Sunday, September 16, 2012

Update


Thanks for all the advice and support guys!  I'm still surprised so many people have taken an interest and care about our success.  It really does help keep us on track.

I wanted to give a little explanation of what we've been doing to the boat, because I'm not sure I specifically have of late.  We're getting a new paint job because we've had to patch many holes in the decks, including where the chain plates were removed.  Also, the decks are soft in spots from moisture seeping in through the hundred-thousand+ holes left from screws that once held on teak decks, and from chain plate and hardware leakage. Our decks were covered in honeycomb painted in a cracking house paint (not yacht paint) which provided no moisture barrier and was assisting the rot.  So the deck and cabin was, for all practical purposes, not really painted at all.  Besides the house paint coat from 3 years ago, it has only been painted one other time we believe (about 20 years ago) in it's 43 years on this lovely planet.  Also, every window leaked, and the cabin trim leaked leading to rotting interior wood and rotting bulk heads.  (We can tear the bulk heads out with our bare hands! That's how bad the rot is!)   The house paint on the cabin was peeling off everywhere, and has to be re-painted after sanding and patching the trim holes with epoxy.  The toe rails were removed because they were broken and leaking in so many places contributing to deck rot and bulk head rot as well.

We have wondered whether or not it was worth it to do all this work, but ultimately decided the brakes needed to be applied to all this leakage and rot if it was ever going to ever be resellable.  At 43, with bad neglect when we bought it, we just had to put a stop to the damage now before it got so bad it would require more time and money later than it does right now.  We want a long term home that we can resell in good condition when the time comes.  We chose to have it Awlgripped rather than painting ourselves with yacht paint to better seal out moisture and provide a tougher protective covering to prevent further damage.  Because it will be a new professional paint job, it will look very pretty, but prettiness is just a side-effect, not the motivation.  We hesitated to dig this deep every step of the way, wondering if we were screwing ourselves now, or if not doing it would screw us later.  If we had it to do over we'd do everything differently in terms of what was done when and where, but alas it's always easy to see what should have been done in retrospect.  It's our first boat and a huge learning experience. Hopefully when it's done, it won't need major work for a few years and we'll have managed to preserve her rather than let her slip into worse condition than when we bought her.

Inside the cabin there are a few essential things left to do as well:  Repair the bulk heads; build a mast support (it currently doesn't have one! The wall that is the support is not supported); and repair the water tank/bilge area.  The water tank was built into the bilge - a fiberglass wall in the keel separates the 'water tank' from  the 'bilge'. That wall is cracked and breaking allowing bilge water to seep into the water tank side.  The paint in the water tank is peeling, and the 2 rigidity panels or baffles (not sure) are also coming apart.  We are not going to salvage it in terms of making it a water tank again. We'll cut the lip off the top and build a tray to hold some water bags, and let it be bilge below.

After that we can live aboard again and concern ourselves with systems.  We had no systems when we lived aboard before. The water tank was not safe to use, thus we had no water storage or pumps electric or manual. The electrical system was shot and we only had lights about half of the time, and not enough power to run anything else.  And there was no engine or working rig.  We've pulled out most the the old fire hazard wiring.   It looks like previous owners just added new without ever removing the old. So there were more old wires leading to nothing and nowhere than wires running to somewhere. (We made a couple hundred dollars in copper scrap!)  Now the boat is nearly empty in terms of pluming and wiring, and we'll get to install systems from scratch with simplicity.  Once it's done it will be simple, elegant, reliable, and most importantly: serviceable.  One upside to having to practically re-do everything is that we'll have touched every corner and cranny of the boat, and installed what is there ourselves, thus there shouldn't be any big surprises in the future.

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