Mailbox Rehab

My Mailbox used to look like this:

Leaning Tower of Mailbox

It was sort of floppy, but Hey!  I’ve been busy!  Then I got a notice from the mail carrier that I needed to fix it.

Fix your mailbox notice

It says,
13. Your box should face the road,
14. Your box should be securely fastened to its support
15.  Your box should be made level, and the post firmly planted.

Also notice that it’s dated mid-march and today is Mid May.  That poor letter carrier has put up with it for too long.

Today the mail carrier delivered a parcel to Rehab Jr and asked him to ask me to fix the box.  His reply was “My Dad is too cheap to fix it”.  Well….. ouch.  The truth hurts.

He’s pretty much right.  I priced a replacement mailbox in Home Depot and it was about $60 – $70 bucks.  No way Jose.  I’d like to build a brick one to match the house and other mailboxes on the street  (we sort of stand out in a not-so-great way), but that’s pretty far down the rehab priority list at the moment.   Still, I had to do something.

About a month ago I tried a temporary fix and put a furring strip next to it to give it support, not too effective.  See how the mailbox post plastic is cracked at the bottom?

not to effective

 

That temp fix didn’t work, so it was time to do it right.  First was remove the mailbox.  The crack at the bottom was caused by a dumb little metal post.  No wonder it cracked – no all around support.  This design was destined to fail.  As my Dad used to say, ” Damn Engineers!”.

Out comes the old metal support.

no all around support

Next I grabbed a scrap 4×4 and eight $.10 lag screw with 8 $.02 cent washers.  I pre-drilled holes and then screwed the lag screws through the mailbox plastic post into the 4×4.

Support post attached

Next was dig a hole.  The leftover post-hole digger from our farm owning days made short work of the hole.  It sure is good to have the right tool for the job.

TaDa!  Total cost – $.96.  Four cents shy of a buck.  Actually all this stuff was laying around in my garage, so technically did this fix not cost anything?

job done right

I have to fix the horse trailer lights before I take it back to the farm.  Stay tuned for more rehab fun.

Book Review – Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson

I give this book 3 stars out of 5 – I enjoyed it.

I really liked reading this book and learning about the people and dangers that are in this sort of deep wreck diving.  The difficulties involved and overcome were pretty amazing to learn about.  That people die doing this sport is not surprising given the difficulties involved, and that people continue to do it despite the dangers is pretty incredible.  Once you are drawn to something though, and it speaks to you deep inside I guess you have to go do it.

I find it pretty incredible that people will pay hundreds of dollars, risk their lives, and then spend hours slowing rising to the surface to decompress just to spend 20 minutes or so swimming around a wreck.  That takes real dedication and courage.

The book is more about the two people that were instrumental in exploring the wreck of a submarine and the efforts they went through to identify  it than it is just about deep wreck diving.  I read a lot of history so I was also very interested when they uncovered facts that pointed to errors in accepted accounts of history. I don’t want to do any spoilers, so I’ll end with two things.  First, it’s a really good read and I really enjoyed it.  Second I also saw “Shadow divers exposed” on Amazon, and it makes me curious about what it says about shadow divers.

 

Catalina 22 keel replacement – purchase

Bought the keel yesterday.  It was a small adventure on an absolutely beautiful sunny day.  I got to meet a great guy and he says he’ll guide me if I need help getting through the keel rehab.  Here are a couple of links he suggested.

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/catalina22/

 

http://www.catalinadirect.com/forums/fr_topics.cfm?forum_id=98

I have to be able to move the keel around myself, including unloading it once I got home.  I decided to put wheels on the keel pallet and that should let me roll it down the ramp.  So I took everything I could think of that I might need.  Here I have beefed up the pallet with 2×4′s and then added wheels.

pallet mobility enhancement

Then he loaded the pallet into Mrs. CapnRehab’s horse trailer.

loading keel

A short drive to his house to pick up some parts, and then head for home and unload.  Here is how it looks at the rehabitat.  Yes Charlotte, I got the blue one

keel in the trailer

The best laid plans…  Things didn’t go quite as planned while unloading.  Hit a bump and the wheels stopped but the keel didn’t.  Yanked the nails right out.

wheels fell off

ALL the wheels came off.   I muscled it over to a temporary pallet so I could repair the wheels.  I’m glad somebody invented the lever.

moving to temp pallet

 

wheels repaired and pallet re-loaded

It turns out it isn’t that hard to move the keel around one side at a time.  I can’t even pick up one end, but I can slide it over – that’s all I needed.

Soon to be joined….  stay tuned.

Catalina 22 and keel

(OK, not so soon, I have a lot of projects going on right now)

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Found a keel

I found a keel on my favorite shopping site.  Craigslist of course!

Choice of two keels

My choice of two, and the owner says he’ll give me guidance to get it fixed.  He even has dimensions for it.

C 22 Swing Keel Dim pre 1985

Lucky Me.  Now I just have to figure out how to move it and how to repair it.  Simple huh?  Not.  The specs say it weighs 525 lbs +/- 25.  You have to plan how to deal with something like this.

Here is a thread that talks about finishing a keel after sandblasting.  If you don’t seal it within a few hours it will start to rust and then the epoxy won’t stick to it.

Wish me luck.  I’m going to try to make it out there this weekend.

We don’t need no stinkin keel!

Catalina 22 Keel Repair.

Well, maybe we do.  This is the reason the previous owner gave me the boat.  We have a serious lack of keel:

Keel slot – no keel

In all these pictures, the bow of the boat is toward the top of the picture.

Here is a close up of the bolts.  Or should I say where the bolts used to be.  They look like they’ve been sheared off.

Sheared Off Keel Bolts

Here is the same spot, but at a slight angle.

Sheared off keel bolts at an angle

To give you some idea of the mess this is, I went looking for a picture of one in good condition and found this Catalina 22 / Fleet 20 Portland Oregon blog entry

Hangar Bolt Weldments

Here is a picture looking up into the keel cavity.  I think that thing sticking out of the side may be a “stay down”  bolt, but not sure.

Keel cavity

Wow, it looks like I have a LONG way to go to get this boat in the water!  Unfortunately about the only required skill I currently possess is patience and the inability to recognize when a job is too big for me.

 

First mowing of the Rehabitat lawn

Lil Red is out of commission at the moment, so Orangy was pressed into service.

Orangy the riding lawnmower

For such a little guy, this is a great big yard!

Front yard of the Rehabitat

He just kept saying “I think I can, I think I can…”  till the job was done.

Rehabitat yard is mowed

So I took another few pictures cause it was so pretty.

The Two Best Days….

As the saying goes, …The two best days in a boat owner’s life are the day he gets the boat, and the day he gets rid of it.  Here you see a picture of two very happy boat owners.   CapnRehab on the left (getting a boat), and M on the right (getting rid of same boat).

Yes, we’re making my first purchase for the boat.  Yay West Marine stores for being everywhere!

Smiling Boat Owners

M has struggled with the problem of owning a boat remotely.  Not having a place to work on it, and having a boat that needs serious repair do not go very well together.  He did what he could with the limited time he could get with the boat, but eventually you have to give up.

Here was my first view of the Catalina 22.

First View

Doesn’t look too bad, till you get a closer look at what’s inside.  In the grand tradition of people giving me boats to work on, my first job is emptying them out.

Boat full of water

With the boat tilted up like it is, all the water that leaked into is in the back.  Which is really great, because the wood inside doesn’t look like some of the other disaster boats I’ve owned.  The first thing to do was get a siphon going and get the water out.  IT TOOK 4 HOURS!

Draining Water

While we waited for the water to drain, we worked on the trailer wiring.  This was a temporary setup just to get me home.  Still didn’t work quite right.  Running lights and signals are fine, but when I step on the brakes, the lights go out.

Trailer Wiring

It was about an hour drive home, with M following in the chase car.  It went just fine.