution By Isolating Urine

And then there is a more comprehensive article at:  Negative Effects - Human Urine

This article it mentions the pollution of unused pharmaceutical estrogen and it's impact on fish. This can lead to a "skewed gender ratio and reproductive problems, such as inter-sex fish" What?  "Inter-sex" fish? Since our water treatment facilities fail to remove pharmaceuticals from their discharges, one has to wonder if the proliferance of birth control pills and treatment of postmenopausal women has impacted society and the occurance of inter-sexed humans.  - I'm not going to discuss "inter-sexed humans" due to political concerns.  You'll have to look it up yourself.  ;)

Switzerland estimates that human urine could replace 37% of their farm fertilizers.  The positive uses suggested emphasizing urine as fertilizers.

This  really leads me to such an easy solution at home, too.   A composting toilet, a couple of holding tanks (one for rain water, one for urine), a reverse osmosis filter and a drain field for gray water could get one completely off city water.  If one is only using filtered water for drinking and washing dishes, the filtering pump would not require much of a solar panel to power it.  If you like curly hair, I know the benefits of showering with rain water because my Border Collie Patch's fur was so beautiful after she spent all day in the rain.  My only problem is that I currently use so little water in my house, that my water bill is the minimum $14.90 every month.  Last month I used 748 gallons of water, or only 25 gallons a day, well within the capabilities of a reverse osmosis filtering system.  Nine months out of the last year I used twice that much water, or 50 gallons a day.  I am shocked that I use that much, actually, but spending the money to get off the grid water-wise would only save me $180 a year, so the payback would be roughly... beyond my life expectancy.

Well, I don't have enough space to do all that on my little boat.  I guess I'll have to find a field which needs some extra phosphates and nitrogen.  No estrogen from me, but the cows probably don't need to lower their blood sugar, slow down their heart beat or prevent a stroke from a blood clot, so I'm not perfect.  

The Cumber River Compact asked me what my goals were on this trip...

I really struggled with an answer.  I have this boat from Eddy that deserved to be loved and used.  One morning I woke up and thought to myself, "I need to under take a an intense exercise program with a controlled diet and get my fat butt into better shape. " I am lucky that after 2 nuclear stress EKG's, my cardiologist tells me my heart is not a limiting factor in my life.  I guess the times it has been broken doesn't show up....   At any rate, he says I can work out to my max pulse rate a little over 200, if I want. I am really surprised at how well my pulse recovers when doing interval training.  When I get done with this trip, I'll challenge anyone to a pulse rate recovery challenge.

My friends from Oak Ridge will understand my goal.  I havw the forwithall to row down the river for 546 miles.  I do not personally know anyone else who has done this, although there are others... in fact one gentleman swam the Cumberland.  To my knowledge, no one approaching 70 years old has done this in the past 100 years.  No doubt, in the 1800's there were thousands of men traveling the length of the river as their life.  However, since it is obvious I will never win a Nobel Prize, I am driven to achieve things others have not, or can not accomplish.  This burden is understood by many of my classmates from Oak Ridge.  One Oak Ridger, since she retired, Dawn Eipeldauer, for example, is currently on the last couple dozen miles of hiking every trail in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.

A couple of little problems concerning stewardship of the river solved :)

I was worried about storing trash on the boat.  After all, it was 48 years ago when I caused an article in the Knoxville News Sentinel about a trash dump and collecting the $25 reward from the state for convicting a litterer.  Yes, I've been adamant about the subject for a number of years!

A friend from the sailing community, Jeff Gegner,  lead me to this idea.  The brilliance is that everything on a boat is forced to do more than one task and has to have a  This solution fits both needs nicely.

http://fivegallonideas.com/trash-compactor/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=trash-compactor

The bucket for the seat can serve as a storage container, a seat, a bailer, and a compactor.  How brilliant!  4 uses for one item.

My next issue was provisions for sanitation.  I have been interested in composting toilets for boats for some number of years.  At the risk of being too graphic, there is a concept that has to be understood.... urine is what makes outhouses stink.  '

On boats, there are two approaches to the smell issue of a composting head.  If one has a lot of electricity (think larger powerboats), then one may put a heater in the composting bin which dries it out after each use.  The moisture is vented into the air and the dry compost heap does its magic.

The second approach is to separate urine from the other waste.  This system uses a diverter plate under the seat to send the urine to a tank for disposal at a later time.  The compost pile is churned mechanically by hand to speed the composting action.  The compost can be sphagnum peat moss, or a variety of other products.  A year or two supply of peat moss is about $15, so why spend much time worrying about it?

I also need a head on my 32' sailboat and for environmental purposes, a composting head on that boat really appeals to me.  The heat of the composting process makes the compost inert and safe to dump ashore, or at sea without harming the environment.  Urine is sterile, so can be dumped overboard everywhere except no discharge zones.  Unfortunately, the Cumberland River is a no discharge zone, if I'm not mistaken, so this will be an issue.  I wonder if I could build a solar furnace to evaporate the urine.  Hmmm.  I need to talk to the Cumberland River Compact to get their ideas.

With recommendations from sailor acquaintances, I ended up ordering a C-Head from Florida.  http://www.c-head.com/C-Head.html  I can use it on this trip, then take it to my sailboat the next trip.

Let's backup a little - Eddy and Jan built this boat in Norway.

It is a fiberglass version of a classic wood lapstrake boat that has been built for centuries.  Jan told me there are more of these boats in Scandinavia that there are cars.  It is 17' long with a 4.5' beam and weighs about 400 pounds.

Eddy was a cook on an ocean going freighter, so took a job on a boat from Scandinavia to NYC, loading the boat on that ship.  Then they trucked it to the headwaters of the Mississippi River where Eddy and his high school friend Jan started their trip down the River.

Unfortunately, Customs held the boat for 30 days or so, and they didn't have enough time to finish the River.  We picked them up in Memphis and brought them and the boat back to Nashville where we unsuccessfully tried to sell it. 

They have a blog with lots of pictures.  You can navigate "The Blog" in the header or "Pictures" at: http://www.oldmensriver.com/

The Adventure of 2017 involves physical effort!

I'm rowing down the Cumberland River 546 miles. Starting just below Cumberland Falls in Kentucky, ending at the Ohio River in Kentucky after traveling a lot of miles in Tennessee. 

Map of Journey from Laurel River in Eastern Kentucky to the Ohio River

New boat launched

I plan on doing it alone because I want to go when I want to go, rest when I want to rest and stop to smell the flowers I want to smell.  

The first thing everybody ask, "Are you in good enough shape to do this?" My answer is, "Maybe not the first week. But I will be by the time I finish."  


I'm thinking I'll loose 30-50 pounds because I will have controlled diet on the boat and could burn a few thousand extra calories a day. I have looked at MRE's, but they have a pretty high caloric content.  I really don't want to be burdened with an ice chest, so that introduces some restrictions.  It's not like I will be in the middle of the ocean for a month, I will be going through towns with grocery stores for fresh fruit.

I just finished designing the moving seat and foot stretcher (foot rests as they would be called by normal people). 

Have a bid on some rip stop nylon for a cover to keep me out of the rain. I plan on sleeping in the boat most of the time, as there will be room. Ken Palmer tells me you can dip cloth in Thompson's Water Seal to make it water proof. Hmmm. 

Anchor - check. Anchor light - check. Self-inflating mattress - check

I've been wavering between wanting to take a sail and being a purist and rowing the entire way. With a sail, I need to register it... another small expense. But it came with a little sail and a Dogwood tree mast. 

I'm going to promote the Cumberland River Compact along the journey. They have done a lot of good work to clean up the River. They asked me what I worried about most on the trip. That was easy - keeping my sleeping bag and cell phone dry!

The boat is a classic Scandinavian design  called a Feiring .  The name of the boat means "four oaring".