New guy...somebody get the Hatteras Forum stink off of me, please

[q240z]

Hi all.

I've been lurking here occasionally since early summer when we picked up Libertarian, our 1967 52' Connie. But I made the mistake of only looking at the Bilge here, which wasn't the sort of forum I was looking for, and consequently moved on. I started checking out the Hatteras owners' forum at Sam's Marine (they've got some people with good diesel and 32v knowledge there), but in general they've got little respect for boats that aren't made of 'glass. Imagine my good fortune when a google search for bonding white oak turned up this particular forum! Having surveyed the LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG discussions on this forum regarding bonding white oak, I may have to move on again before long!:p

Anyway, I'm wondering what experience, if any, folks have with finding boat yards that are willing to haul 52+ foot woodies in the Chesapeake Bay watershed? We had Libertarian hauled for hull inspection and bottom painting at Atlantic Yacht Basin, south of Norfolk, but they don't let anybody except their $70/hr, slow-moving employees touch the boats once they're out of the water. We're looking at a refasten in the next few years and want to start planning now.

Cheers,

Q
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a118/q240z/boatin.jpg

[sdowney717]

cheapest and best place I know, he can handle 60footers is
Marina Cove Boat Basin in Hampton VA
he is charging me 150$ per month long term out of the water.
You do your own work as much as you want, and if the boat is too much, he will crush it for you for a couple hundred dollars.
This is a workmans fishing boat marina.
He has 2 large 4 sling haulout machine and has no fear of wooden boat haulouts.
And in Hampton, you dont pay yearly boat tax.

[Gary E]

SD,
That sounds like my kinda place... If you could take a few pic's and post them I'd be gratefull.

Also what's the deal with the boat tax you mentioned? I have heard there is some tax paid every year bassed on value? Whose value? Is this the same deal with cars?

[donald branscom]

[/QUOTE]

The employees don't get $70 per . Not even half of that.
The highest paid welder in CHEVRON in California only gets $22 per hour and they have not hired anyone in that shop for more than 10 years.
They farm out the work to Venezuala and Poland.

[sdowney717]

personal property tax on boats in Hampton VA is ZERO.
Done because the city thinks it will bring in more people who will then spend money with Hampton based businesses. they still keep track of the boats and their values, they just dont tax them at all.
The marina is on Harris Creek right near Langley Airforce base. You should see those guys flying those fighters, its like a show all the aerial manuveurs they do. And right over your boat. I have seen all kinds of planes coming in and going out. The marina is at the end of Harris Creek road and if it is a super high tide, the road goes under about 6 inches of water! Happens rarely.
Although with global warming, perhaps in 30 years it will be under most of the time! Ehrlin keeps up the marina fairly well and is easy going guy, he has all the equiptment you would need to haul motors out, it is a real working marina and I would also say about 25% of the boats there are abandoned.
Lots of fisherman with their deadrises are here. This is not a place with a lot of expensive fancy boats.

[Thad Van Gilder]

Yank Marine in Tuckahoe, NJ (near Ocean City) hauls several wood boats that size regularly.

-Thad

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

Great boat the 52... Either that or the 57 is what I want to end up with. Good luck with her.

[q240z]

"The employees don't get $70 per . Not even half of that."

Hey, if it's leaving my wallet, it really doesn't matter to me how it's divided up.

Thanks, Peter. But you know what they say about being careful what you wish for...;)

It's good to hear that there are working boatyards not too far away. Too bad there aren't any on the Potomac.

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

Does she have Cat's or Detroits?

[Hughman]

". Too bad there aren't any on the Potomac.

Try St Mary's county. There's a yard I *think* called Point Lookout Marine, between St Mary's river and Point Lookout. I hauled several vessels there 20 years ago, and found things congenial.

Go for a drive along the MD side of the river and see what is there.

[q240z]

"Does she have Cat's or Detroits?"

Twin 6-71s. The port engine is terrific. The starboard one is an ether addict when cold, but starts right up and has plenty of power when warm. I'm working on putting in hydronic heat, so will plumb block heaters as soon as I figure out where to put the in and out coolant ports on non-turbo DDs. That was some of the info I was trying to glean from the Hatteras forum. Not even boatdiesel.com has been helpful in that regard. Any ideas?

Hughman, I checked with every yard listed online for the Chesapeake and its tributaries, which I admit wouldn't likely include all of the "working yards," but found very few that could or would haul wooden boats of this size. They all say that their insurance companies prohibit it, even ones who used to haul wooden boats as recent as five years ago. It turns out that many of these big old woodies aren't maintained well enough to take the strain of a haul out, and stereotyping and prejudice is rampant in our species.

Who woulda thunk it?

[mikemoore]

check out Zimmerman Marine in Mathews, VA, might be able to handle your boat.

[Bob Adams]

A friend of mine just hauled his 75 foot Trumpy at Georgetown in the Sasafrass River. A bit of a run from DC, but a nice wide lift with 4 straps.

[Dryer lint]

cheapest and best place I know, he can handle 60footers is
Marina Cove Boat Basin in Hampton VA
he is charging me 150$ per month long term out of the water.
You do your own work as much as you want, and if the boat is too much, he will crush it for you for a couple hundred dollars.
This is a workmans fishing boat marina.
He has 2 large 4 sling haulout machine and has no fear of wooden boat haulouts.
And in Hampton, you dont pay yearly boat tax.

i used to have a boat at marina cove by. that was 20+ years back, but it was a real watermans yard back then.

Im wondering if the boat carpenter named "woodchuck" is still around?

[Dryer lint]

personal property tax on boats in Hampton VA is ZERO.
Done because the city thinks it will bring in more people who will then spend money with Hampton based businesses. they still keep track of the boats and their values, they just dont tax them at all.
The marina is on Harris Creek right near Langley Airforce base. You should see those guys flying those fighters, its like a show all the aerial manuveurs they do. And right over your boat. I have seen all kinds of planes coming in and going out. The marina is at the end of Harris Creek road and if it is a super high tide, the road goes under about 6 inches of water! Happens rarely.
Although with global warming, perhaps in 30 years it will be under most of the time! Ehrlin keeps up the marina fairly well and is easy going guy, he has all the equiptment you would need to haul motors out, it is a real working marina and I would also say about 25% of the boats there are abandoned.
Lots of fisherman with their deadrises are here. This is not a place with a lot of expensive fancy boats.

there used to be a air farce sergeant that would paint the name on your boat free hand. the guy was the best artist i have ever seen- he was cheap too

[sdowney717]

Ehrlin will haul any boat that pulls up to his dock in whatever shape its in.
He once pulled a boat and the transom fell off the boat.

I have called some yards and they will refuse to haul you if you are a wooden boat, even in an emergency they will not haul you out.
They claim the boats are too old and will fall apart. And people will abandon the boat and they dont want to deal with it. York River yacht Haven on the york river refuses to haul wood boats even if they are at their marina. Kinda made me mad, the manager claimed some persons were suing the marina when the travellifts 'damaged' their boats on hauling out, so they made a policy based on a lawsuit, if you can believe it. Then they will tell you to take it to a marine railway or some such nonsense, of course they dont exist anymore. And they claim wooden boats are too old, leaky, eyesores, rotten fungus infested termite eaten hulks, ecological nightmares full of oil and gas waiting to sink at their docks and they dont want them even in the marina. I mean serious prejudice. Plus they say only poor people own wooden boats and wont have the resources to properly maintain or fix them so they are a huge liability. They say if you could afford a proper boat it would be a glass boat. So the prejudice runs deep.

[Hughman]

Zanhisers(sp?) in Solomons?

[q240z]

"Plus they say only poor people own wooden boats and wont have the resources to properly maintain or fix them so they are a huge liability."

I had a debate with a clorox bottle pilot at the yacht club next door on this very issue. He said EXACTLY what you wrote. My response was that the reason he's in fiberglass is because he's too poor to pay for the craftsmanship and material costs of a comparably sized wooden boat and he doesn't have the skills required to make it affordable. Judging by his reaction, I might as well have told him that if he flaps his ears fast enough he can achieve unassisted flight.

The problem, of course, is that there's truth in that statement that many people buy wooden boats because they want something big but can't afford FG. Unfortunately, that trend has been going on for decades now and "they" have created a stereotype that "we" now have to live with.

I suspect that we're in a period of transition now, where the unmaintained hulks are sinking, burning, or falling apart on the hard. The poor folk who just want the biggest boat they can get for the money will eventually not be able to afford the well maintained woodies. Instead, they'll go for the old, delaminating FG boats, and we know what happens after that...