INVESTIGATOR 563

I have been known to scavenge stuff off the roadside council throwout. Lots of marine stuff and boat bits too as I live in a coastal town. Anyway a year or two ago I found stacked neatly in copy paper boxes about 50 odd copies of various Cruising Helmsmans, Multihull,Wooden Boat and a few copies of a great read called Australian Amateur Boatbuilder.

Re-reading one recently it dawned on me there was probably a web site for this so I did a quick search and came up with..

http://www.boatbuilder.com.au/aabb-pdf-archives.html

...this has some great pdf format boat building yarns from their archive. As they are pdfs they are easily downloaded on an ipad or similar for reading off line. Many are timber sailing stuff. Both the mag and these stories have some great "saved from the bonfire" renos that put the pissy bit of annual work needed to keep moored boats viable into perspective. As I have a 16 hour flight to Canada coming up later this year Im saving them up to fill up a few hours. Its interesting what skills you can pick up from these articles.Enjoy.

No, I don't intend to build a timber boat , done too many house and boat renos to still have the will and elbow grease reserves but I like reading shipwreck stories too and I don't intend to do that either.

Quiz :Whats the best bit of stuff you've ever got off the road side?

Hi Ozzie:

Thanks for sharing that yarn. I have a great scavenger story, though most won't believe it.

One day I was walking around the southern edge of Corio Bay here in Geelong.

There had been a particularly strong northerly for the past 24 hours, so a lot of seaweed and other flotsam and jetsam had been pushed up onto the short beach.

Something bright red caught my eye half buried in the weed; I jumped down onto the sand and unearthed a brand new red plastic esky.

I guessed it had probably fallen overboard from some hapless fisherman's tinny earlier in the day.

Despite missing its lid, I thought it would be great for carting stuff on my boat, so I grabbed it, washed off the sand, and took it home.

A week later we were walking in the same area, and this time a bright white object caught my eye; you guessed it: half peeking out from the sand was the white plastic lid off my newfound esky.

After a wash, I reunited the lid with its other half, and now I have a brand new esky for the boat.

I'm still hoping for half a dozen stubbies of beer to wash ashore to put in my esky.

Cheers,

Brilliant Geoff.

Best Ive ever fished out of the lake was a spinnaker bag . No name on it so it came home. Speaking of yarns about rubbish , I inherited my love of restoring old junk from my late dad. Years ago when you were allowed to scavenge unofficially from the local tip he was poking around and lost his good reading glasses..... after a fruitless search he went home and then to his local bowlo for a consoling ale . He then struck up a conversation with one of his drinking mates bemoaning the loss of his specs.

"Ive just come back from the tip and while scavenging myself found a case with glasses and you name on them"

DAD "Bloody beauty mate where are they, in your car ? "

"No I figured if YOU turfed them out they must be $#*t so I chucked back on the pile"

He swore black and blue this was a true story and he did make a rare trip to the op for new glasses so I think it was.