Save the whales!

A Whale of a Tail

I worked my first construction job on Sanibel island back in 1973 as a carpenter on a house off Dixie Beach Parkway. Since then I’ve done just about every construction job imaginable on various Sanibel homes. Our speciality is rot repair but we’ve replaced doors and windows, remodeled kitchens, built decks and rails, painted, and after hurricanes Charlie and Wilma spent over 18 months just repairing wind and rain damage. In other words if you had asked I would have said we had done it all. Be careful what you say!

My company, Foy R Parker Building Contractor has done maintenance and repair work for Brenda Roguska at Sanibel One Realty for many years now and we’ve worked on the same houses many times. One house in particular is a nice, older beachfront home on West Gulf Drive called Whale House. To emphasize the name or maybe the origin of the name, there has always been a large carved wood sculpture of a female gray whale with calf in the yard facing the ocean. Other than noting it’s existence I had paid little attention to it until about 4 years ago when I realized it seemed to be missing. On further investigation I found the whale totally overgrown with shrubs. Curious, I forced my way through the bushes to take a good look and discovered that the sculpture was badly rotted and part of the tail had fallen off. We cleared a path through the bushes, got the sculpture off it’s base and moved it under the house so it would be protected from the weather. I told Brenda what we had done and moved on to other matters. About a year later I was back at the house and noticed that the whale was still lying there. I mentioned it again to Brenda who told me that the home owners were anxious to have the whale repaired but that she hadn’t been able to find anyone to do the work. Rotten wood is right up my company’s alley and since I am always up for something new I told her we might be able to make the repairs. Never having done anything resembling this I knew it was a gamble but I figured we couldn’t do much more damage than had already been done.

We loaded the ten foot long sculpture in the truck and took it to my house where I could study it we could work on it at our own pace. We started with a chainsaw to cut out all the rot, and cut and cut and cut. It seemed the rot would never end. When we were done I was appalled, as there seemed to be as much air as wood. One eye and half the mouth were missing, the mother whale had a hole four feet long and nearly a foot wide all the way through her body while the calf had a four inch by three foot slot across it’s back and of course there was the missing tail. We coated what was left with a wood consolidant and threw a tarp over it. I think we realized at that point that repairing the whales was going to be a much bigger job than we had anticipated.

The whales sat in my yard for months, in fact they moved to a new home with me where I kept them covered by the tarp and did my best to avoid thinking about them. My wife kept asking me when I was going to get the whales out of the yard. The truth was that we aren't wood carvers and I was scared to start, the whale’s bodies were bad enough but the double tail kept me up nights. After about a year of seasoning in my yard Brenda called to let me know that the owners of Whale House were going to be arriving for a one week stay in two short months and were anxious to see the finished whales. Nothing like a little pressure for motivation. I ordered a large quantity of epoxies, polyurethane glue, rubber gloves and a pile of lumber. While I’m generally not a fan of cedar I choose it since it’s easily worked and it would all be covered with a very waterproof high tech coating anyway. We started gluing and stacking boards and filling the holes.

Bottom of the whale

Each board had to be cut and carved to fit the very irregular hole the chain saw had made. One board at a time we filled and glued until the holes started to fill.

Top of the whales

We finally had the body cavities solid again and could turn our attention to sawing, grinding, filing and sanding the new wood to make it look like a whale. Since there were some of the original profile to work from that part went by fairly quickly. Carving the eye and mouth caused some stress but by referring to the existing eye and mouth we muddled through. Then we had to finally face the dreaded tail. Once again we stacked and glued cedar until we thought we had enough wood that the tail could be carved out of it.

The start of the whale’s new tail

That of course this was the easy part. Up to this point it was just like replacing rotten wood on a house with some curves but now we had to cut away everything that didn’t look like a whale’s tail. Al Hassie, Ron Fisher and I spent the next few hours shaping, carving and refining until it really did look like a whale’s tail again. We gave the whole thing a good sanding and then applied the first of 4 coats of a high tech polyurethane coating that looks and feels like what I imagine a whale’s skin really feels like. Not only does it look good but hopefully it will protect the whales for many years to come.

Gray base coat

Each coat had to dry for 24 hours so it took 3 days for all three coats of the base to be applied. In the meantime Brenda was calling me every day to remind me of the owner’s imminent arrival on Saturday.

Thursday was spent creating a new base for the whales since the original base was simply a section of tree trunk that was now totally rotten. I decided that something nautical was needed and what better than a dolphin. The dolphin I had in mind wasn’t the marine animal but a group of wood pilings used as bumpers in ship’s channels all over the world. We used treated fence posts trying to keep the proportions right.

Friday we carefully loaded the whales and parts for the base and headed for Sanibel. We sank the middle post of our new base into the ground four feet and bolted the other posts to it and each other. Giving the posts a few wraps with galvanized cable gave it the right look and the base was done. We carried the whales around the house and fastened them on their new base facing the sea. All that was needed was the final coat of black polymer and the whales were finished. After a 4 year journey the whales of Whale House were home and with hours to spare!

Completed whales back at home

The owners were very pleased and I was happy and relieved. The whales had been saved and we had successfully completed our most unique job ever. By the way, the whale’s tails turned out perfect!