July - August 2009 The Community Outlook Page 19

that the engine room followed by a water and saw a domed, football shaped aircraft
tight compartment housing the steering gear. some one hundred feet across descend near
Also, the load is amid ship, where the boat them. The object remained stationary about
carries best. One nice thing about the engine a foot above the water. The two men were
in the stern is the absence of the roar of the levitated aboard the craft, examined with a
engine up in the wheel house. The more tra- sort of scanner for about twenty minutes,
ditional design is to have the pilot house at and released. Then, the craft rose straight up
deck level and the focs’sle below deck with into the night sky, and flew away.
the engine directly behind the focs’le. The On the way downriver, we passed what
raised focs’le design has several advantages. had been stands of bald cypress. From 1880
The raised hull forward provides extra buoy- to around 1930 the surrounding area experi-
ancy, prevents boarding seas and almost enced a timber boom. Loggers would “ring”
The keel of the Fishing Vessel Day Star
was laid in July of 1977 at James K. Walker
Marine Shipyard in Moss Point, Mississippi,
on the banks of the Pascagoula River. Per-
haps it was the site where the legend of the
Singing River was born. Local legend says
the Pascagoula Tribe waded hand in hand
into the river, singing a mournful song. They
preferred drowning to becoming enslaved
to their enemy, the Biloxi Tribe. It is said
that on quiet summer and autumn evenings,
the sad song of the Pascagoulas can still be
heard near the river
Following the keel laying, framing and
plating of the hull progressed. She was to be
a seventy five foot, side rigged, steel hulled,
clam dredger. I made many trips to Moss
Point to observe construction. One incident
stands out. A large shrimper freezer boat was
undergoing refitting. Two men were working
in the hold when a spark from the welding
torch set the polyurethane insulation alight.
That material gives off dense black smoke
and toxic gases such as carbon monoxide
eliminates the danger of pitch poling, which the trees to kill them and then wait up to a
and hydrogen cyanide.
can occur when a boat races down a steep year before cutting them down. This would
That environment could not support life.
sea, buries its nose in water and flips bottom allow the sap to go down so the trees would
Smoke billowed out of the ship’s hold. Res-
up. Fuel in the bottom eliminates the prob- float. Trees could be felled, but could not
cuers descended into the hold, wearing Scott
lem of free liquid. With high level outboard be removed from the swamps until high
Air Paks. I sent my best prayer aloft, but I
wing tanks, fuel flows outboard when the water came in the spring of the year. Then
expected the worst. AND THEN. The rescue
boat rolls, raising the center of gravity and they were rafted and sent down river where
team emerged leading the two work men.
decreasing stability. schooners would take them to foreign mar-
When the workers realized that they were
About three of the clock on the afternoon kets. Many logs would sink and became
trapped and faced asphyxiation they covered
of Wednesday April 5th, we set out down the “sinker cypress”. There is a big market today
their heads with a tarp and breathed pure
Pascagoula River for Point Lookout, a two for “sinker cypress”. Trees that had been first
oxygen from the cutting torch. I always felt
thousand mile voyage by way of Key West. growth cypress logs, four feet in diameter
that this miracle bestowed luck on Day Star.
The crew consisted of Bob Doxsee, captain, and up to ninety feet long that had been sub-
Day Star was side launched in February
Warren Cline, navigator, and Bob Mc Curry, merged for up to one hundred years are in
of 1978 and completed in the water. She is
engineer. great demand. Some of these trees were over
of raised focs’le design. That is, the living
An interesting event happened on the Pas- one thousand years old when felled. Divers
compartment is in the bow, slightly below
cagoula on the evening of October 11, 1973. attach a cable to the tree which is winched
deck level with the fuel tanks in the bottom.
Two shipyard workers were fishing off the aboard a barge.
The pilot house sits atop the focs’le. Behind
west bank of the river when they heard a Down river, past Ingalls’ shipyard, where
the focs’le is the clam hold and astern of
whizzing sound, saw flashing blue lights we saw many warships lined up and out into
continued on next page
Page 20
Mississippi Sound, where we saw a few
shrimpers lying too with their nets hang-
ing out to dry on outriggers. They shrimp at
night. It is twelve miles from the mainland
to the barrier islands; Ship Island, Petit Bois
Island and Horn Island. We stood out Horn
Island Pass into the Gulf of Mexico and
struck a course for Key West, a five hundred
mile leg of our voyage.
Like the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of
Mexico is a semi-enclosed, ocean basin with a
broad shallow rim. It is the ninth largest body
of water in the world with an area of about six
hundred thousand square miles. Its maximum
depth is over fourteen thousand feet.
In the early morning hours of Thursday,
April sixth, our power steering failed leav-
ing us with limited control over the boat. The
pump was belt driven off the main engine and
had been improperly aligned during instal-
lation. The friction caused a bushing in the
pulley to disintegrate, leaving a donut hole
between the driving shaft and pulley. And
there we were, out in the middle of nowhere.
NOT TO WORRY!!! When McCurry and I
were in a tight spot we would always say —
Back to the Drawing Board. We heaved too,
shut the engine down and went to work. Bob
emptied the contents of a Campbell Soup can
and cut it into strips with tin snips. Then he
wound the strips between the shaft and pul-
ley filling the void with shims. NEXT With
the ships electric welder he fused the mass
The Community Outlook
together forming a solid shaft and pulley.
Then we restarted the engine and resumed
our voyage, changing course for Tampa Bay.
We called the shipyard via marine radio tele-
phone and arranged for a new pump to be
air freighted from Tacoma, Washington to
Tampa International.
Friday morning we steamed into Tampa
Bay and docked at the Coast Guard station in
Saint Petersburg. Bob went to the airport to
pick up the pump while I decided to visit my
aunt up in New Port Richie where I spent the
night. It was well that I did as we were never
to see each other again.
By mid Saturday morning we were on a
southerly course for Key West. Warren stood
to the wheel while Bob and I were up in the
bow. Suddenly, two porpoise broke water
coming straight for us. My camera was
around my neck and I got a shot of them sur-
rounded by a large circular ripple just before
they went under the boat. A beautiful sight.
Sunrise found us on the approach to the
Florida Straits between Key West and the Dry
Tortugas. We rounded the Keys and bore away
to the Northard. In terms of longitude, Key
West is about on a line with Cleveland, Ohio.
After transiting the Florida Straits we
picked up the Gulf Stream. It originates in
the Gulf of Mexico and exits through the
Straits of Florida. The Gulf Stream is big-
ger than the combined flow of the Missis-
sippi, the Nile, the Congo, the Amazon, the
July - August 2009
Volga, and others major rivers. It is a huge
ocean river with a flow of up to eight bil-
lion gallons per minute. It is close inshore
at the southern tip of Florida and trends off
shore as it flows north. We followed it up the
hundred fathom line picking up four knots
of speed.
As we boiled up the hundred fathom line,
we fell in company with a pod of porpoise.
Bottle nose dolphin they are known as today.
Warren had been anxiously awaiting them
and when they appeared he called out excit-
edly—“THE’RE HERE” They lined up four
abreast under the bow wave and hitched a
free ride. Or maybe they liked the feel of the
wave breaking on their backs. Sort of like a
Jacuzzi. When we leaned over the bow to get
a close look, they would see us. They would
turn their heads to one side and look directly
at us with those huge eyeballs. Others would
gambol all around us and have a great time.
You could sense the high intelligence level.
They escorted us up that long, blue, beauti-
ful, Gulf Stream Ocean Sea Road. It was a
never to be forgotten experience. When they
finally left us it was here one minute, gone
the next. They can attain speeds of over fifty
miles per hour.
We filled the clam holds with salt water
and used them for swimming pools. I got
up on the weather deck and did cannon ball
jumps into the pool.
From Key West, Florida to Eastport,
Maine the coastline of the United States
trends ever eastward. Accordingly, we
laid down a course well East of North. We
planned on keeping well offshore of the
treacherous Diamond Shoals, the Graveyard
of the Atlantic.
The wind came on from the south west and
blew like thunder. Long, precipitous, heaving
seas built up but fortunately for us it was fol-
lowing seas and fair wind astern. Not a drop
of water came aboard. That night it was like
being on a roller coaster. She would struggle
up to the summit of those mountains and then
roar down the forward face into the valley. It
blew like that for a couple of days but every
sea drove us closer to home. Then on Wednes-
day, in the early morning hours off Diamond
Shoals, the wind hauled up to the North West
and blew a gale of wind and rain. The pilot
house doors, up on the weather deck, were of
wood and not watertight. The bow is full, not
a sharp entry into the water. Going to wind
she would drive into a head sea and fling the
July - August 2009
water off to the side. The wind took that air
borne water and flung it back at us with a
vengeance. Water came in under and around
the door on the windward side, flooding the
wheel house and drowning out the automatic
pilot. Water came pouring down through the
overhead and cascading down the stairs into
the focs’le below. There was nothing to be
done except weather on through.
Aside from that one characteristic of Day
Star, she is the finest kind in a seaway. A
good sea boat, she. The full bow makes for a
beamy boat; good for carrying heavy loads.
Her hold carries six hundred forty bushels
of clams, about thirty ton. A safe load, all
below deck level
Coe Best, a well known naval architect,
designed Day Star. A stability test was con-
ducted at the shipyard. Weights are placed
against the bulwark on one side of the ship
and angles of declination are recorded as the
weights are increased. Calculations deter-
mine the stability of the boat.
The squall blew itself out and it was slick
calm for the rest of the voyage. Off Diamond
Shoals we were about seventy five miles off
shore. From there, we struck a northerly
course. As we steamed northward the eastward
trending land drew closer to us. Long Island
is at right angles to the coastline so we had to
fetch Jones Inlet or run up on the beach.
Every morning we would find two or
three flying fish on deck. They were about
eight inches in length, a beautiful blue on
top and a silvery bottom. When pursued by
predators such as bluefish, tuna, mackerel
The Community Outlook
and dolphin, they make long flying leaps out
of the water and glide on their outstretched
fins for distances of up to a quarter of a mile.
They attain speeds of up to thirty miles per
hour in the water before launching them-
selves into the air.
My two crewmen were individualists out
of a book. Warren and I knew each other
since the mid 1960’s. At a time when funds
were low, he called me at my home one night
on the telephone. Right out of the blue. He
said he was working for McKay Radio, a
division of AT&T. He had just come back
from South America on a job repairing sub-
marine overseas communication cables. His
company wanted to lease my little Victory on
a bare boat charter for an extended period
of time at a very attractive rate. I thought
“Yeah, Yeah, I’ve heard that before” What I
said was “Come to my office tomorrow with
a contract” He did. It was a very successful
project. At the time there were many active
communication cables off the coast of Long
Island. We used Victory to find the flaws in
the cables and repair them. We put rollers
on Victory’s bow and stern, then grapple up
the cable, get it over the rollers, fore and aft,
and then power the boat forward until the
flaw was found and then fix it. Warren was
very good at it. There was little in the way
of electronic position finders in those days,
No Global Positioning System. I don’t know
how he did it. Then the cable company’s
boat, the Cable Queen, arrived on the scene.
Warren was better at finding the cables then
they were, so he would locate the cable with
Page 21
Victory and they would repair it. Interesting
stuff. I lost track of him for a while but he
eventually found a home in Point Lookout.
He captained boats for the Viking Fleet and
Artie White’s eighty three foot Angler on
night blue fishing trips. Warren was George
Grant’s step father.
I could write a book about Bob McCurry.
A case study from the word go. Raised in
Nebraska, Bob enlisted in the Marine Corps
at age seventeen and never went back. He
reenlisted for Korea, too. In his rough and
ready manner he would proudly growl in
his gruff voice,” I was a good Marine.” He
worked on heavy construction equipment
for years and lost part of a finger in an indus-
trial accident. We affectionately called him
“Old Nine and a Half”. Lanny would con-
stantly tease him about his western broad A.
“I come from Nebraaaaaska”. Or “There’s a
lot of Waaaaater in Nebraaaaaaaska”. Bob
actually yanked out his own tooth with a
pair of vice grip pliers. He was very good
at fabricating the Rube Goldberg machinery
that we devised. We would draw imaginary
blueprints in the air with our hands or chalk
diagrams on the concrete floor. Bob fabri-
cated, welded and installed the hydraulically
driven clam conveying system for Day Star.
After hauling back the dredge from the sea
bottom, the clams are dumped into a hopper
built into the boat. A conveyor system trans-
ports the harvested clams from the hopper
into the twenty clam cages in the twin holds.
Each cage holds thirty two bushels. All cages
are filled in place. One of the first things he
did after arrival was to install watertight
doors on the pilot house. Bob dropped by my
place to help out on a project one day in the
mid seventies and never left. A Great guy. I
miss him.
We made Jones Inlet Sea Buoy at sundown
on Thursday, April 13, 1978. The maiden sea
voyage of the F/V Day Star was successfully
prosecuted in eight days. It was a memorable
voyage; the pump failure, the pair of porpoise
in Tampa Bay, rounding the Keys at sunrise,
sailing up the Gulf Stream led by a pod of
porpoise, high running following seas, that
head on breeze of wind off Hatteras, a fine
crew and finally—home port..
We steamed up to the dock in fine style
to the greeting of a welcoming committee.
Barbara Streisand belted out “I’m Super-
man” over the ship’s loudspeaker. It was a
good feeling.
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Page 22 The Community Outlook July - August 2009

Of course, everyone came aboard to admire

the boat. My good friend, Bob Main, AKA
Walter Mitty, commandeered the captain’s
chair and became engrossed in the radar
screen. In fact he was overheard telling young
Matt Brennan “Get out of the chair, Kid.” The
black and green screen delineated both sides
of Reynolds’ Channel and the Loop Cause-
way Bridge. Totally absorbed, one hand on the
wheel, his face in the radar screen, Bob uttered
the never to be forgotten words, “Bridge
Ahead”. You had to have been there.
All hands got down to the serious business
of celebrating. The symphonic sound of pop-
ping corks could be heard well into the night.
To take a clamming trip aboard Day Star,
Google bob doxsee videos and click on video
collection. Allow time for the video to load.
— Bob Doxsee