Jun 23 2007
One Thing Leads To Another
The thing about a boat like ours is that sometimes, it’s actually a lot more like Easter than it is like, oh, boating.
The man we bought her from did not believe in maintenance. We knew that up front, and figured we could tackle it. We knew, for example, that when the anchor windlass broke, instead of fixing it or getting it fixed, he simply had a second one installed right next to the broken one. We knew that the depth gauge that you can see from the helm had been codelocked for four solid years and he’d not bothered to get it fixed (”We’re in the Caribbean, right? Just look over the side, you can see how deep it is!”). So we sorta knew we were going to find some weirdness.
We were utterly unprepared. Utterly.
We’re at the stage now where if you touch one thing, you end up unraveling fifteen loose ends to find the source of the issue. Good news is, my husband Captain Overbuilt is amazing at tracking things down, but the bad news is, it’s taking for-freaking-ever.
Here’s the current drama. We wanted to thoroughly vacuum the berths before putting our stuff in there. Considering the delivery captain who “did not ever once not ever” smoke in the boat managed to leave cigarette ash everywhere, we thought a good vacuuming to be prudent. Except that under the suction of the shop vac we used, the nasty beige vinyl liners began disintegrating, leaving trails of rotted red foam backing dust below them. Ugh. So vacuuming was abandoned, and the liner panels were ripped off the walls.
This exposed the bones of the boat. (You can see it coming, can’t you?) Which, also exposed two chronic leaks into our berth. Small, pin drop, but long-term enough to rot out one board. So, la, leaks are addressed, board is replaced, but in inspecting, we realize that the huge aft cleat and the stanchions don’t have backplates. As in, they’re bolted through fiberglass, with zero support. UGH. We also realize there’s a problem with how the hatch has been installed (the screws are wrong, it’s seated badly, and the caulking is shot), and it needs to be ripped out and redone.
Since we’re poking around anyway, we start tracing wires, and realize that the electroni problem is in fact worse than we thought. Exposed wire ends start… and are traced… and disappear… only to reappear, attached to nothing on the other side either. In a fit of prudence, we decide that we’ll wait until we have someone around who’s hip to electronics to start completely rewiring the boat. The bad news being, it’s now utterly obvious that we’re going to have to completely rewire the boat. Good news is, looking at all the random cut and exposed wires, we’re thinking we could probably save 100 pounds of weight by cleaning it out.
The point, as you may recall, was to make the berths fit for habitation.
Obviously, the nasty vinyl had to go, since it was on its way out anyway. We ripped the vinyl off, cleaned the boards, and figured out a way to wrap them with fabric attached to fusible fleece, so they ended up being totally superior to the godawful plastic nastiness. I’ll post instructions and pictures once the process is done. Jason also figured out how to do the same thing with maple veneer, and while it’s still a work in process, the results are going to be gorgeous, I can already tell.
Because of the aforementioned electroni disaster, we’re not going to change or upgrade the lighting, so it’s still going to be the nasty overhead fluorescents, ugh. And because we’re also going to be replacing the mattresses (cause the ones in there were clearly the originals, and thus 16-year-old substandard shedding foam), we’re not going to be able to redo the cabinets like we wanted to… at least, not right now. But considering there’s a massive IKEA only a fifteen minute walk from the boat, I may try exerting some influence there. Cause if anyone can make better use of the space than IKEA, I haven’t met them.
One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. I wonder what easter eggs we’re going to find tomorrow…
Oh, I can so see that whole thing unravelling in my mind’s eye … what a staggering task.
Would some execrable word-play on “Easter egg” lighten the work?
Excellent Adventure’s SubText: Extensively Ravelled Excreta Gets Gone (another metaphor for the process of divestiture, eh?)
Excellent Adventure Says, Tatty Electrics Rarely Enable Great Graphics (an understatement if there ever was one)
Ack, stop me, I’ve got work to do! I could keep this up for _days_.
Love & hugs. I’m still starry-eyed from reading about her coming in through the Gate.
ah yes been there…
Side note… do you know about the big boat flea mart coming in Aug in Marin?
So it goes, ever and always. And Ikea is a boon to boat life. Don Quixote is littered with Ikea experiments, some of which “stick” and some of which spend a few weeks kicking around before being freecycled as clearly unsuitable. Ping me offline if you’d like the itemized success/failure list for Ikea.
So this boat of yours is really excited for you to get to know her inside and out - like this is her “in arms” phase where you have loads of contact, get to know one another well, establish those bonds, deepen the trust, get in tune with one another?
As the daughter of a vet, this reminds me so much of taking in a rescue pup - a lot of work, time, effort, energy, but with such a huge, fantastic payoff for all. And from where I’m sitting, what you guys are doing *still* sounds fun and exciting. P.S. - If you do end up at IKEA, please post before and after pics (I’m a junkie for stuff like that).