Sunday, March 24, 2013

First day of the rebuild - 3.25 hrs


Yesterday was a sunny, blue sky day but a little cool to me but workable, high was 50F. I decided to do the hour drive over to see Phoenix and get a little work done. I had bought a used tiller at Bacon’s Sails, a marine consignment store, but it had too much upward curve for my taste. I did find the old broken tiller while cleaning up, so I have a template when I go back to Bacon’s. I’ll head over to Bacon’s Monday since they have a 10 day return policy. But now I have a much longer list of items to look for!

Next I decided to clean out some stuff that would be difficult to dispose of once the boat is back home. Since I have no plans to install an inboard motor this primarily meant getting the old wet exhaust pipe out and the prop and shaft. Due to a loop up high in the lazarette(this is the area behind the cockpit) I could not figure a way to get that blasted pipe out and I only had hand tools. Luckily I had a hacksaw among the tools but man was cutting through that pipe tedious and required several rests and two blades. I guess I was lucky it was early in the season so there didn’t appear to be any active wasp nests. All the wasp nests were on the underside of the lazarette right above my head when I cut the rubber exhaust connection to the through hull. 
Atomic 4 inboard gas engine wet exhaust cut by hand

The boat should sail better with the weight of the exhaust, prop and shaft removed. I’d guess about 50lb combined. Plus, removing the prop gets rid a tremendous drag source.
Junk removed today.
I wasn’t able to get the transmission shifter hardware out. The nuts spun underneath and the forward nuts are in fiberglass. The old gauges will be remove later. This cockpit is going to require quite a bit of work to make it blue water ready. A breaking wave pooping the cockpit would quickly end up in the bilge. All the details will be on my main website for those interested.



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