Month: June 2020

Life itself probably runs on kind of a continual timeline, but blogs, not so much. So let’s back up a little. What I called a pontoon boat — but was really a raft bereft of anything but four sheets of expensive plywood and two pontoons — left my hands on the fateful day that the Amphibious Superheroes jumped out of nowhere at the Trego Boat Landing. I subsequently delivered a homemade helm. At that time Tom at Shell Lake Marine said I would get the boat back with a motor in about a week.

And it was exactly a week. Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, I got a call from Shell Lake Marine and met Tom at the landing where he had my, um, kinda “boat” ready for launch. I brought a lawn chair, a life jacket, a throwable (part of boating regulations is that you have a throwable life preserver on the boat), boat registration and one Leinies Summer Shandy. Because no boat should be launched without a beer. In Wisconsin Leinies is mandatory. (Sorry other Wisconsin breweries. I love you all, but in my family Leinies is a tradition.)

So here’s what I sent to the marina:

And here’s what I drove back from the landing:

Huck Finn would be jealous. I must admit that it was a bit unnerving driving along with no rail. And I loved waving at all the big shiny boats out on the lake on the busiest weekend of the year. That odd lady with the . . . thing on pontoons. But look how easy it is to clean! Just drive real fast and the dirt blows off!

I did enjoy my Shandy, though. Should have taken a selfie and sent it to Leinies with a caption “Join me out here. And don’t fall off.”

Unfortunately I managed to take the picture without showing the motor. But it’s a motor. You know. A boat motor. The most admirable thing about it is that it starts. Unlike its predecessor.

Every now and then there bursts upon you a terrific solution that should have been there all along — and probably had been. While I’ve been struggling away trying to strip the layers of paint from the aluminum pontoon “skin” — I discovered recently that that’s the official name for the stuff — I’ve also been searching for an innovative material with which to replace it. There HAS to be something better than aluminum that will require hundreds of dollars in stripper, at least that many hours of my time (picturing myself next November wearing blaze orange to prevent being shot by deer hunters while I’m still scrubbing away at layers of faded paint) and still end up looking like, well, repainted aluminum.

Then it happened.

I know pretty much every boat that goes by here. OK. Maybe not by heart, but the boat that came rocketing around the corner last Saturday was definitely not one I’d seen before. Sunflower yellow and occupied by a lone young blonde, she scooted on past. The color of the boat and the driver sans companions were notable. But the incredible thing about this boat was the skin. It was floating…. ok, billowing. It was made of something like parachute material. The wind caught it just so, which had it fluttering quietly up the lake like nothing I’d seen before. This was not a boat. This was a butterfly on pontoons driven by the Princess of Trego.

And suddenly my solution was upon me! I too, could use fabric for pontoon skin. I SPRUNG into action. Well, no. To tell the truth. I stood there for awhile because I’ve seen thousands of pontoons drive by my house and I have to say that not one of them ever fluttered. So I watched awhile as she met up with another boat and they did a sort of mating dance in the wide bay upstream before disappearing into the evening mist.

Then I trudged up Killer Hill and took stock of my fabric. Nothing worked except one piece of vinyl canvas. I scratched my head and measured and re-measured and determined that I didn’t have enough. Trouble was that the fabric had to show on both sides and I didn’t have enough of anything that was suitable. All my vinyl is backed with something either kind of fuzzy and white or printed with the manufacturer’s logo. Not what you want on the outside of your boat. I walked around for two days with a deep frown.

🙁

But then I measured again. In fact, I took the half-stripped skins and laid them out on the fabric.

They just barely fit, but I was able to do it. I cut them out 1/2 inch too big all around, then hemmed them on the sewing machine. I started out ironing the hems, but was terrified that I’d melt a hole through the vinyl-coated fabric. I have no idea what this fabric is, where I got it or where to get more. If I managed to melt it, there would have been no way to replace it. So I ended up just sewing the hems without ironing, which turned out easy enough.

I then RUSHED to the hardware store and, with the help of Al, bought sheet metal screws and fender washers with which to screw the hemmed fabric to the rails. Skin at last.

It was impossible to keep all wrinkles and faults out of the canvas as I stretched it to fit the old holes, but did my best.

In fact, Kent and Brenda were here for the weekend and helped a lot with getting the last of the canvas attached to the rail. Sun angle and other factors make it look imperfect, but once it was on the boat. . .

I thought it brought some nautical class to the project. Not your typical pontoon boat. . .

Here’s the finished rail a little closer. Also showing the first coat of something on that poor neglected deck. Finally!