I am going to try and cleirify some questions here. I have already posted most of this info on the reinactors site. I am just getting caught up with you guys.
Ok Memorail exhibit. This was the exhibit that ONEOK used to help rais funds for the memorial in HI. We had it on indefinate loan until the other contributors needed their items back. (Major downer). We currently have an Viet Nam era exhibit in place now and a very small Gulf Wars exhibit in there now( I need more stuff for this one). In the future we will be puting an exhibit featuring torpedos and an exhibit featuring Women in the Service (from Rosie to today). All exhibits are being redeveloped to help remove the clutter and make the museum as a whole more organized.
We actually ahve 2 Geo Cashing sites on the boat. The GPS group shows more intereest then the letter box group. Kind of a neat feature here.
On the issue of paint, I am working with the Batfish Memorail Foundation. Some changes are happening there. It looks like they will be loosing 1 member due to the inactivity of the group. On the good side though, I have started communicating with the board chair Matt Albright. He seems to be willing to help. We just have to learn how to work within their peamiters. I am going to take up the banner on the whole paint issue so to speak to help aleviate all of the past isssues that have occured. I am working with Libert Auto (military vehicle restoration) to develope a process that will include a sand blasting of the boat and repaint. The next step in this process will be to get some one to test the paint on the boat and the soil arround the boat for contamination. The best out come here will be a .5m lead contant on the boat and contaminated soil. This will make things work really well. Liberty Auto has already found some people that will help aleviat the costs by donation of some supplies. I would really like to get our groups involved when it coms time to paint the boat. This way we are only paying for the cost of Liberty Autos time.
Yes, the deck is going down ASAP. The Navy is going to site this as a safty issue. This will be a cut and dry job as all the hardware on the boat is brass and still good. The wood is on site. I just need man power. We will want to miter the joints between each plank that is to be put down. I have technical docs to show how this is to be done. At the same time I would like to replace some of the angle iron in the supperstructure to help support the deck. We will need some welding help and angle iiron to do this. I am going to break the deck down into sections starting at the front and work backwards. We will ahve to work around the visitors as we complet this project. When this job is completed, we will be removing the plywood pathway and the chaiin marking the pathway to allow visitors to walk freely on the deck. We will also move the front fence line to the end of the wood portion of the deck.
I also want to add that Dennis Gilbert is going to try and get the subvets to help on this project during the reunion. I do not forsee them getting the entire deck completed so we could use all the help we can get.
Rick
