HANGER BUILDING
About
eleven years ago I hauled some gasoline, lumber and freight for the watchman at
Sung Harbor Cannery. One of the items was a huge 1000-pound tractor tire. In
return, he gave me four huge 12 by 12 Douglas fir timbers that had been lying
on the dock since the late 1960’s. Two of them were 16-feet long, one 30-foot
and one 34-foot long. The shorter ones had rotten spots on them but the long
one was in perfect shape. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them at the
time but i loaded the short one on board and towed the longs ones behind the boat. After they laid on the sand spit for a year I figured out how to use them
to build a hanger.
The
next day I flew to town and got Dan Heathers to help me peel poles. I harvested
about twenty-six poles six to eight inches in diameter on the butt end and about
thirty-feet long. It took three days to peel them. We peeled the bark off from
them using draw knives. Dan works for me once in a while whenever I need a hand. He's the best worker I ever worked with.
I used the jinn pole to pick them up and place them on top of the big timbers. I spiked the poles down with 8-inch tree nails.
[A jinn pole is a kind of sky hook. The first thing you do when you buy a bulldozer is weld a four-inch pipe coupling to the top of the blade on one side and weld another one about three-feet down on the arm. You take a 16-foot length of drill pipe and mount an eye-bolt on one end. You stick the pipe down into couplings. When you want to lift something you tie a rope to the eye bolt and fasten the other end to the thing you want to lift.]
Because the shoreward 12 by 12 timber was 3-feet longer than the back timber I placed an extra pole on the ends so it fanned out making the opening of the hanger 38-feet wide. When I nailed down the 2 by 6 nailers for the roofing I let the two by sixes stick out an additional two feet and put upright poles under the ends to support the walls. This made the opening of the hanger about 40-feet wide. The Cub has a 32-feet wingspan so I had over three-foot clearance on either side.
I used the jinn pole to pick them up and place them on top of the big timbers. I spiked the poles down with 8-inch tree nails.
[A jinn pole is a kind of sky hook. The first thing you do when you buy a bulldozer is weld a four-inch pipe coupling to the top of the blade on one side and weld another one about three-feet down on the arm. You take a 16-foot length of drill pipe and mount an eye-bolt on one end. You stick the pipe down into couplings. When you want to lift something you tie a rope to the eye bolt and fasten the other end to the thing you want to lift.]
Because the shoreward 12 by 12 timber was 3-feet longer than the back timber I placed an extra pole on the ends so it fanned out making the opening of the hanger 38-feet wide. When I nailed down the 2 by 6 nailers for the roofing I let the two by sixes stick out an additional two feet and put upright poles under the ends to support the walls. This made the opening of the hanger about 40-feet wide. The Cub has a 32-feet wingspan so I had over three-foot clearance on either side.
Now
all I needed was metal roofing. It was November and our boat was put away in
Kenai for the winter so there was no way to get the roofing hauled over. I took
Dan back to town and bought enough 12-foot long sheets of roofing to cover the entire
building.
My
neighbor, James Isaacs at Silver Salmon Lodge hauls stuff under his little J-3
Cub all the time. He once landed on the outside beach to show me how much he
could carry under his plane. (Showoff) He had several sheets of plywood two, four by six
timbers and a huge 6-inch steel well casing tied under there. At the time I
couldn’t believe it. He also has a rack welded to his landing gear to haul big
propane tanks.
Meanwhile
back in Kenai I encountered to guys from Kasiloff who said there were going to
pick up a boat in Homer and bring it up to the Kasiloff River. They volunteered
to take my roofing to Tuxedni Bay on the way back to Kasiloff if I would take
them to Homer. I agreed and loaded the rest of the steel roofing into the back
of my pickup and drove them to Homer.
They
loaded the roofing into the cockpit of the 32-foot gillnetter and departed
Homer. About a week after I arrived back in Tuxedni Bay I called around to find
out where my roofing was and got the bad news that they had broken down in the
middle of Kachemak Bay. They didn’t check the transmission fluid before they
left Homer so their transmission went out. Somebody towed them into Seldovia so
they got drunk for a couple days. When they sobered up they chartered a plane
back to Homer leaving the boat in the Seldovia boat harbor along with my
roofing.
It
was unusually warm that December of 2003. I harvested broccoli sprouts out of
our garden the first of December. I watched the weather report for the next
week or so. Day after day the winds were less than 15 knots from the north. So,
about the middle of December I decided I would take the skiff across Cook Inlet
and get my roofing that was still in Seldovia.
With
extreme tides ranging over twenty feet and strong winds Cook Inlet can be one
of the roughest bodies of water in the world. Anyone attempting to cross it
with two outboard motors in the summer when the weather is nice is considered
crazy. I was going to do it in the winter with one outboard and the additional
danger of making ice. I mixed 30-gallons of outboard gas for the old 50-hp
Mercury put on my Carharts coveralls, hip boots and rain gear. After leaving our home
I headed in a direct line from the cannery entrance to Seldovia.
In the middle of the Inlet I crossed close astern of a Sea Land tug and barge. I know they thought I was completely crazy and I thought so myself out there with one old outboard in an open skiff in December with the temperature hovering around 20 degrees.
In the middle of the Inlet I crossed close astern of a Sea Land tug and barge. I know they thought I was completely crazy and I thought so myself out there with one old outboard in an open skiff in December with the temperature hovering around 20 degrees.
When
I got to Seldovia my roofing was sticking up at a 45-degree angel out of the stern
cockpit of the 32-foot boat. It would have never made it to tuxedni Bay. One
good and it would have slid out over the side into the drink. I stacked it down
into the bottom of my skiff and lashed it down through the scupper holes with ½
line so that it wouldn’t shift.
I
slept in the cold cabin of the boat and took off for the fuel dock at
eight in the next morning. I bummed a cup of coffee and bought four
candy bars for the trip. After fueling up I took off into a fresh northerly
breeze. I reached Anchor Point without incident and continued up along the
coast until I was abreast of the Stratski microwave tower.
My motor was cutting out before I got to Sterisky Tower so I removed the
cowling to discover that one of the wires attached to the primary of one of the
four coils was arching. I cleaned the contacts and tightened up the coil nuts and sprayed everything with WD-40. It ran fine after that.
By
that time it was noon and there was a good chop running down the Inlet. I
pulled the stern plug so that the water would run out and got underway. The
spray was coming over the starboard side and hitting me in the face. I couldn't
run fast because of the chop. There were a couple places in the middle of the inlet where the swell were so
bad that I had trouble keeping the 20-foot skiff pointed in the right direction. I bailed the slush ice with a
five-gallon bucket to keep up with the water coming in.
It took another five hours of spray in the face to get
into the entrance of Tuxedni Bay. I had been standing up and bailing water nine hours. I was chilled to the bone and
more hypothermic than I had been in my life. I am used to running around in a skiff in
the winter but crossing the Inlet in the winter is pretty hard core.
It was dark by the time I entered the cove. Mary was really worried about me and I was damned glad to be home.
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