Tales from the Ninaa Ootakii (I need a little help)

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Tales from the Ninaa Ootakii (I need a little help)

Kevin Schooler is organizing this fundraiser.

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I *really* suck at asking for help.

I do Maritime Rescue, often in circumstances where no one else is coming.

The Ninaa Ootakii (aka, "The Pacific Northwest Ghost Ship") has been an integral part of that, providing me both shelter and a stable logistics platform.

Edit: tldr; Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am on month 22 of a 4 month haulout.

Not at the finish line, but very close.

The hull is patched, reinforced, and waiting for barrier coat.

The new main drive, transmission, prop shaft, prop, and genset are all ready to be installed.

... and this is the part I suck at.

I'm out of funds.

I'm treading water, but I need to pay the prop specialist, the crane operator, and the port.

I also need a bi directional thrust bearing, 18 gallons of barrier coat, and 40 gallons of bottom paint.

Call it roughly 15,000 + PPE, and miscellaneous incidentals.

I've come this far, and I'll get it done, but paying to sit in the boatyard while I save up enough funds to finish this is incredibly depressing.

I'll be okay once I clear this hurdle.

Thank you for any assistance you can provide. I deeply appreciate it.

/end edit

The story so far:

She had some troubles before my time with her. The most famous incident was arguably this one:

(s/v Ninaa Ootakii, Beached on Beckett Point, in Discovery Bay.)

Dec 31, 2018, 2:09 pm, a friend of mine reached out to me, to ask me how I would get her off the beach, and would I come help.

"30 ton excavator and a big tug" I replied.

Two years later (after she was refloated) her owner tapped out and gave her to me.

I then became, in the middle of winter, the new owner of what was, essentially, a derelict shipwreck slated for the crusher.

Then I walked into st Joseph's with a 100% blockage of my left anterior descending.

For those of you without medical degrees, this is what they call "The Widowmaker".

Apparently, since I wasn't married, it wasn't my time. So, with a few additional bits (a stent, which is, apparently, something like a plastic spring out of a ball point pen that keeps an artery open?) ... the story continues.

48 hours after walking into the ER, Elijah Johnston and Alden Rohrer (my go-to guys for this kinda thing) are moving Ninaa from Discovery Bay to Port Hadlock, while I'm scrambling to find "anchor gear suitable for an 80' schooner" on a Sunday.

Then I pumped *twelve thousand gallons of water* out of her.

Two days later, COVID lockdown happened, and I didn't go home.

And so the work began.

First thing I did was build a box:

(Coffer dam, 8 feet deep, clamped to the side and underneath s/v Ninaa Ootakii, Port Hadlock, wa)

to patch, at sea, the below waterline hole in her starboard side. (more on this later)

That took it down to a more manageable 30 gallons an hour, at which point I installed a whole bunch of solar:

a big battery bank:

and an extensive number of safety systems to keep her off the beach and the water on the outside.

Then I added Internet, security cameras, and a couple of feline friends for company. (all'y'all know Void and Abyss)

(Void is the handsome one in the back)

(Abyss has resting homicide face)

About 6 weeks into this, I get formally introduced to a local legend who was doing "Special Circumstances Rescue" training, (Alden and Elijah had both been students of his) ... and that afternoon I started what quickly became training every morning, work on Ninaa every evening.

Turns out, Ninaa makes an *excellent* launch platform for Maritime Rescue operations in Port Townsend bay and the surrounding areas.

(r/v "Driftwood", departing s/v Ninaa Ootakii)

(r/v "Driftwood" and yours truly)

At this point work on Ninaa slowed down a lot, because I had fixed everything I could do at sea, and I needed a haulout.

That required a huge amount of bureaucratic legwork, paperwork, and was an absolute nightmare to deal with.

So while I was sorting all that and saving every penny to fix the boat, I was doing rescue training and big water practice.

Solo rescues in the middle of a gale pretty much became my new normal.

(I have 14 terabytes of GoPro footage, likely going to YouTube it when I get Ninaa back in the water)

... Driftwood and Badger (my rescue boats) will vehemently argue that "small craft advisory" doesn't apply to them. You are what you do when it counts.

And then, after the 847eleventeenth call to figure out what the problem is, I got Emily on the phone.

(Huge shout out to Emily at the U.S. Coast Guard National Vessel Documentation Center, who sorted this whole mess out in 2 minutes)

Scheduled for haulout, deposits paid, we start gearing up to haul her out.

Then I get a phone call, from David Jordan himself. (He built her, in his backyard, when he was a much younger man) ... of course a man who built a 137,000 lb, 80 foot schooner in his backyard would get on well with me, lol. (I had no idea he was still alive, so it was a bit of a shock to me, but boy howdy is that man a wealth of knowledge)

And so the current adventure began.