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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
July 15, 2001 As if Mother Nature were in cahoots with the
Cherokee project, the usual sweltering July temperatures haven't seemed to
show up in full force. This week, as heavy fiberglassing gets underway on the
transom and sides of the hull, cool Autumn-like weather has moved in - perfect! Below, Bud
is preparing the hull sides to receive fiberglass sheathing. The sheathing is glued in place.
Once dried, it will be sanded and fared in to the rest of the hull. The fiberglassing of the
transom, we are glad to report, is completed. This fiberglass provides the substrate for the varnished mahogony
transom that will be installed at a later date. Everyone is feeling the fiberglass itch!
Bud Preparing Hull
Jon Cutting Fiberglass
Applying Sheathing, Fully Sheathed Transom (Note Leonard's Taped Shorts)
The decking in the forward guestroom is getting a coat of epoxy. Meanwhile, Jim
is fitting deck beams and decking in the galley area.
Brooks Applying Epoxy to Decking
Jim Making Things Fit
Norm is applying faring compound to the aft guestroom head. His sidekick Brooks is coating
panels in the aft guestroom itself. This faring process takes many hours of sanding to provide
a good, flat, fare surface for paint.
Norm and Brooks Faring Well
The black, lead-impregnated rubber mat has been glued to the engine room bulkhead.
Lead is used for sound-deadening because of its density. It also keeps the bulkhead
from vibrating at a high rate of speed. The mat is being
held in place by many stifflegs as the glue dries.
Vertically-placed Mat Held by Stifflegs
These days, if you happen to be anywhere between Staits and Marshallberg around
sunset, you'll hear top 40 music rolling out across the water. It's coming from
a trawler owned and operated by seventeen year old Zack Davis. Zack has been fishing
alone (if you don't count his dog Whitey) since he was twelve, and just this year traded his twenty
foot skiff Firecracker for a bigger boat. Zack can sew together his own
nets, maintain his engines, work his winches and keep a steady course. While most kids
his age are cruising the roads bored and looking for action, Zack's cruising the inky
waters of Core Sound, "catching bugs." He bought his own truck, and knows his way around the
building of boats too, since his father and great-grandfather built boats. Zack wants
to go to college, but is proud of the business he's established for himself and may just
keep it up later in life too. "The old timers say there's no future in commercial fishing,"
he remarked. "But I'm used to all the rules and regulations. I don't get discouraged." His
boat seems to prance along the water with optimism; the other night Zack trawled by to the
Beatles singing, "One day, you'll look, and see I'm gone, for tomorrow may rain so,
I'll follow the sun."
Signing off for now, Barbara "Fish Doctor" Blake
Zack Davis Shrimping on Core Sound
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