Hope

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Hope, (and possibly ignorance), at least for me, is integral to taking on a project of this size. How many times have you talked with someone who completed a large project and said, “if I’d known how difficult this was going to be, I never would have started it”. I’m not really a planner, I tend to jump into things with both feet. Due diligence is important, But I think there is a point that you have to just commit. So hope first reared its head on this project early. I knew that we had a lot of deck work in our future, but at this point I’m working under the assumption that we won’t have to re-core the entire deck. Or at least hoping we won’t.

The first thing we focused on after getting all of the stuff off of the boat was stripping the deck to prepare for teak removal. What made this difficult was the Toe Rail. When they built the boat they installed the Toe Rail on top of the teak.

The Toe Rail was bolted through the deck every three inches for the full length of the boat. Which means we had to remove about 350 bolts which weren’t necessarily easy to access. The following pictures show the large ceiling panels which covered the underside of the deck. These panels came off easily. What you can’t see, (and I don’t have any pictures of), are the plywood panels that ran along the edge of the deck that the larger panels screwed into. Those were more difficult to remove. Cupboards in the Galley, and Heads posed problems as well. Probably the worst area for access, though, was the engine room. I spent a lot of time in the engine room contorted in uncomfortable positions, cursing Toe Rail.

We did finally get all of the Toe Rail off the boat. We were able to remove all of the bolts except for two or three, which I cut with an angle grinder. The only real hiccup in the process was a short detour I had to make to the emergency room to get four stitches in my finger. I wasn’t paying attention and somehow the angle grinder made contact with my index finger.

Catching Up

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We have been working on this boat for over a year now. These first posts will focus on our progress to date. I’m going to start from when the boat arrived in Texas. Later I’ll add posts talking more about the quest for the boat, and the boat itself. I should also add that prior to starting this project neither myself, nor my wife had ever worked on a boat before.

This is the boat immediately after we unloaded it in Texas. The unloading process really served to illustrate something that’s become a recurring theme with this project. Nothing ever goes as smoothly, or as quickly, as you expect it to. We bought brand new boat stands for the project, and when we bought them we sized them based on the size, and draft of the boat. Unfortunately we discovered, as the boat was hanging under a very expensive crane, that the boat stands were too tall. To clarify: the problem was probably more the restricted pivot range of the pads on top of the stands, but the effect was the same. The problem was solved by cutting down six of the eight stands with a sawzall, and blocking the boat up about eight inches higher than we’d planned on. To be honest blocking this boat was a stressful experience for me. Where it’s stored the boat is fairly exposed to the wind, and for the first six months I pulled in to the lot fully expecting it to be laying on its side. I suppose now, a year later, I can officially add boat blocking to the list of boat skills that I can claim a modicum of competency in.

One thing I was adamant about when I was looking for a project boat was, no teak decks. I was prepared for a major project, but I didn’t want to deal with a poorly maintained teak deck, and the core problems associated with it. So what did I end up with?

Not only is that a lot of teak, but it was extremely worn, and there was a large part of the foredeck that felt distressingly like a trampoline. To illustrate the wear here is a picture of the windlass switch on the foredeck.

Unfortunately any project of this size has to be a labor of love, and when we’re in love, it changes our outlook. So first project on this boat, deck repair.