Yo, Ho! A Pirate’s Life for Me!

Where were we? Ah yes, I was explaining what it was we had done to transform a simple little C30 pickup truck into an awe inspiring pirate ship bar.

So, Sean comes over and begins his magic work. The back of the truck is starting to take form. At this point, we were not thinking straight, as I do not believe the rum had fully kicked in. By this time, the only thing we had in mind for this truck, was Tiki Bar. As we were building ideas out loud, this bar was nearly destined to become a rolling Margaritaville. *The travesty!*

We kept building the bar, knowing that it would lead us to the righteous path. We all started slowly realizing that we are not 49 year old women, and we should not be making tribute to a man that lost a sandal, and failed to remember where he got that tattoo, all in the same day.

NO! We are indeed MEN! And manly men… with beards! And we drink… Powerade? No! Well, yes. (It was 110°F that day.) But, no! We drink RUM! Who else drinks rum? Pirates of course! And how much more manly does it get than to be a pirate – Sail the seven seas. Take what you want. Leave no bottle unturned…

Unfortunately, none of that actually clicked for us like that. In fact, it was Liz, Christian’s wife that made it all apparent to us when she came by to drop off their daughter, Kayla. I was up on the truck and Liz says, “Cool, a pirate bar!”

Everything just made sense after that. Of course — a Pirate Ship! It was easy after that. We need “_____”, and we would rummage through the yard until we found something suitable, then we made it work. Sean continued on the bar, making the most beautiful masterpiece, from a bunch of rubbish.

Sean made a great captain – “Batten down the hatches, mateys! Hoist the anchors! Something to do with a mizzen li…” Okay, maybe none of that was said. But he knew what he wanted, and let it be known to us that he had a definitive plan. When he needed something, we got it. If we did not have it, or we could not find one, we made it from things that we had laying around.

Once the bar was made up, it was time to accessorize. And what better way to accessorize… than with CANNONS!!

That is right! Four 203mm cannons flank this beast! And what would one shoot out of an 8″ cannon? Well tunes of course! Inside of all four cannons, resides a 3-way speaker at the ready to blast our adversaries right out of the water!

…and they are even outfitted with a fog line, for that truly ominous piratey feel! What respectable pirate ship would set sail without its own cloud of fog surrounding it! Not this one! We have that under control.

It was time to start thinking about entertainment. Not just for the eye stimulation, but what were people to do, while on a pirate ship?

Drink rum, of course! But, is there anything else one could choose to do? Certainly there is! We have started the building of the Wench’s Deck, an area above the truck cab for the ladies to congregate (at two, maybe three at a time… but, that makes for a great V.I.P. experience.) This wench’s deck is a platform that will span the full eight foot width of the bed, and make its way forward, all the way to the front bumper.

In order to do that, I needed to start on some bracing. I found two sticks of angle iron, and welded them to our new CUCV-turned-pirate bumper.

Laugh if you must, but I can assure you that these posts will not fail. We still have quite a lot of fabricating to do up here, but we are off to a good start.

Believe it, or not, these here goalposts, were the most crucial part of this build, at least concerning the Wench’s Deck. That is because everything after this is just connect the dots, and if this part was not done properly, then the whole upper deck would fail to work out. Of course, these were made too long, and they will need to be cut down to size, but we will be getting this done later, so that Sean can come back through and build onto my frame, making something out of nothing. Or, as my cousin Dustin used to tell me – “Turning horse shit into ice cream… that is what we do!”