Weber Grills are (Apparently) a Gateway Drug


 
R

Roy-Parallax

TVWBB Pro
Those who have been reading my posts know I have a friend who has been helping out with grills. In fact, he's coming over today as we try to finish up our work (on his hybrid grill and my two). His name is Steve, but I've not called him by name because I didn't want to confuse him with our Steve (Steve Hoch). From this point forward, I'll refer to him as Steve C (or SC for short).

I got into these Weber grills not long ago and Weberitis is a real thing. SC would help me pick up grills just because he's a good friend and we enjoy hanging together. Then he saw the results of my labor when I was cooking for my son on my Platinum and he began to get sucked down the Weber rabbit hole. Next thing, we were scouring the online ads for grills and driving all over the place to pick them up.

Then last week, we got talking about what might be next. Here it is:

Morgan 38.jpgMorgan 38 Interior 1.jpgMorgan 38 Interior 2.jpg

A lot bigger than a grill. And a bit more expensive, though we got a good deal. It's gonna be a true labor of love.

For those who may be curious, it's a 1971 Morgan 38. A real classic of a sailboat with many devoted followers (in that sense, not unlike the Weber, though not a mass market product -- there were less than 1,000 made and only 75 of our particular version). Extremely ocean worthy though I'll be happy if I simply master sailing the Puget Sound. It's a lot to take on in a lot of ways. Money, time, learning to sail. Yet I'm really excited about the opportunity. Hopefully my wife and seven year old son will love it. I'd love nothing more than to give my boy some wonderful lasting memories.

I have adult kids too who live far away and they suddenly have an interest in coming up to visit. This thing sleeps six comfortably. Has a full head with a real flush toilet (unlike a lot of boats which compost) and shower. It's in pretty good shape but there are of course many things to do. Maintenance is a never ending endeavor.
 
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Actually...... there are some really nifty mounts to hang a small kettle off the stern rails, complete with gimbals.

That is a really nice hole in the water to throw money.
 
Bruce said:
I just saw a Weber Q that was mounted to a pedastal and it said it came from a pontoon boat. The problem is, the grill looked like it had been dredged up from the bay after a few years under water.

Here it is: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/4919614644757538?ref=search&referral_code=marketplace_search&referral_story_type=post&tracking=browse_serp:e9193720-7c45-476e-af06-1180df7de2c9
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That thing wouldn't hold up 10 minutes against the salt air. I've seen some 316 stainless grills designed for marine applications. Not cheap!
 
Yeah, a lot of pieces had to come together. Wasn't just the Weber thing.

My wife and I have friends who live on a boat. For years, they've been hoping we'd get one of our own. They build and repair sailboats for a living and were willing to share information. I wasn't willing to do it on my own, though, because it felt like way too much responsibility. Then I got sucked down the Weber rabbit hole. Then SC got sucked in too. We've been spending weekends repairing grills. Then my wife and I hung out one Saturday with out boat friends and had such a nice time. We left the Marina feeling so good and I began to think about whether I might consider finding a boat to restore. Certainly a lot more work than a grill but what the hey. Then SC and I got together on Sunday, I mentioned what I was thinking about, and he mentioned that he'd just checked out a boat the day before.

As much fun as we've had working the grills, it got us both thinking. And a week later he'd moved from buying that boat on his own to having a partner. I came along for the test sail and negotiated the price down $2,000. He'd have never done that. Feels like we're a really good team. Our skills compliment each other and we get along well. Another important piece is we live in one of the best places in the country to own a boat. With over 100 islands in the San Juans, it's kind of a waste to live here and not have one.
 
Years ago my friend's dad (who served in Merchant Marines during WWII) and also was a VERY accomplished tool and die man not to mention a skilled craftsman beyond reproach always pulled an "Agent Gibbs". He would build boats in the basement during the winter. Fully out of wood and he made every single metal part that went on them. The last one he built was a cabin cruiser. He would steam box all the wood, and then build it from the floor up (he had an extra deep basement) since he had built his own house from scratch as well. The only piece he did not make was the engine. Anyway he would hand build the entire boat than number and document every piece. Then he would fully disassemble it (all made with brass screws BTW), and my buddy and his brother helped him carry every piece up from the basement to the garage, where he had a trailer waiting for it. He would then totally reassemble it on the trailer and that would be towed to all the places they boated plus their little summer place up in Lake Cheteque WI (not sure of spelling). He was actually written up in Chicago papers and such.
When my friend's brother wanted an electric train, solid hunks of brass were machined into perfectly detailed cars, all the wheels and trucks hand made and so on. He only bought the electric motors and the American Flyer tracks to run them on. Some of them I believe are still on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
Unlike your boat though he never made sail boats. Only powered boats
 
LMichaels said:
Years ago my friend's dad (who served in Merchant Marines during WWII) and also was a VERY accomplished tool and die man not to mention a skilled craftsman beyond reproach always pulled an "Agent Gibbs". He would build boats in the basement during the winter. Fully out of wood and he made every single metal part that went on them. The last one he built was a cabin cruiser. He would steam box all the wood, and then build it from the floor up (he had an extra deep basement) since he had built his own house from scratch as well. The only piece he did not make was the engine. Anyway he would hand build the entire boat than number and document every piece. Then he would fully disassemble it (all made with brass screws BTW), and my buddy and his brother helped him carry every piece up from the basement to the garage, where he had a trailer waiting for it. He would then totally reassemble it on the trailer and that would be towed to all the places they boated plus their little summer place up in Lake Cheteque WI (not sure of spelling). He was actually written up in Chicago papers and such.
When my friend's brother wanted an electric train, solid hunks of brass were machined into perfectly detailed cars, all the wheels and trucks hand made and so on. He only bought the electric motors and the American Flyer tracks to run them on. Some of them I believe are still on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
Unlike your boat though he never made sail boats. Only powered boats
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That's really something. He could have designed and built them for sale. The boat we bought is sort of like that. Was made by a guy named Charley Morgan. He made one-off racing boats and then designed a few boats to be sold more widely. He's still alive. He's highly respected, as are his boats, and he collaborated with other highly respected engineers to design some models together.

There were four models of the Morgan 38. Ours is from the first line, the only one designed entirely by Charley. There were less than 1000 Morgan 38s total, and only 75 of the first model. Ours is actually number 75. The hull number is 38075, which signifies it's the 75th Morgan 38 (at that time). Hull numbers were a brand new thing in the late 60s / early 70s, which is why the number is so low.

The nice thing about having a boat of this vintage is it has a very solid and low maintenance hull. The first fiberglass boat was created in the 1940s but they didn't become popular until the 1960s and even then many or most boats were still wood. When oil prices rose in 1973, builders began finding ways to save money by making hulls thinner or adding alternate materials. Over time they are more likely to blister, split or crack. Our boat, the very last of this model, came off the line in 1971. All the bugs were out of the system by then but there had been no effort to save on costs by compromising quality because oil, the base for any plastic, was still cheap.
 
Kelly C said:
Nice boat Roy. Congratulations! It deserves a Weber Galley Que for sure.
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Thanks Kelly. Really excited about it. Won't be doing as much grill stuff now that I have this much more time consuming hobby. But the grill stuff really did open me to it. Plus it got my buddy and I working together on projects and we discovered that we enjoy it. The mostly silent camaraderie of working with a pal. We were working mostly separately on our own grills, helping each other here and there. Now we'll be doing a lot more stuff in tandem. Like when the boat gets pulled out of the water and we're scraping barnacles or sanding or painting. One of us rolling, the other back brushing. That sort of thing.

There will be a lot of stuff that he does where I'll just be assisting. But I'll be hunting down bargains on all the equipment we need, negotiating the prices and making the purchases. All of which adds up to sailing. Since a boat is never completely restored or maintained, we'll have to find a balance between work and play.
 
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