Scarano Boat Builders

The events in this post took place in July of 2020

The night before our departure from Shady Harbor.

We had been referred to Scarano Boat Builders by Brian Donavan the owner and operator of Shady Harbor marina.  On our trip down, three weeks earlier we had met with Eric Everson the project manager over at Scarano who would be overseeing the refit.  I had left Eric with a drive that contained photos, a copy of the survey, and some PDFs of the original plans that the Burger Boat Company shared with me.  I wanted Eric to have a feel for what work needed to be done in order to give us an idea of how much we would be looking at investing back into Tropical Horizons II.

Scrub, scrub, scrub a man with his tub!

While Karen and I were busy with various tasks on board Tropical Horizons II, we took some time out of our day to head over and visit Scarano Boat Builders so that we could see what they were capable of as well as see the pontoon that we would be tying up to on our arrival.  We met Eric and toured the various shops looking at many projects that they were working on.  It was all quite impressive and I had a good feeling as to what they were capable of.

An overcast day prior to leaving Shady Harbor.

Back at Shady Harbor, we continued working about, cleaning, packing and preparing Tropical Horizons II for her winter stay in Albany NY.  We had a short list of projects to complete over the winter that were a bit much for us to take on ourselves.  Our days were taken up by various maintenance tasks such as: pumping out our holding tanks, filling up water tanks, cleaning the outside removing rust stains from the hull, sorting and storing items for the winter and so on; until one evening had me feeling a bit uneasy.  I had noticed the bilge pump light flicker on and off at the helm and did not think much about it earlier that day.  When I noticed that the flickering light continued after our supper, I was a little more concerned.  We cleaned up and settled down for the evening.  Before heading off to bed, I checked on the flicker light and again it would come on and off.  I headed down into the engine room, lifted up the floor plates that covered the main bilge compartment, I was expecting to find a defective float switch, that was not the case.  The float switch functioned quite well, the bilge was full of water and filling up from the stern sections of the boat.  Add to that, the oil from the line break was floating on top of the bilge water, I needed to find a way to clean up the oil before it would find itself in the river.  I picked up more oil absorbent pads and started to float them over the oily bilge water, then would ring them out in a bucket before floating them again to absorb more oil.  This was working and after a few hours of this exercise I could see clear water to the bottom of the bilge with a bucket of oil.  I was relieved!

Shady Harbor slipping away in our wake.

The question to ask now was where did all of this water come from?  From what I figured, this water came from the water tank vent hoses which seemed to go nowhere.  This will be something else that we need to address.  The job list was creeping upwards ever so slightly.  The next few days would be more of the same until we made our way to Scarano Boat Builders where we would ultimately leave Tropical Horizons II for her long needed hull refit, we just didn't know how badly she needed this work.

Coyemans Landing Marina

Coyemans Landing

Arriving at Scarano's we docked at their floating pontoon where we would unload our personal belongings that would be returning to Canada with us.  The bins were starting to fill up again as we continued to pack and we were wondering how we would bring everything back home.  U-Haul was the answer, this time with a smaller trailer, the smallest one they had available proved to be large enough for everything we needed to bring back.  

There are always interesting houses to see, this one reminded me of the light houses on the Chesapeake

Crow's nest?? Not if you ask that Osprey

At the helm heading up river.

So don't hang out under the bridge!

The Hudson is still tidal at Albany and as the river narrows, the tidal range increases and so did the incline on the ramp from the pontoon to the shoreline.  I also managed to find some wasps who promptly stung me multiple times on my foot as I walked off the ramp.  I took care of them in my own creative way!  

That's a lot of scrap metal!

Albany is just around the bend.

Scarano Boat Builders dead ahead.

With the trailer loaded up with most of our stuff, we just had the food left to load up which would wait until we were ready to leave.  Karen and I kicked back and enjoyed the last night onboard Tropical Horizons II before she would be hauled out of the water and spend the rest of the summer, fall, winter and spring on land.  I rested and iced my foot where the wasps did their best to make me uncomfortable and we were both feeling a little down knowing we would be returning to dry land.  Then without warning a small square rigged sailing ship showed up on the river and was heading right for us.  They were flying the Russian Federation flag and no one on board spoke a word of English.  

Arrival of visitors from Russia

The Russians had arrived and as they skillfully docked their little ship, three gentlemen hopped off and were all speaking excitedly in Russian (at least I thought they were excited).  There was a bit of a problem as they could not plug in to shore power since the 30Amp plug was not working and we were plugged into the 50 Amp outlet.  I communicated with them the best I could and we determined that they would be happy with a 15 Amp connection and so, I set them up with an electrical connection provided by Tropical Horizons II and they were quite happy with the arrangement.  I sent a quick message to the yard manager just to let him know what was going on and once again we settled in for our last night aboard.  

This tiny ship made it over from Russia.

After a supper we were unsure of what to expect from our new neighbors, I went over to say hello and introduce myself only to find that they had all left?  That night was quiet and Karen, Tank and myself all settled into our beds for one final sleep.  The next morning, we awoke cleaned up and had breakfast.  I started to empty the water tanks and Karen was busy packing up the food and last minute items that I would haul up to the truck for our departure.  This is when we met the Free Masons, yes that's right 3 gentlemen drove up in a car and just started talking with me.  

Love the classic boats!

The first question they asked is if I was a Free Mason...the answer to that was a simple..."Nope, can't say that I am."  I explained that we owned the Burger that was docked on the pontoon and that we were having some work completed at the yard here.  They were there to see the little Russian Ship, apparently it was all over the news and had caused quite a bit of excitement in the area.  I didn't get a whole lot of information but the ship was built by her captain out of Russian pine and was sailed from Russia across the the US in order to get to their twin city which was somewhere in Minnesota and that the ship was a bit of a travelling goodwill cultural museum to help build friendship between the Russian Federation and the United States of America....there were no politicians onboard!  

I explained that they had left the night before and I had not seen any activity since then.  The senior of the group kept chatting with me as I loaded up the remaining items in the trailer and truck and before long we were on our way towards the Canadian boarder and we said goodbye to Tropical Horizons II as well as our new found friends.

See you next year!