The Bonnie J
This is a picture of my boat, the Bonnie J. It's not all that much to look at- just an old wooden boat built back in the fourties, just after world war two, I believe. When I went shopping for a bigger boat back in 1990, I knew that I didn't really want a wooden boat,but it's all I could afford. Every year at a minimum you have to scrape and paint it, and if that's all that needed done, I'd feel fortunate. There is always the need to go on the grid iron or haul it out to replace the zincs and re-paint the bottom. The zincs are softer than the other metals in the boat and are considered sacrificial. Because of all the different metals, even in a wood boat, there's an electrical current that surrounds the boat- kind of like a battery. I don't understand all the in's and out's about it, but the current will attack the metal in the boat. If you don't replace the zincs when they need it, the current will eat the prop and keel cooler and eventually the...