Tank Thread Tank reached 38 years old...in 2009!

[Paul B]

Boat

So I go to my boat today because for some reason, there is always water in the bilge and it drives me nuts. For 10 years I have been cramming myself in the bilge with a rag and a bottle of Lestoil so I can get the grease off of everything especially those white bilge pump hoses in between the engines. You can barely make out the red bilge pump all the way in the back. There is always grease in there because even a drop of oil in a bilge will coat everything if there is water in there.
Years ago I installed that bilge pump on a 24" piece of 1/4" plexiglass and secured the plexiglass in a place in the bilge where I can easily remove a screw and take out the bilge pump that is in a place that you can't get to.


Today I brought my camera there which has a 6' flexible hose in it so I can get the camera all the way under the engines to look for the leak.


So I removed all the water in the bilge and cleaned it nice and white. I also cleaned those corrugated hoses. I then did something else for 10 minutes and when I came back, there was water in the bilge.
I again sucked out the water with a vacuum and dried it nice and clean. I went and did something else and when I came back, there was water in the bilge.
OMG, I am going crazy, there should not be water going in there but it is a very tight spot and I can't see where the water is coming from.
It didn't help that it is 90 degrees and the sweat coming off of me is also filling the bilge.


I stick my feet up in the air and get my head all the way down there wondering how I am going to get out and I see it.
A little waterspout of water is coming into the boat from a tiny hole in the middle of the bilge, under where I have that plexiglass bracket that I made to hold the pump.


Then I figured it out. When they built the boat, the Jiboni that installed the bilge pump must have drilled the hole for the screw all the way through the hull into the sea. That must have been tough because the hull is probably 2" thick there.
He probably put in a screw he got in Home Depot because it was not stainless steel and it rotted out leaving this nice little hole where water comes in.
I got a real stainless steel screw and screwed it into the hole.
Problem solved and it only took me 10 years to find it.
I would never have found it if I didn't take the pump. bracket and hoses out to clean.
The water was probably filling the bilge about 2" deep and the bilge pump would come on pumping out most of the water until it filled again.

 

[Paul B]

Yesterday I went to a party on a rooftop of one of the oldest hotels in Manhattan,
(Not my Idea) But they had a raw bar and if they have a raw bar, I am there. This was a birthday party for my Son N Laws Mother.
There was maybe 60 people there and I got to meet some artists and show off some pictures of my Steam Punk stuff. My Grand Kids were also there. I don't know what this thing costs but they charge you $57.00 "extra" per person to have raw oysters there.
An oyster costs about two bucks so I am not sure how they figure that ridiculous price and I don't think most people even eat raw oysters which is fine for me because that is one of my favorite foods.
My Daughter of course was there and she is actually shorter than me.
Here she is wearing 8" shoes. No, I am not kidding, it looked like she had cinder blocks taped to her feet. The soles were about 2" and the heels were 8".
Like Duh, how do you walk in such things?

 

[Paul B]

Andy, I think you and me are the only ones who read this thread. I may as well just text you. :scratch:

 

[Paul B]

I am looking for a new (or used) outboard for my 7 1/2' dinghy. I bought one two years ago but it is from China and a piece of garbage. It is a 2 1/2hp 2 stroke something I can't pronounce but the main problem is that it is air cooled. Air cooled anything run by gas is silly. I want a water cooled, 2 stroke 3 1/2 or 4 hp motor not from China because I want it to actually run without blowing up after one season.
I will probably get a used one because I only use it maybe 2 or 3 hours a year so I don't want to spend over $1,000.00 for it. I can probably get a used 2 stroke for 3 or 4 hundred.
I want a 2 stroke because they are lighter and smaller as I am not interested in gas economy when I am using less than one gallon a year. I can go for the extra fifty cents in gas a year.
2 stroke motors are so simple a 5 year old girl could pull it apart in ten minutes with a pliers and a comb from a Barbie Doll. Maybe Airline Hostess Barbie or Supermodel Barbie.
On my first boat I had a 140hp 2 stroke motor but one day it blew up.


We were out with some old people (who at that time were much younger than I am now). It was a beautiful night and all of a sudden I heard this "Pop". The engine stopped. I tried to start it but there was no sound.
I took off the engine cover and saw all these parts fall into the ocean. The connecting rod came right through the side of the block knocking the starter off the engine and I could see daylight coming right through the cylinder.
I had a pliers and maybe a screwdriver with me and my wife said to me, "Can you fix it?"
I said, Yes I can, after I buy a new power head for about $5,000.00 and spend a few days installing it.
That is exactly what I did but it took all summer to get the new power head.
Of course I had to buy new pistons, rings, reed valves and everything else except for maybe the propeller.

 

[reefiness]

What a bone head that guy was. Haha. Did you plug around the hole at all or are you just going to hope the screw holds out the ocean?

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[Paul B]

The screw will hold fine. That hole was probably there for 10 years and the boat didn't sink. It probably let in a couple of gallons a day and the bilge pump pumped it out.
When I take the boat out of the water at the end of the summer I will crawl underneath to see if there is any more damage.

 

[Paul B]

My new pair of Janss Pipefish seem to be doing fine. I needed to really step up my brine shrimp hatching operation and I am probably still woefully to short to provide enough food for all the planktavores I have
If I get time (and that won't happen until the winter) I will build another shrimp hatchery that I can fill in between the times I fill this one now, which is every day. But the shrimp take about 36 hours to hatch so I play RAP music near their hatchery which cracks their eggs and they get out faster. Then they cram themselves as far from the music as they can so I can easily get them.

 

[Paul B]

Did I mention I hate Manhattan? I totally hate that place and seriously don't see the attraction. I mean, if you are from Tibet, Siberia, Tunisia, the North Pole or some place like that where there is no crowds or big buildings I may see a little attraction. But if you come from almost any other place I am sure you have seen buildings. Even if you come from a place that only has buildings that are two stories tall, you can just imagine that same building with 100 other buildings on top of it,it is the same thing. Cement, windows and bricks don't do it for me.
Also no one speaks English in Manhattan either. When I worked people came up to me every day asking me questions in every language on earth like I had a sign on me saying I speak Russian, Czekoslovian, Swahili, Mozambican, or Spanish. The only word I know in Spanish is Ricardo Montalban, and he's dead.
I can speak English and I am not to good at that.
I always tried to answer questions of tourists (especially the Swedish Supermodels that we often get) because us New Yorkers have a bad reputation for being cold and heartless and I tried to change that.


Tourists have a very hard time on our subway system. And I always felt bad for them and tried to direct them the right way, even if I had to go with them. I rode it all my life and still have problems on it as it is very confusing and I think the guy who designed the signs was from Mars.
You can walk for miles following some of those signs and end up where you started.


Once I was on the Long Island Railroad coming home from work and it was on a Saturday which was unusual for me. The train was empty except for these two Supermodels in bikini's with tiny cover ups on. "I hardly noticed" But one had a bright red bikini on with a blue sun visor on her head that read Ray Ban, she also had red shoes on and a leather thing around her neck with a tiny wooden pendant that read California Red Wood Forest. She was between 31 1/2 and 32, But Like I said, I didn't really notice them.


The train stopped at Jamaica and they got off. A few moments later the one with the red bikini, that I hardly noticed got back on and ran over to her seat obviously looking for something.
By the way, this was probably 30 years ago.
She ran to get off the train, but the doors closed.
Now she is frantically running the length of the train car trying to get off but of course the train is moving. Her friend was back in Jamaica.


The next stop is mine and she gets off as do I.


She runs across the tracks to where the train would take her back to Jamaica.
Now she is standing on the platform, miles from any beach on a train line that doesn't go to a beach and I notice that she is crying.
The Gentleman that I am, I go over to her to see what is wrong, even though I already knew.


She is from out of town visiting her friend in Manhattan and they were going to the beach in Montauk which is 100 miles east.
She thought she left her bag on the train and came back for it, but it wasn't there.
They don't put pockets in bikini's so I knew she didn't have any money, and this was before cell phones.
I told her we can call Jamaica Station and see if her friend went to the police.
No luck calling there so I offered to take her back to Jamaica which is a dump and not a real nice place to be especially a really beautiful girl wearing nothing but a bikini.
I wanted to take her home but I figured my wife would frown on that.


So she hesitated but got in my car and I drove her back about 15 minutes to the Jamaica station.
I gave her ten dollars and let her off right near the police station and told her to run as fast as she can for the station.
She wanted to write my number down but neither of us had a pencil but I would have liked to now what happened to her.
Hopefully her friend would have known she would take the next train back and find her there.
I never knew.

 

[Paul B]

I just made the most delicious meal of linguini and clams. Clams are very cheap now and are one of my favorite foods. We also had a nice salad with all garden vegetables, a bottle of wine, crusty Italian bread, good music and my main squeeze.
My kind of night.

 

[Paul B]

I will tell you about a Jiboni. A few years ago I went to an optometrist, or optomoligist, I forget, but it is the one who tests your eyes for glasses so I guess they have to go to about as much schooling as a guy who takes up the hem on a Supermodels dress.
But I don't really know.
Anyway when I would look to the side, I would see double. That was fine if I was looking at a beautiful woman, because I would see two of them, but if I was trying to change lanes, I would see two tractor trailers coming at me and I wouldn't know which one to get out of the way of.
So this "Jiboni" is examining me and he notices this so he turns to my wife and says. Your husband has a Brain Tumor.
This coming from an eye glass guy.
My wife immediately goes into panic mode and gets the horrors calling my life insurance company and sizing me up for a suit.


So he says I have to go for an MRI of my head.
I go for the MRI, then a brain tumor test where you look into this black box and you have to push the button when you see little Supermodels running across the screen like comets.
I did all that and what do you know, No brain tumor (Thank God)
Not that I got upset anyway because like I said he was "Jiboni" eye glass guy.


It turned out to be a slight weak muscle in my eye and I needed eye muscle surgery.


So I go to Manhattan to the Eye hospital and this normally only happens to little children so the doctor comes in with one of those flashlights on his head with a "Big Bird puppet" hanging on to it.
I go in for the surgery and of course I have to get naked, I ask if they are sure they are working on the right end of me and they assured me they were.


So they wheel me into the operating room and stick me on this aluminum table which I think they just removed a case of Bud Light from because it was ice cold. Then the nurse sticks me with the IV which she just took out of the same place they stored the Bud Light so I am shaking because I am freezing as there are parts of me that are not used to being on such a cold table.


(I know I told this story on here but I am not sure if it was last week or last decade so if I just posted it, go and watch Oprah, I think she is giving away cat chow to homeless bowlegged cats on welfare)


The nurse (who of course has her face covered with the surgical mask) sees me shivering and she comes over to hold my hand. She says "Oh Honey, don't be nervous, this is a simple procedure"


I said "Nervous!" how could I be nervous? I am laying on a table naked, surrounded by 7 beautiful Babes!


They all laughed so hard they almost lost their masks.


Then the Dr. comes in and he says, "you have him on the table backwards" which didn't give me a lot of confidence. Now I was shaking because I figured they would mistakenly remove my gall bladder through my nose or some other "important" part that I may need.

 

[Paul B]

We took the boat to the Bronx last night for dinner to my favorite clam place and on the way back to Long Island as I was driving I held the phone behind me and without looking I took this. I think it was kind of cool.
To make this post about fish (because I know I don't do that a lot) There were a lot of fish jumping but I doubt they were copperband butterflies.

 

[Paul B]

My bluestripe and Janss pipefish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPzSxrsVW3U

 

[LongIslandAndy]

Awesome job Paul, those purple queens are not easy to keep alive. Looks like one is turning into a male

 

[Paul B]

Andy, I got some Janss pipefish because my favorite person (Andy) whose name I won't mention (Andy) couldn't get them for me. Whenever my favorite person (Andy) would get them for me, he (Andy) would sell them to someone else first (Andy)

But purple queens are a piece of cake, sort of like guppies.

 

[Paul B]

If you ever get to Maui there is a road there on the side of a cliff that almost no one drives because it is like those old road runner cartoons where the road is 8' wide and nothing but a very long straight drop to the rocks below and the other side is nothing but rock cliff. The car rental places forbid you to go there. I will ask my wife the name of the road because I forgot.
You need to go very slow and sometimes you need to pull in your mirror so it doesn't hit the rock. The road goes for a few miles and it is a 2 way road but we didn't see anyone else. If someone is coming in the opposite direction you can see them around the rocks on the next mountain and one of you have to find a place to stop to let the other car pass. You may have to back up half a mile to do it because there are very few places wide enough to have a car pass.
There are no railings because there is no place to put them, that is how narrow that road is but the views are unmatchable any place in the world.
You can see where parts of the road collapsed and they stuck pilings into the rock to "repair" it.

There was one place around a turn that was wide enough for two cars to get by and we stopped to take pictures. This very old and skinny guy appears on a bicycle and he says his name is Marty, Marty the Jew.
Marty the Jew said he was following us up the mountain and he rides there almost every day because at the end of the road is a stand where they sell banana bread.
He said it is the best banana bread on the Island.
I told Marty the Jew that even if it was the best banana bread on the planet, I wouldn't ride a bicycle miles up this skinny road for it, not even if Christie Brinkley was on the back seat.

He said he was from New York and him and his wife retired there and loves banana bread.
We left Marty and continued up to the banana bread stand. There was this bored looking girl there on a bench with a few loaves of banana bread which of course we bought. It was good, but I wouldn't ride a bicycle up there for it. We told her Marty the Jew was on his way and she said, she knew, he comes there 4 times a week. :biggrin:

 

[albano]

Hana highway

 

[Paul B]

It could be Hana Highway. But I think it was Kahekili Highway which may be the same thing. This video doesn't do it justice because it is a sheer cliff to the left of you with only a few weeds between you and the rocks far below but it was the most beautiful road I was ever on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciR2KvadLt8

 

[Paul B]

These Purple Queen Anthias are extremely cool and colorful but they do require a little different care than say a tang or manta ray. Well, actually Manta Rays do kind of eat in a similar way, kind of but these Anthias require tiny food and although they will eat it when there is no current they seem to really enjoy eating in a swift current.
I feed them new born brine shrimp every day but I also add either frozen new born brine shrimp, cyclopeze, fish eggs or really anything tiny. I am not sure how they can see the food moving so fast but there are tiny things they won't eat. At first they will only eat live food but they eventually get the idea and I am certain that in time they will sit at the table with me and eat linguini and clams.
I need to hatch shrimp every day because I have about 10 fish that depend on that diet including mandarins and five pipefish.











I don't have a picture of the Manta Ray.

 

[Paul B]

Anybody ever go to Bora Bora?
if you get to Bora Bora, stay away from those silly huts. They only built them because there is no dry land there.
The one road that goes around the circular Island has little to nothing on it except as I said Bloody Mary's Bar and how long can you stay in a bar?
The only thing they sell in Bora Bora is black pearls so if you need those, go there.
We went to a black pearl shop (actually you can't miss them because they are like Starbucks in Manhattan) The girl asks you what price range you are looking for. You can go from $50.00 each to how much my Daughter spends on shoes.
You tell her how much you want to waste, I mean spend and if you say a thousand dollars each (which we didn't say) she gives you a shoebox filled with thousand dollar black pearls.
You take this cardboard box that is worth the same as Trump Tower and bring it to a table to look through it so you can pick out how many you need for a pendant, necklace or nose ring. I would imagine that you can take one of these pearls and stick it up your nose and walk out. We didn't do that as my nostrils are not big enough.
They take the pearls and X Ray them to see how thick the nacre, or shell is. Then they drill it and either string them or put a loop in so you can wear it "wherever".
We bought a couple and as we were leaving the girl, who was kind of a Supermodel said to us "Where are you from". We said New York. She said "Where in New York". We said Long Island. She said "Where on Long Island.
We said New Hyde Park. I said Where are you from? She said "Mineola". Mineola is walking distance from my house. I said, That is some commute.
What are the chances you go to the complete other side of the world, the farthest place you can travel and still be on earth and meet someone from your town!
Now that is a little far to go for a job.

 

[Paul B]

HELLO, IS ANYONE OUT THERE? I am not sure if my computer is on. It's awe fully quiet in here. I know Andy is lurking around (I will see you Sunday as I have too much sponge and no one wants it so if you don't take it, I am throwing it out)


If anyone is out there, raise your hand......Higher.


Anyone been to Colorado. Besides you people who live there.


I haven't been there in almost 50 years so I am not sure if it has changed. But as I mentioned, when you are in the Army you can go anyplace you want so we went searching for ghost towns. There are a few scattered all over the place there but most of them are just a couple of rusty pitchforks and a piece of a Starbucks sign with a plaque that reads, "This is Tombstone" or "Welcome to Wagon Wheel, ATM in the back, Population Zero".
I don't remember finding anything of significance. But the scenery up in the mountains is totally cool. They said you can see three states from on top of one of the mountains but I couldn't make out the black lines between them so I wasn't sure what I was looking at.
I also liked Manitou Springs. I am sure I spelled it wrong as you have to be an "Indian", or Native American to spell it. I love Indian stuff. At that time we called them Indians, I now realize they are Native Americans and a guy like me who is from Brooklyn is really a foreigner.

My friend and me would take either an M-60 tank of an APC (armored personal carrier) out on the prairie and look for buffalo, ghost towns or girls. No girls or ghosts, just buffalo. We didn't hit any.
I am sure I must have mentioned it in this thread 12 times but in case I didn't I will tell it again until I can think of something else to write. I was going out with a girl I met in Denver. (She is the one with the cute flounder face)
She had a Volkswagon. I told her where to meet me next to the fence of the Govt. land. She and her friend parked her car next to the fence and we lifted them over using the barrel from the gun on the tank.
We spent the day exploring the plains, it was very cool. I am sure I would still be in Jail if anyone found out but I was a Sargent and had a "little" pull, but not much.
I am sure that was the only time those girls had a date in a 120,000lb tank. We had no artillery shells so we couldn't play with the gun.
OK I will think about some fish story to tell as this is a fish forum. (No one on it anyway) so I may just sit here and whistle...........Wow, this is boreing. :scratch: