Tank birthday, 47+ years

[SpartaReef]

This thread had 2,278 posts, I am sure I posted 2,270 of them, but who are the rest of you guys. WHERE IS EVERYONE?
IS ANYONE OUT THERE?
No one has anything to say. Good morning, happy birthday, drop dead, nothing!
Am I the only one who still has a tank?
I am quite sure I am the only one still on this thread from when it started, whenever that was.
I know no one will post anything about ich because I think that is just silly, no one wants to talk about leaky bilges on boats, no one has any Janss pipefish, no one built an algae scraper or SteamPunk anything.

Love you Paul... like distant family. Lol. Read all your posts, just don't say much. Learn more by "listening" than talking.

 

[Brew12]

This thread had 2,278 posts, I am sure I posted 2,270 of them, but who are the rest of you guys. WHERE IS EVERYONE?
IS ANYONE OUT THERE?
No one has anything to say. Good morning, happy birthday, drop dead, nothing!
Am I the only one who still has a tank?
I am quite sure I am the only one still on this thread from when it started, whenever that was.
I know no one will post anything about ich because I think that is just silly, no one wants to talk about leaky bilges on boats, no one has any Janss pipefish, no one built an algae scraper or SteamPunk anything.

Happy Birthday! Except that I seem to remember your birthday was a few months ago. :confused:

As for bilges, I'll go out on a lake in a boat with dirty bilges. The ocean? Not a chance. If people don't care enough about their boats to keep them properly maintained, I want to be able to swim to shore.

 

[Paul B]

(I was posting above your posts while you were posting. ) :D

I hate grease which is odd because I was an Oldsmobile mechanic many, many years ago and before that I worked in a junk yard so I have had my share of grease.
Now, I hope I can keep the water and grease out of my bilges. I built this thing under each engine that keeps those grease pads up off the floor of the bilge so if any oil drop has the audacity to want to fall into my bilge, it gets caught in those pads.
My boat has never been in fresh water as I don't have a trailer and even if I did, I couldn't tow the thing because I think it is 11,000 lbs. :cool:
This is Long Island so we have a lot of sea water around here. :rolleyes:

 

[chris85]

Good mooning... I use to hate when a customer would come in with a filthy bilge, then I started working on a tugboat and the bilge was literally about 6in. of oil and grease. I would take a pleasure boat bilge any day. When I got done with it you could eat out of it.

Talk about a leaky bilge... I had a pilot that thought the boat was all terrain and we had to hammer a broom stick in the hole and throw a bag of concrete on it to stop leaking!!

Sorry been a bit busy haven't been here the whole time but I did read all the post and articles!!

 

[Scubabeth]

This thread had 2,278 posts, I am sure I posted 2,270 of them, but who are the rest of you guys. WHERE IS EVERYONE?
IS ANYONE OUT THERE?
No one has anything to say. Good morning, happy birthday, drop dead, nothing!
Am I the only one who still has a tank?
I am quite sure I am the only one still on this thread from when it started, whenever that was.
I know no one will post anything about ich because I think that is just silly, no one wants to talk about leaky bilges on boats, no one has any Janss pipefish, no one built an algae scraper or SteamPunk anything.

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 blacks taped to her feet. The soles were about 2" and the heels were 8".
Like Duh, how do you walk in such things?

Hi, @Paul B! I follow this thread, too, and enjoy reading your posts....just don't have much to reply to myself. You certainly make me chuckle, and I love reading about your tank and exploits! ;)

 

[Paul B]

I get in there every week with grease remover and clean. Now, with no water coming in, it should stay nice and clean. I also paint the rust spots on the engines every year. I re designed all the hydraulics and electrical systems. Everything is now mounted on 1/2" thick acrylic which I bent into brackets. I hate the way engineers design things so I throw all that stuff out and build stuff out of much better and usually cheaper stuff. I have 1/2" thick and
1 1'4" thick acrylic. Iron and steel is a stupid thing to use in a boat.

 

[Paul B]

Hi SCUBA. I am glad you posted. I need to see people post occasionally or I feel I am talking to myself even though I probably also do that. :eek: Done any SCUBAing lately? We just booked a trip to a private Island where they filmed some of "The Pirates of the Caribbean" where Johnny Depp, or Capt Sparrow was marooned for a while.
But after diving Bora Bora and the rest of the Tahitian Islands I am totally spoiled and don't really enjoy diving the Caribbean any more.
I have been diving since I think 1971. I did my first dive in Australia when I was on R&R.
A Supermodel took me but I think I already posted that on here a few years ago. :rolleyes:

 

[Scubabeth]

Hi SCUBA. I am glad you posted. I need to see people post occasionally or I feel I am talking to myself even though I probably also do that. :eek: Done any SCUBAing lately? We just booked a trip to a private Island where they filmed some of "The Pirates of the Caribbean" where Johnny Depp, or Capt Sparrow was marooned for a while.
But after diving Bora Bora and the rest of the Tahitian Islands I am totally spoiled and don't really enjoy diving the Caribbean any more.
I have been diving since I think 1971. I did my first dive in Australia when I was on R&R.
A Supermodel took me but I think I already posted that on here a few years ago. :rolleyes:

Ha! I find that I talk to myself at times, too; must be completely normal! :) My husband and I starting diving 12 years ago when we were married, and we used to go once or twice a year, but it's been a couple of years now since we've been. Bora Bora is on my list of would-love-to-dive spots...maybe someday! Heck, I just want to stay in one of those huts over the ocean with the glass bottom!!! We like Hawaii (not just for the diving--lots of outdoor things to do there!) and Grand Cayman the best of places we've been diving. Have also been to Cozumel, Belieze, Bonaire, Florida Keys...I'm sure I've forgotten somewhere. We've had our own "reef" for the 12 years we've been married; started with a 46 bow-front for the first couple of years, and have had our 125 since. It moves around the country with us, though we usually sell our livestock before moving (that's always sad, but easier than transporting...tried that once from New Mexico to Texas; all fish made it, but died shortly thereafter in the smaller tanks while waiting for us to set up the 125b again; never did figure out what on earth happened.) Someday when we can stop moving around, we'll really have a tank we love!

 

[Rybren]

Hi Paul,

I'm not here and I don't read anything you write - unless it's about supermodels.

Jerry

 

[Turbo's Aquatics Verified Sponsor]

Good morning, happy birthday, drop dead, nothing!

Good evening Paul! Happy Birthday, I'm pretty sure you had one sometime over the last 365 day. Don't drop dead. Something

:D

 

[Paul B]

Now that's what I am talking about. If you see Rybren tell him I mentioned Supermodels in my last post.
SCUBA, you dove in good places. I have dove in those places and the Caymans are real good as a drift dive is fun and that's what they mostly have there.
I recently dove on some of the outer Hawaiian Islands. (I don't really like Hawaiian diving) My old girlfriend lives there and she was in our crowd so my wife is also friends with her. She took us to places where tourists don't go like a winery on top of the mountain on Maui and a Lavender farm up there above the clouds on the side of a cliff. Very cool.

My wife and I were diving in the Caymans and I am not really a tourist diver but you are supposed to follow the crowd. I was looking under rocks as I normally do because here in New York I am a lobster diver. My wife was hanging on to my belt and all of a sudden she pokes me and with this horrified look on her, she motions that we are alone.
That does not bother me because this was the Caribbean and there are dive boats there all the time so I am sure we will get a ride home.
Anyway, we went searching for our party and saw them in the distance so we headed for them. Their dive guide swims up to us and motions to "Go Back". Then he writes on his slate that we are not in his party.
Now my wife is panicking. I thought it was the best part of the dive. So we swam around a little and our guide found us and he was all horrified and panicky.

I normally dive here in NY and if no one wants to come, I go by myself which your not supposed to do, but it is what it is and I am not really a snowflake. I just don't dive at night alone as that would be stupid. Here we get tangled up in a lot of old fishing line.

WE once dove in some Island off Mexico (big mistake) and I saw this giant moray eel about 12' long. I pointed it out to the Jiboni behind me because he was taking pictures of everything. The Jiboni swims up to this giant fish and tries to tickle it under his chin like "Jacques Cousteau " (I forgot hot to spell his name, I don't do French)

The eel apparently never met Mr Cousteau and bit this Jerk's hand up to his elbow.
The eel was having a good time shaking this Genius back and forth and I was hoping the moray would eat him whole so I could get on with this boring dive. I mean, if you are going to be stupid enough to stick your arm in a fishes mouth that is half the size of a school bus, you deserve to get eaten. :mad: I am sorry but I don't have a lot of feelings for stupidity. It's like if you jump off a building holding a handkerchief for a parachute, should I feel bad when they pick you up off the sidewalk with a sponge!

So now there is blood swirling around this guy and the eel couldn't eat him whole and other people now see this. Of course I have to put this horrified look on my face and go and convince the eel, who was a friend of mine, to let this Idiot go and find another college grad to eat. :cool:

I convinced the eel to be nice and we got the moron to the surface and back to the boat. Then I ruined the rest of my day in a Mexican hospital so they could treat this Jiboni.
The rest of the week this guy was telling this story all over the place how this man eating fish almost tore off his arm.
I still am not speaking to that eel. :confused:

We took a helicopter over Kauai. That cut in the mountains is where they filmed the original King Kong movie where they had that giant wooden gate to keep him out. They also filmed one of the Indiana Jones movies here on a river that runs through there. Very cool.




There is a small moray here in the center. I think he was cousins of the large green moray I spoke about.


Visability isn't the best in Hawaii.



You can probably tell I have nothing to do right now as I am waiting for my wife to get up. :rolleyes:

 

[Chasmodes]

I check your thread out as much as I can and read every post. Most of the time, I don't have anything to add of value, so I just read and enjoy...hit the like button a lot (because I like what I read). At least you'll know that I'm following.

Sometimes I lose track of the threads. Unlike other forums, when you follow a thread here, the alerts seem to stop showing up after a while. So I have to go hunt for the other threads. This one is pretty easy to find. Time is not on my side though, because getting on the PC is the last thing that I want to do after work, so that leaves me with the mornings prior to my start time, lunch and before I go home after work to read and post.

Anyway, keep up the posting, we're here!

 

[Brew12]

Now that's what I am talking about. If you see Rybren tell him I mentioned Supermodels in my last post.
SCUBA, you dove in good places. I have dove in those places and the Caymans are real good as a drift dive is fun and that's what they mostly have there.
I recently dove on some of the outer Hawaiian Islands. (I don't really like Hawaiian diving) My old girlfriend lives there and she was in our crowd so my wife is also friends with her. She took us to places where tourists don't go like a winery on top of the mountain on Maui and a Lavender farm up there above the clouds on the side of a cliff. Very cool.

My wife and I were diving in the Caymans and I am not really a tourist diver but you are supposed to follow the crowd. I was looking under rocks as I normally do because here in New York I am a lobster diver. My wife was hanging on to my belt and all of a sudden she pokes me and with this horrified look on her, she motions that we are alone.
That does not bother me because this was the Caribbean and there are dive boats there all the time so I am sure we will get a ride home.
Anyway, we went searching for our party and saw them in the distance so we headed for them. Their dive guide swims up to us and motions to "Go Back". Then he writes on his slate that we are not in his party.
Now my wife is panicking. I thought it was the best part of the dive. So we swam around a little and our guide found us and he was all horrified and panicky.

I normally dive here in NY and if no one wants to come, I go by myself which your not supposed to do, but it is what it is and I am not really a snowflake. I just don't dive at night alone as that would be stupid. Here we get tangled up in a lot of old fishing line.

WE once dove in some Island off Mexico (big mistake) and I saw this giant moray eel about 12' long. I pointed it out to the Jiboni behind me because he was taking pictures of everything. The Jiboni swims up to this giant fish and tries to tickle it under his chin like "Jacques Cousteau " (I forgot hot to spell his name, I don't do French)

The eel apparently never met Mr Cousteau and bit this Jerk's hand up to his elbow.
The eel was having a good time shaking this Genius back and forth and I was hoping the moray would eat him whole so I could get on with this boring dive. I mean, if you are going to be stupid enough to stick your arm in a fishes mouth that is half the size of a school bus, you deserve to get eaten. :mad: I am sorry but I don't have a lot of feelings for stupidity. It's like if you jump off a building holding a handkerchief for a parachute, should I feel bad when they pick you up off the sidewalk with a sponge!

So now there is blood swirling around this guy and the eel couldn't eat him whole and other people now see this. Of course I have to put this horrified look on my face and go and convince the eel, who was a friend of mine, to let this Idiot go and find another college grad to eat. :cool:

I convinced the eel to be nice and we got the moron to the surface and back to the boat. Then I ruined the rest of my day in a Mexican hospital so they could treat this Jiboni.
The rest of the week this guy was telling this story all over the place how this man eating fish almost tore off his arm.
I still am not speaking to that eel. :confused:

We took a helicopter over Kauai. That cut in the mountains is where they filmed the original King Kong movie where they had that giant wooden gate to keep him out. They also filmed one of the Indiana Jones movies here on a river that runs through there. Very cool.




There is a small moray here in the center. I think he was cousins of the large green moray I spoke about.


Visability isn't the best in Hawaii.



You can probably tell I have nothing to do right now as I am waiting for my wife to get up. :rolleyes:

Hawaii isn't my favorite place to dive, either. Had a chance to dive there a few times when my submarine pulled into Pearl. Maybe I just never found the right spot. The best dive I did there was on Electric Beach where a power plant releases its cooling water around 100 yards off shore. First dive was nice. Second dive (sunset dive) was going great until one of the brainless brutes, AKA Navy Seals, we were diving with decided he needed to take the hook out of the mouth of a 6ft long shark. The shark did NOT appreciate the assistance. Fortunately, no one was hurt but we aborted the dive and began to swim toward the beach. I can tell you that it is a very uncomfortable experience having a ticked off 6 ft long shark circling and you can only see it when it swims into the path of someones dive light. I'm ok not doing that again.

Apparently there aren't many museum curators who do scuba since I didn't see a single "Do Not Touch" sign anywhere in the ocean.

 

[Turbo's Aquatics Verified Sponsor]

I totally agree Paul on HI diving. The best dive there I have been on was on Maui on Honolua Bay, lugged gear what seemed like 1/4 mile (but was really only about 600 feet) from the road to the beach (rocks) and then proceeded on a 90 minute dive where we never broke 30 feet and came back with 1100lbs of air

I normally dive here in NY and if no one wants to come, I go by myself which your not supposed to do

Shame on you! You just need more dive buddies

 

[Paul B]

Chas, I am building another SteamPunk lamp and going through the parts you sent me to see if I can make anything out of them. I'm sure I will make something fit, and thanks for posting.

Hawaii isn't my favorite place to dive, either. Had a chance to dive there a few times when my submarine pulled into Pearl. Maybe I just never found the right spot.

That's weird, I thought they would frown on you opening the hatch on a submarine to swim out. But what do I know. :eek:

I dove Hawaii on my Honeymoon 43 years ago and a couple of years ago. It is certainly not the best place to dive but you would think so due to it's place in the Pacific.
The problem there is that it is a volcanic Island and not a Coral Island and those volcanoes' are always erupting because we have not found the "shut off valve" yet and that lava makes soup out of the sea. Look at that picture I posted above, the visibility is like looking through one of Floyd's algae scrubbers after it ran for a month on a Noob's tank who overfeeds.
Also most of the larger fish and sharks are gone, they used to be all over the place. Now you can throw in half a cow and have to wait until a week past Tuesday to find a shark, and it will probably be a Sissy Nurse shark.

In Tahiti, it's like those cartoons when you see the Supermodel on a deserted Island with a Nerd accountant and shark fins are all around the Island.
On Bora Bora you have to count seconds between sharks so you don't jump on them as they pass the back of the dive boat. They don't like it when you land on them with a SCUBA tank.
Also in Bora Bora, when you jump in the water that is 120 feet deep, you feel you are going to fall to the bottom because I think they filter that water with a diatom filter, that is how clear it is.

until one of the brainless brutes, AKA Navy Seals, we were diving with decided he needed to take the hook out of the mouth of a 6ft long shark.

I won't say anything bad about Navy Seals because although I didn't see any Seals in Nam, we did have Special Forces Rangers and those guys were really either very brave, or very stupid. They did things that would make me cringe and didn't seem to be afraid of anything. I am sure a shark of any size would not phase those guys or King Kong, Godzilla, Mothra, Batman etc. Very tough Men and I am glad we had them there. :cool:

Look at the difference in Bora Bora. Sharks were like guppies all over the place as well as Manta Rays as big as my living room, along with 12' lemon sharks, whales and Supermodels.
Unbelievable place and SCUBAbeth, I really hope you can get there some day. It took me about 35 years of marriage before I got there.
But don't stay in those little huts on the water unless you really love your husband. They only build them because there is no land on Bora Bora and they have to build on pilings in the sea. There is only one road around the outskirts of the Island because you can't go inland because it is just a very steep mountain that you can't climb and the only place to go is "Bloody Mary's Bar". They sel black pearls all over the place which is about the only thing they sell.
If you go, take a Windstar Cruise. Trust me.

Bora Bora.


The only harbor on Bora Bora with our ship in the middle. That is where they filmed "Mutiny on the Bounty"


Bloody Mary's Bar.


Our Ship there. The Windstar. In the back there is a SCUBA shop and the back of the ship opens up to let the divers out in a Zodiac. Fantastic and because of this ship, which I have taken 3 or 4 times, I won't go on any other ship. Only 200 people.

 

[Brew12]

I won't say anything bad about Navy Seals

I will, but only because I trained with them before I was pulled from the program. I figured they would have waited and let me fail out. :confused: Still friends with a few of them. Best guys I ever met.

those guys were really either very brave, or very stupid

I'm not sure there is much of a difference. ;)

 

[Paul B]

I trained with them for less than a minute, then they looked at me and said. "Are you freekin kidding!"

 

[Chasmodes]

Paul, I can get more of the radio tuners if you want them. Some of them are pretty large and interesting. There are a lot of old knobs too, from radios, TVs, you name it. I'll probably be over there again in the next 2 weeks. I'll take some pics and PM them to you.

 

[Turbo's Aquatics Verified Sponsor]

Bora Bora.

*starts planning trip to Bora Bora

 

[Paul B]

Thanks Chas.
Floyd, if you go there on a Windstar, you will never want to go anywhere else. Now I am spoiled. :rolleyes:

WE are going here shortly. It is a tiny private Island that I never heard of in the Caribbean. They filmed the scene here when Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) was marooned with that Supermodel in "Pirates of the Caribbean".
But it is not Bora Bora.
As I get older I am looking for smaller and more secluded places as opposed to tourist places. I am a Lousy tourist and don't like crowds. Working in Manhattan got me right out of that. :confused:

http://www.scubamom.com/grenadines/mustique/