There is no body of water on my farm, apart from a small pond about 20 feet across where ducks swim and sheep drink. So my wife raised her eyebrows this past summer when I started restoring an old boat with an ancient outboard motor.
“And where is that going to be used?” she asked.
It came from a tree job my son did on a weekend. Instead of paying him, the property owner presented him with a seven-foot fiberglass boat, powered by a 5 hp Seahorse 2-stroke outboard motor made in 1953.
The boat needed paint and the motor didn’t start. But there was a good spark and it coughed blue smoke once or twice, suggesting it was willing to make an effort if the moment was right. I was struck by how well built it was, with a carburetor made of cast steel and the fuel lines of copper. I started reading up on it and cruising around the antique outboard motor clubs of North America on-line. The Seahorse was made in the hundreds of thousands by the Johnson brothers out of Terre Haute, Indiana starting in 1922 and it became part of every teenager’s first experience with an outboard motor for two generations, much like a young farmer might bond with a John Deere M or a Massey 35. The fuel mixture is an eye-watering 16-1, but this helps to explain why many of them are still running after 70 years. There is so much oil passing through the cylinders they simply don’t wear out.
I found that when the world was presented with the Seahorse, it immediately divided into two groups. Either you love it because it never quits or you hate it because it burns too much oil. There is no happy in-between. I’m in the first group because I have always been impressed by any tool or machine that is built to last a lifetime. The evidence shows that choosing a hare over a tortoise usually offers the best ecological option over the long term. Do we ever think about how much carbon is produced every time we build a whole new engine?
The on-line conversation threads offered cautions. If the compression is much below 70 lbs it probably isn’t worth getting into, but if the compression is higher, chances are there’s lots more life in it. Mine tests at 75 in the lower cylinder and 80 in the upper. So, I set to work looking for parts.
There is one man still making the leather seals for the primer pump in a Seahorse. He is a retired doctor in North Michigan who sends you the seals in a stamped self-addressed envelope. He also sent me instructions and diagrams for rebuilding the carburetor with improvised washers and gaskets including tools he had designed himself for the procedure.
There is a brass sleeve in the primer pump cylinder that has to be removed with a tap and die to get at the old leather seals. That effort took me into Sheridan’s machine shop in town where work stopped for a full half an hour while several old guys reminisced about their own days on the water with a Seahorse.
It took a summer of tinkering, sanding, plugging and painting as the farm calendar allowed, but just after the first hard frost when the boating season was over, I yanked the pull cord and the engine sputtered to life. The shop filled with a satisfying cloud of blue smoke.
“Congratulations,” said my wife. “And now what? Are you going fishing somewhere in your little boat? The season is closed.”
There was no clear answer to that. I haven’t fished for decades, but I suppose I can start again anytime. There is a larger point here than just fishing. As a small farmer I have come to believe that it always makes more sense to repair and re-use than it is to throw away and buy new. Better for the farm, better for the planet and better for me.
The Johnson brothers went bankrupt at the beginning of the Depression because money dried up and people fixed their old outboards rather than buy new ones. The patents lived on under new owners for the next 35 years until the industry gradually gave way to a complete acceptance of an eight to ten year lifespan for a motor, just like with cars and trucks, washers and dryers and everything else. But the Seahorse, the John Deere M and the Massey 35 are still around to remind us that we can do so much better than that.
My grandsons aren’t that keen about farming but they do like to fish. I’m lucky my old truck has an eight foot box on it. This boat will just fit.