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Here is a sample portion of a chapter from our book on houseboating. VINTAGE GEORGE His card reads:
On a typical Sunday morning we find George adding flotation to George Yeannakis' home on a Fairview Avenue dock. George has already connected with the diver he often uses, Billy Sprague. Billy works in Bellingham, over a hundred miles north of Seattle, as a surgical nurse, but right now he's placing fifty-five gallon barrels under the Yeannakis' house. Each of the rotationally molded polyethylene barrels adds about 450 pounds of buoyancy. George explains, "The government doesn't want these barrels in the land fill; they'd have to cut them up first. So everyone is delighted I recycle them for flotation." He's standing on Yeannakis' deck holding a yellow tape measure extended to the level of the water so he can measure the increasing height of the deck above it. Jan, whose home is directly across the channel, spies George and leans out her upstairs window. "George, have you got a diver down there?" "Yeah, what do you need?" he answers with a hint of New Jersey twang. "I've had a couple of workmen over here who lost a pry bar and a ratchet set. Could you have him take a look?" "Sure. I'll tell Billy when he comes up." Later that day George will write out a check to Billy, but you can bet one hundred to one that Jan will never receive a bill. All this is communicated over the whirring of a compressor George uses to blow the water out of the barrels once Billy's positioned them. The water is necessary initially so the barrels can be maneuvered under the home, a feat Billy accomplishes without benefit of artificial light but with a fair amount of spatial expertise in basic geometry. Another neighbor from near the end of the dock comes up. "George, my sewer connection has gotten too short, can you add a couple of feet to it?" "I'll take care of it next time I'm back here," answers George. As soon as Billy surfaces, George tells him about the pry bar and ratchet set. George explains, "Billie loves crawling along the bottom of this lake. It's his favorite thing; he actually calls his business Bottom Obsession." Meanwhile George Yeannakis reports his house is still a little low on the east side. George maneuvers three more barrels, one smelling distinctly of vinegar, into the lake and begins filling them with water. While George is leaning over the water handling the barrels another dock resident comes by. "George, I've put in a terrific corner toilet I found down at Seattle Salvage. Could you use my old one?" "Sure," he answers. "I'll put it in one of my rental houses. "It's the nature of the work," explains George. "You never know what will come up next. The other day I was working at Jeanette Day's dock and she asked me if I could help find her dog, Skipper. The little schnauzer was blind and had been incontinent for the past couple of years, but Jeanette was absolutely devoted to him. "Somehow Skipper had wandered out of the little box she'd made for him. She couldn't find her dog anywhere in the house and was afraid he'd fallen into the lake. She asked me to check under her float hoping he had managed to crawl up on some of the logs. Unfortunately, I found him floating dead in the water. She was devastated. I helped her bury him in that patch of grass up by the mail boxes." At this point Billy surfaces without a pry bar or ratchet set, but with four hammers in his hand. George tells him they have to add another inch or so of flotation on the east side of Yeannakis' house, and Billy disappears with one of the barrels. When asked how he got into the flotation business, George replies, "If anyone had told me thirty years ago I'd be doing this, I would have never believed it, but life takes funny turns, like this job." George arrived in Seattle the summer of 1958 intending to get a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography. That goal was torpedoed when Dixie Lee Ray, a University of Washington zoology professor who was later to become Governor of Washington, gave him a D in marine invertebrate biology. George had majored in biology at Antioch of Ohio with a minor in chemistry. His chemistry minor landed him a job at Boeing in the shipping and packaging section where chemistry know-how was applicable in working with adhesives. When Congress voted not to fund the supersonic transport, the Boeing Company shrank by approximately 70,000 employees in the Seattle area over a two year period. Like thousands of others, George was laid off in 1972, free to explore other career options. "When I first came to Seattle I had some friends from Antioch who lived on a houseboat in Portage Bay, so I bought one a couple of years later. I paid $800 for it with $100 down. Since it had three bedrooms, all the appliances, a Franklin stove, plus a decent kitchen and living area, I rented out the two extra bedrooms and my house mates covered the mortgage payments. I decided this was a slick scheme, so I bought a second houseboat, rented it out, and then a third. I did most of my own maintenance on them, so I worked with the steel barrels we used for flotation back then. I realized the Styrofoam we used at Boeing would be much easier to maneuver than steel barrels, so I was the first to start installing it for flotation. I still work with Styrofoam occasionally, but these plastic barrels are even better." Bill Velte, now of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, once rented one of George's houseboats in the 1960s as a graduate student at the University of Washington. A perpetual handyman himself, Bill reports George willingly shared his talent for improvisation with humor and fervor, as if to spread the word and call his fellow country men to domestic self-sufficiency. A classic example occurred in a kitchen where George had used his chain saw to cut Styrofoam. The problem: a leak in the water pipe below the sink. The theory: dislodged (rust and) Styrofoam (particles) will drift into the leak area and plug it. The tool: a hammer. George asked Bill to open the sink faucet just enough to allow the slowest possible dribble. George grabbed his hammer, thoughtfully tilted his moustache, and banged on the pipe slightly upstream from the leak. The result: the leak dwindled to a mere drop or two per minute (and then stopped.) "Ha!" George exclaimed gleefully, "plumbing boils down to a well-controlled leak." The still legendary George has finally leveled the Yeannakis' home, so he heads toward his trade-mark 1979 blue van that doubles as his traveling shop. First he checks with Billy to tell him the address of their next job on Westlake. The diver has found two twenty-five pound lead trolling weights which George admires while poking through the dock (paper recycle) dumpsters. "I'm always looking for semi-current magazines," he explains. Instead of magazines George finds three decent square wooden planters which he pulls out and places on the ground for anyone who might want them. Then George reaches into his pocket to pull out his car key. It's on a two-foot long chain along with about twenty other keys attached to his belt. "I've lost keys in the water one time too many. I'd rather look like a biker than go through that again. I haven't lost a wallet in years, it's on a chain too. People wouldn't recognize me unless I'm in my field jacket and wharf rat costume," quips George. However he's dressed, George is available twenty-four hours a day and considered a rare treasure by floating home owners where the answer to virtually any structural houseboat problem is three simple words, "Better call George." * * * * * * ORDER
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