• Ahoy and Welcome to the New SSS Forum!!

    As you can see, we have migrated our old forums to new software. All your old posts, threads, attachments, and messages should be here. If you see anything out of place or have any questions, please click Contact Us and leave a note with as much detail as possible.

    You should be able to login with your old credentials. If you have any issues, try resetting your password before clicking the Contact Us link.

    Cheers
    - SSS Technical Infrastructure

New Boat 4 Sled

Props to DAZZLER for bulldogging a discrepancy in 3BF finish times and sleuthing a Slackwater_SF photo, showing the DH 111-159 winner, using a headsail whose number didn't match the entry, finished ~two hours later than recorded. Well done, Sir! (Tom has served on the 3BF multiple times and appreciates the challenges. His and Sues 4th in their 30 boat class was well earned. DAZZLER went CCW.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whatever floats your boat. Today it was paddling laps on Brewer Lake, east of Watsonville, full of wildlife. Brewer Lake has no outlet and in the recent rains has reached a high water mark indeed. Portola passed near these parts in 1769 after missing Monterey, probably due to fog. Brewer Lake is small enough, 1/3 mile x 150 yards, that white pelicans have to circle twice to gain enough altitude to fly clear. The only sound was roosters crowing on shore, not your usual yachting soundtrack.

Brewer Lake.jpg
 
Last edited:
You know my quest for a 'better mousetrap." Poison is not a better mousetrap. Instead, poisons end up killing just the things we are trying to save. We of the Silent Spring generation remember how close we came to losing osprey, pelicans, eagles, peregrines, and condors forever with huge overuse of DDT, still plaguing our waters of the Catalina Channel.

School is out, but the New Zealand designed and built A24 we bought today for experimentation looks interesting. There is no rat problem here at CBC. But there is at the Crows Nest Restaurant at Santa Cruz Harbor and Whole Foods Market where there are dozens of bait boxes, at least 24, filled with high tech poison formulations, so many that people were tripping on one baitbox at the front door of Whole Foods.

Here is the A24, available at Ace Hardware. It doesn't use poison, no tending or resetting is necessary, and it optionally records strikes on a visual meter.

A24.jpg

Clockwise from lower right: the C02 cartridge, chocolate pudding attractant, test strips, instruction manual, and the A24 with one moving part. Will report on results. Does DOLFIN carry the A24 at Hammer and Nails?
 
Last edited:
sleddog said:
You know my quest for a 'better mousetrap." Poison is not a better mousetrap. Instead, poisons end up killing just the things we are trying to save.

School is out, but the New Zealand designed and built A24 we bought today for experimentation looks interesting.
Click to expand...

We are vastly outnumbered by critters of all types up here in the hills. Mice, wood rats, voles chipmunks, squirrels, and gophers by the herd. We've paid thousand$ in car repairs for chewed wires and inhabited fans in our cars. I've tried many ways to deal over the 50 years that I've lived at 2500' elevation.

When my neighbor a mile down the road, said he was having good kill rates with electronic traps, I bought one to try. After weeks of not catching anything I complained to my neighbor. He asked if I was using the small or large size, and I told him I'd bought the small one to try. He then said "I've never caught anything with the small size; you have to use the large (more expensive) size". Reluctantly, I paid the extra money and got the large. They work by capacitor discharge when the rodent shorts across 2 metal plates.
I took it home, installed the battery, loaded the bait holder with peanut butter, stuck the trap in the shed and waited with baited breath (pun intended). The next morning I went out to see the results, and when I opened the shed door the "trap tripped" light was on! I picked up the trap, opened the door to discover that the bait was all gone, and whatever left a nice turd on one of the plates, but no carcass. Thoroughly disgusted and $65 poorer, I've never re-baited.

I will be as interested in your report Sled, as much as I'm interested in the next post on the New Boat 4 Tchoup thread.

I wish you many kills Sled.
 
catch & release mouse trap.jpg

My version of a better mouse trap:
1. a bin that's taller than the jumping height of the intended target
2. a dowel that spans the opening plus some overhang
3. a plastic water bottle with a hole cut into the bottom that the dowel is fed through
4. peanut butter smeared in the middle of the bottle as an attractant
5. not shown in photo: a roll of chicken wire attached to the top edge of the basket next to the dowel that serves as the access to the attractant
6. a willing partner that will drive you and the captured target at least a mile away to it's new forever habitat
7. dog not required
 
So ... wait! Synthia, you suggest that the mice won't bother to be trapped until it becomes a sporting event for them? And, Bob! Where DO you find these photos? Every one is a keeper. Is that the starting gun for yacht clubs along the Carquinez Strait?
 
Rats voyaging inter island have been an environmental disaster since Day 1 of Polynesian voyaging. Even remote Easter Island was not immune, rats causing the demise of civilization by deforestation of 16 million palm trees by eating their seeds leaving a barren landscape and no means for locals to build boats or fish for porpoise, their main diet...

I found a rat on the 47 foot Paul Whiting cutter SHANACHIE. TJ's Super Premium, French Vanilla Ice Cream with pomegranate arils for first correct guess where. Guesses limited to two.

1) In the spinnaker pole.
2) Under the maststep.
3) Under the anchor chain pile in the forepeak.
4) On the masthead.
5) Wedged in the cockpit thru-hull drain
6) In the binnacle.
7) In the empty bino case.

Guess quick before Ants gets back from Death Valley.

TJ's.jpg
 
sleddog said:
Rats voyaging inter island have been an environmental disaster since Day 1 of Polynesian voyaging. Even remote Easter Island was not immune, rats causing the demise of civilization by deforestation of 16 million palm trees by eating their seeds leaving a barren landscape and no means for locals to build boats or fish for porpoise, their main diet...

I found a rat on the 47 foot Paul Whiting cutter SHANACHIE. TJ's Super Premium, French Vanilla Ice Cream with pomegranate arils for first correct guess where. Guesses limited to two.

1) In the spinnaker pole.
2) Under the maststep.
3) Under the anchor chain pile in the forepeak.
4) On the masthead.
5) Wedged in the cockpit thru-hull drain
6) In the binnacle.
7) In the empty bino case.

Guess quick before Ants gets back from Death Valley.

View attachment 8136
Click to expand...

Well, Ants has returned after a delightful Death Valley 1/2 marathon and visit. The missus beat my time by 30 minutes.

My guess is the empty bino case.

As for mouse traps, the Eyrie approach has been reinforced by mouse experience in the Adirondacks. Any rotating container with peanut butter wired to the top of a 5 gallon bucket will do. Fill the bucket half full of water. The mice go for the peanut butter without log rolling spikes, so the mice fall into water and drown. A good extermination night may leave 3-6 dead mice depending on the resident population.

As for pest control in Bodfish, I started a count when I purchased the property in 2002. The gopher count, using mechanical gopher traps, is 493. I was hoping for 500 on 2022, but 2023 will hit that milestone and keep going.

Similar to the counts on Sleddog’s post, the interest and topics just continue. (7 million coming soon)

Cheers,
Ants
 
AntsUiga said:
Well, Ants has returned after a delightful Death Valley 1/2 marathon and visit. The missus beat my time by 30 minutes. My guess is the empty bino case. Cheers,Ants
Click to expand...

Congrats on your and Marsha's 1/2 marathon!!!

Sorry, the answer is not rat in bino case. But you and anyone else can guess again. This is not "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!"
 
Last edited:
#5, cockpit drain.

Lots of mice here in the desert. Synthia's trap reminds me of a couple that we've built, following a design that Rebecca found on YouTube. It uses the same half-liter water bottle baited with peanut butter, but there's a wire poked laterally through, just above the middle, as a pivot. The wire is bent down and attached to a wooden base, then up again to hold a small piece of cardboard that blocks the mouth of the bottle when it's tipped down. Normally the mouth is upward at a 15 to 30 degree angle, and the mouse can get in. But if he tries to leave, the bottle tips down and his exit is blocked. The only flaw -- I assume this applies to Synthia's version also -- is that it's extremely difficult to convince the traumatized mouse to leave through the narrow mouth when we've chauffered him to greener pastures.
 
#5 Wedged in the cockpit thru-hull drain. Not too surprising.

OOPS!! Looks like Mr. Critter (Max) already guessed that. So I second his guess based on my own experience.
 
Last edited:
AntsUiga said:
As for pest control in Bodfish, I started a count when I purchased the property in 2002. The gopher count, using mechanical gopher traps, is 493. I was hoping for 500 on 2022, but 2023 will hit that milestone and keep going.
Click to expand...

Ants,
First, congratulations on your Half-Marathon! Well done. It’s too late for my knees and hips to even consider such endeavors.

I’m very impressed with your gopher count. When I was about 10 years old, I was a gopher bounty hunter. Armed with two mechanical traps, I caught gophers for our neighbors for 50 cents each. It was a good business. So I’m not sure what 50 cents each translates to in todays $$, but it seems to me you’ve earned yourself a significant reward.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top