gas jon and suzi

Watercolor dates to the 50's

Suzi, Justin and me on the beach at Blake Island

gas jon and suzie

Suzi.  Her front window just visible in that watercolor of old Lake Union. Same as the day Kennedy got shot or St. Hellens blew, running down that dock behind cousin Jon is burned into my memory. Cringe a little remembering the splinter under a fingernail climbing around that gray wood tugboat later that afternoon.  Smell of creosote in the mid-morning sun, down a ramp to the floats where a few pleasure boats hid behind the  WWII vintage ship. Justin and me excited to see Suzi for the first time.

Of course, Jon stopped at the biggest and best cruiser on the dock, climbed up the side with a huge grin and as soon as the two of us inland bred brothers had looks of amazement on our faces he jumped back to the rough board float and scampered to the next boat. Not so impressive as the big yacht. Canvas pulled over the open part of her deck, varnished mahogany cabin and transom needed some work, love at first sight. 

Twenty-six feet, that's almost thirty. Did the same thing in my mind in another chapter of future life and my boat measured thirty-three, that's almost thirty-six, length of those beautiful classic trollers built in Tacoma before the war. My boat came out of a backyard in Bellingham.  Suzi probably built in some long-forgotten yard along Lake Union. Jon and I used to poke around the old Lake Union but really only got a glimpse of that world before it disappeared under rich people's plastic yachts and upscale restaurants. 

Sometime in the fifties my uncle Simon sold a tough sixty-foot dragger, try out the easy life up on the beach for a while.  Keep his hand in and have some fun with the family, he got the Suzi. Her name painted in fancy script across the stern.  A small open deck with a high stool and small ships wheel drive the boat from outside. Gaslamp with white-hot sputtering mantle over galley table where us kids used to sit up late on sleepovers playing Rook and listening to KJR in later days when the boat didn't go out so much anymore. Under weigh kids could sit on the back of the galley satee to see over the bow, steer with one foot on each side of the spoked wheel. Around the corner, below the front deck, the head pumped out through a fitting in the hull below the waterline. Hard for a kid to remember which valve to open and which to close and supreme embarrassment when the bowl didn't clear and you had to go ask for assistance. Yuck.

Mom and dad's bunks came to a vee up forward, two by two hatch overhead gets you up on the bow. Back up in the cabin, propane galley stove across a narrow aisle from the table,  sound of Simon's knarled hand pumping his coffee pot full in the sink while he waited to take the boat through for the locks. Hard to think of that guy without a coffee cup in his hand.

Chrysler Crown gasoline engine bolted to a wood bed, lined up with propeller shaft, covered with a ceiling tile-lined box sat at the forward end of the room.  Run the fan, lift the box and sniff for gas vapors before pulling the starter. Six volt cranks the engine over at dead battery speed, my heart sank pretty much every time I started a Crown on the original small batteries in the trolling boat I ran a few years later. 

Of course when we were all on the boat with Uncle Simon in charge the possibility that anything could go wrong that he couldn't fix never crossed my mind.  One night when a family group was out on the lake enjoying city lights reflected on the still water, the Crown in Suzi refused to start. Going to say everyone enjoying cocktails out on the water, but our family is all Nazarine.  

Backup motor, a five-horse power outboard. Gas tank dry, spare tank dry. No problem, half can of paint thinner poured into the motor, no outboard mount so Phil and Earny held it down over the stern, pulled the cord, and away we went toward the beach. Got us in, didn't it? 

Simon used to say that the diesel in the Meldon, his dragger would run on canned milk, meaning the machine isn't picky about fuel. Of course, as a little kid, I visualized the boat caught in a storm and out of fuel and Sime runs up to the galley, grabs a can of Carnishion of the table, pours it into the engine. Starts just in time to be saved from being dashed on the rocks somewhere. And yes my mind has spent most of its time in fantasy worlds.

Years later and Simon has gone back to the fish business, away in the boat four months a year, living on the north Lake Washington beach a refuge from real wind and wave. Not a whole lot of enthusiasm for camping trips in little Suzi. She became a swimming platform in summer, a cabana for kid campouts any time of the year. By the time Jon and I were old enough to start figuring out how the boat worked, the engine hadn't been started in several years.

Jon knew more than me, learned from his brother Phil and now we had things torn apart on our own.  Charge the battery, make sure there is oil in the crankcase and water in the heat exchanger, hefty squirt of starting fluid in the carburetor, pull the starter.  Cranked her over until the old battery went flat. Gas in the tank at the stern, but nothing coming out of the line at the carb. Gas turned to varnish.

Never that much verticle clearance in boat engine compartments, Crowns got around this with an updraft carburetor. Mounted under the intake manifold, had to practically stand on your head to get down and fiddle with the thing. I want to say we pulled it off the engine and took it apart on the galley table to clean all that sludgy gas, but at that stage of our learning, it's highly unlikely we ever could get it back together. Always a spring goes flying or tiny screw turns up missing. Either smart enough to leave the carb alone or dumb enough not to think of a mini overhaul, we sprayed the heck out of it with carburetor cleaner instead. I don't remember how we cleared the sludge out of the copper tube gas line that led to the forty-gallon tank at the stern of the boat.

By the time we were ready to try starting again, beautiful rainbow swirls drifted around the surface of the bilge water.   We tried to be careful, but a little spilled clearing the gas line, carb cleaner dripping and a little bit always slops out draining the carb after it floods with almost every pull on the starter. 

There is an art to starting a Crown without filling the elbow-shaped intake with gas. Of course, Jon and I had no idea. Takes just an instant at full choke then feather it back quickly or you will be on your head trying to hold an old Folgers can under while unscrewing the plug, keep as much gas out of the bilge as possible. 

Learn by doing, only with some things boys only get one chance.

In place of an air cleaner boat engines have a device called a flame arrester. Slips over the intake, maybe three by six inches, looks like the fins in a radiator, sixteenth of inch openings with an offset section in the middle. The one I had was brass, maybe they all are. Idea is when the engine backfires there isn't so much flame shooting out into the confined engine compartment. Plenty of flame to light gasoline fumes though.

Mother's prayers and having the entire engine box and shaft alley open saved our lives. After cranking that old engine until the battery went almost flat again, suddenly she coughed into life. Coughed as in backfire igniting the bilge into a beautiful but terrifying three-inch blue flame that danced along the surface of the water all the way from where we were standing to the stern of the boat.

Battery was almost flat by then and time to head home. Make sure the fire didn't spread beyond the surface of the bilge, probably not mention anything about that to the folks over dinner. 

We didn't have enough experience working around boats and gas engines to keep ourselves out of trouble, but we sure as heck knew what could have happened.