These photos and others are posted on my Facebook page now, but I thought I might post a few of them here. I wasn't quite sure where to post this, as it has pictures of me, but not altogether, and the newspaper article is about one of my little "adventures", but it's the only one I have from that trip (digital cameras didn't exist then, and a normal camera would have been destroyed).
The rest are various boats that I had a hand in building while working for Sintes Fiberglass Designs in New Orleans. This was in West End Park on the lake front of Lake Ponchartrain also bordered by the 17th St. Canal. That facility no longer exists, thanks to Katrina.
First, the newspaper article:
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I look young there, don't I? I was around 28 1/2 years old in that picture. As I said, this is the only picture I have of this boat, which we built in our back yard over about a year and a half.
It is a tri-hull pontoon boat made from 22-55 gallon drums tied together with a boxed angle iron frame, the front half of which is elevated above the rear by around 8 inches, covered with 3/4" marine grade plywood. It was powered by a 1957 Mercury Mark 75 outboard. You see the front cone on the front of the port pontoon? I designed and built all three of them.
Following is a picture of the high-tech 53' Sport Fisherman, the building of which I was involved in:
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I always wanted to be as handsome as that fine young fellow standing to the right of the rest, in his white tee-shirt with the Sintes hat on...wait a minute...that is me! No wonder he's so handsome! :P
Over a period of several years I was involved in the building of this boat. I was in on the fairing of the outside of the hull (naturally, it's a one-off) then, when we flipped it over (I was there for that event...it was an intense few hours, culminating in a highly intense few seconds!) I was involved in the inside lay-ups and internal and external construction.
The hull was formed from a frame kit (designed by David Sintes of Sintes Fiberglass Designs, to give credit where credit is due), covered with C-Flex and external fiberglass laminates, faired, and painted with a final coat of paint. We then built a roller cradle for it in order to flip it over to the up-right position.
All laminates and infrastructure was done high-tech all the way. We used uni-directional woven rovings and vinyl ester resins for the hull and used high density foam panels laminated on both sides and vacuum-bagged for high strength. All this was done to make the boat as light as possible while maintaining maximum strength.
Here is a picture of the (almost) finished boat after we had moved it outside the shop:
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At the rear of the boat and on the other side of the fence is the famous 17th Street Canal. You're looking into Bucktown, which was a fishing village that existed at the time of the photo.
More to come later. I have something I have to do right now.