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Blake
Boatworks

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P.O. Box 91
Gloucester, North Carolina
(252) 729-8021
blake@blakeboatworks.com
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Weekly Update

Notes from the Field - "Cherokee" Huckins Restoration Project
December 4, 2002 As the December winds scatter Carolina
pine needles
everywhere, and the marsh goes from green to winter brown, it's hard to think about swimming.
Nonetheless, the new teak swim platform that is getting fitted onto Cherokee's stern evokes
upcoming days of hot weather and a refreshing sea. The platform, built by Jerry Johnson of Otway, weighs
about 100 pounds and will serve to cover the action of the waterjets and protect them from damage, as
well as provide a spacious area for swimmers when the boat is at rest.
Norm Admires Teak Swim Platform
Bottom and Top View of Platform
A stout aluminum framework will be built for the underside of the swim platform, which will also
help protect the waterjets and will handle any dock impacts.
Busy Little Beavers
It's looking like Feliz Navidad at the Cherokee site with stacks of neatly wrapped packages -
not toys, but beautifully varnished pieces that are protected in brown paper and set aside
until the interior painting is completed. Kerry and Bill have sanded, varnished, and
wet-sanded their way through original and newly-built objects, turning them into virtual
mirrors of slickness and shine.
Kerry's Cabinet, Wet-Sanding a Shower Shelf
Trimwork is giving the Cherokee a tidy and finished look. Chris is shown below trimming
out the electrical panel. Trim strips are being pre-finished and will be placed around the ceilings
of the vessel interior.
Chris Laying the Trim
Trim Strips Drying in the December Sun
While perusing the Sea Chest, a "Foxfire"-style, prize-winning journal that Cape Hatteras
School high school students have produced since the early 1970s, FishDoc came across an amusing
interview of Jenette Stowe, a Hatteras midwife born in the 1880s. Her description of
wanting to go fishing with her husband shows the fiesty spirit of an old-timey island
woman. “I used to go fishing
with him and one morning he didn’t want me to go. I said, I tell you I am going. So I
went down there and got in the skiff. After we got off a little ways he grabbed me up
and threw me overboard. I came to the shore a cussing for everything I could lay my mouth
and tongue to. When he come home I watched him walking up the path. He came up here to
the door, he throwed his hat in and said, ‘If the hat can stay in I can stay in, can’t I?’
I jumped at him - he run and jumped over the fence and I run him clear on down to his
father’s.” And the couple lived happily ever after...Signing off for now, Barbara "Fish Doctor" Blake
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