A Lot of Progress

It has been a while since we posted and a lot has happened. We purchased a few more items for the boat at great prices. You have to love Craigslist. One of which was an eight person self inflating life raft. All through the summer and this winter, we have diligently been working at home on all the "stuff" we stripped from the boat. Jeanne has been working on all the stainless steel. I have stripped and rebuilt all the winches. Bob has gotten good progress done on the engine and we hope to fire her up in the next week or two. Below are some updated pictures. Stay tuned as we hope to have Living Life in the water soon.

Jeanne outside working on the stanchions

A before and after shot of the stanchions

Some of the stainless before and after cleaning

 

Some of the stainless after cleaning

One of the winches torn down for cleaning

Parts after cleaning

Engine upside down, but bottom end complete

Turned upright. Ready for flywheel and bell housing

- The Captain

Captain...I'm givin' it all she's got...but there's something missing...

Engine completely broken down and ready for cleaning, inspection, replacing any parts deemed necessary to replace and painting. All you see above was done in about two and a half hours. We have a great work place for all of this. Once again, thanks Bob and Becky!

- The Captain

Lot's Happening

Where to begin. Jeanne and I took the engine last week over to Bob's work to power clean and drop the oil. Bob is a great friend of ours, a diesel mechanic and has offered his talents to do a full overhaul on the engine. Thanks Bob!

Bob power washing the engine

Engine lifted in the air

Bob draining the oil

After all this, we strapped the engine back on the trailer and headed to his house. This will be it's home for the next couple of weeks.

Engine in Bob's garage

Apparently Bob got the itch to start breaking the engine down two days later and had Becky, his wife send some initial pics. These are from Becky.

Cute toes Becky!

Looking good!

Also this week, we picked up some new toys. My Mom and Dad visited us and brought with them our 45 lb. CQR anchor that Dad picked up off of Craigslist down in Key West a couple of weeks ago. Also, here is a pic of the Edson pedestal and guard Jeanne mentioned in her post and our Lofran windlass we picked up off of Craigslist.

Edson pedestal

45 lb CQR

Lofrans Progress One windlass

That's about it. Preparing the boat for painting still. Should have pics soon of the boat completely stripped. Have a good weekend.

- The Captain

The 3Ms

Oh my, this would be the first post from the "Admiral", as Sean has taken to calling me. It has been a REALLY busy 4 days! Thursday,we drove to Jacksonville to check out the engine we wanted to purchase for the boat. Sean was thrilled with it, so we finalized the transaction and made arrangements to return to take our new baby home. The best part of the day was making new friends! Barbara and Reggie (yes, Reggie, we both know she always comes first), are awesome people! We hope this will be a long term friendship, and are confident it will be. After scurrying back home, we took my daughter, Sarah, and a few of her friends out for her 21st birthday dinner. What fun! Returned home....nite nite mama.

Friday was more of the birthday celebration, (21 only comes once), with a party to include 50 of her closest friends, affectionately referred to collectively as the termites. Termites, you ask? Well.....they come out of the woodwork, without warning.....consume everything in sight.....then their wings fall off and they drop where they stand. And I love them all! I think sleep finally found us about 4AM. Oh well, the things we do for our children.

My tireless husband was up at 6 to Lowe's for plywood for the trailer to pull our new engine. He dragged my "happy ass" up at 7:45, on the road by 8:00. After Barbara and Reggie graciously took us to lunch, the 3Ms (Macho Marine Mechanics) started on the extraction from Submit. (See S/V Submit: Cautions and Extractions for their details) Barbara and I opted to avoid the potential bloodbath and venture to Publix for their provisions. Upon our return, we were very pleased to find them both not only alive and uninjured, but smiling, with the engine hanging 12 feet above the ground.

They, on the other hand, were even happier to see a suitcase of Heineken in hand! My favorite exchange of the day......

Barbara: I'm glad it went off without any problems.
Reggie: I never said that! It was a pain in the ass!

Later.....

Barbara: (inspecting said engine on the trailer), You two did a great job.
Reggie: Keep dreaming, Alice! You're almost in Wonderland.

This delightful couple then took us for a bite, we acquired a "new" pedestal for the cockpit from an old salt at the marina, secured the straps and headed home with our precious cargo. We took the day today to enjoy Easter Dinner with family, and will be back at it tomorrow.....if, of course, Sean can drag my "happy ass" out of bed!

- The Admiral

Busy Week

I am a pretty big optimist. It can also be one of my downfalls. I have always tackled problems with the attitude, "No problem...two weeks". Well, the last thing in preparing the top-deck for epoxy filling, gelcoat repair and paint, was tackling the bow pulpit. I have been putting this off to the bitter end as I really didn't want to find out how bad it was. Very abnormal for me. Here is the best picture I have of what the bow pulpit looked like.

If you look closely, some previous owner hacked this job. Apparently at one point, the teak had been replaced with plywood and then a very poor attempt at fiberglass was made. As you can see, it was all rotten, a ton of screws in, falling apart...just nasty. I really, really was not looking forward to finding what was underneath. But, it needed to be done. I began chipping away and peeling off and taking my trusty boat chisel, scraped all the crap off. Much to my surprise, it all came off relatively quickly and most of the gelcoat underneath was still in tact. Here is the afterwards picture.

With a little work on the gelcoat, some sanding, it will be good as new.

On to other stuff. During the week while we are working on the boat, we stay at Jeanne's parent's house in St. Petersburg, as they are only ten minutes from where we have the boat. I'd like to thank them immensely for putting up with us and their hospitality. Love you guys. Well, while there this week, good and close friends of the family came to visit, Chuck and Kay. We had a wonderful visit with them and it was good to see them again. Here is a nice picture of Kay, Jeanne, Chuck and Katie (Jeanne's mother).

Back to boat stuff. We own an engine! Thanks to our new good friends, Reggie and Barbara of SV Submit. We drove over to meet them in Jacksonville yesterday and to take a look at their engine, a Perkins 4.107 they have for sale, which is currently in their boat. After hearing it run and so forth, we completed the transaction. I feel bad for Reggie as I was hoping to assist him in extracting the engine, but could not as that leads to the next topic.

Sarah, Jeanne's daughter, turned 21 yesterday. We took her and some of her close friends out to dinner last night. Here is a nice one of her with, of course, a shot.

Tonight we have a big BBQ planned for her birthday where no doubt, the house is going to be packed with her friends and family...but mostly termites.

Big week next week. Hopefully we will take delivery of our engine and start filling holes. Stay tuned.

- The Captain

Deconstruction Finished

This week was a fairly productive week. The boat is completely stripped of all hardware. It looks barren and quite ugly now. I'm glad it is finished now as Jeanne is getting itchy to start putting the boat back together, but it will be a slow process. Preparing the top deck for paint will consist of multiple steps. First step...fill in all the holes. Went to FiberGlass Coatings, Inc. here in St. Pete on Thursday to get supplies and to talk to their specialists. They are fantastic for DYIers like us. Tommy spent 45 minutes first listening to what we would like to accomplish and then showing and explaining all the different options for us to create a professional looking job. After we all came up with what we felt was the best solution, we carried out our two part epoxy. Monday we start drilling and filling and we plan to show the steps with pictures for anyone who might be interested. Stay tuned.

- The Captain

Some Good News

Went out to the mailbox and found this. USCG accepted our name changes. We are official now.

- The Captain

2 Steps Back = 1 Step Forward?

Been a long week. The unseasonably high temperatures and humidity have hindered our work a bit, but we did get a lot done. Still taking out screws. Screws and more screws, removing all hardware, teak, hatches and portholes. This afternoon I was joking to our buddy Guy that we have had to have taken out at least 600 screws. Jeanne popped up and shouted, "600? Hell the portlights were 240 alone!" I thought about it for a second and realized, 24 screws per porthlights, 10 portholes...yep, that's 240. Good googly moogly. So, in reality, we've probably taken out over 2000. Then I started thinking that if even 1% of the screws allow water infiltration, that's 20 spots where water has leaked, and I know it's more than that.

Anyway, onto the subject of this post. After removing all the portlights, some of them have had water infiltrate, and there is some core rot around them. But, better to find this now than a couple hundred miles offshore in a torrential rainfall and water pouring in. So, one more thing added to this list. We hope, with some fairer weather forecast for next week, we will get the rest of the deck cleared and be able to start filling unneeded holes, fix the portlight's surroundings and generally prepare the deck for a new coat of gelcoat paint. The other set back was we were hoping to remove then rebed some of the portlights. NOT! Three that had been one time replaced with Vetus portlights, came out fine and are in great shape, but the other 7 were the original Grey portholes and they basically fell apart in pieces. So, 7 new Vetus portlights will be on order soon. So, we are still in deconstruction mode. Hopefully, SOON, we will be in re-construction mode.

Some of our friends/family have stated that the boat did not look this bad. Well, this is true. We probably could have gotten the boat in the water quickly as it really is not in bad shape. However, this is the best time to tackle all of this as it would eventually have to be done. And quite frankly, next year in the Caribbean, I don't want to be dealing with any of this. I want to enjoy my wife, our boat and our new lifestyle knowing every bolt, screw, wire, tank, fiberglass and engine is good, as we have had our hands on it.

- The Captain

Clearing Off The Top Deck

So, the last two days have been productive. Our buddy Guy came over and helped us get the mast down onto the ground. That enabled Jeanne and I to start ripping out screws. And man, do we have a lot of screws. We eventually plan to count all the screws we took up, but we are too tired right now. The plan is to get the entire deck cleared of everything so we can start epoxying in holes and filling in scratches with gelcoat. Some sanding and ready for paint. Here are some pictures of the boat finally.

This is after the thru halls were removed.

Top view of the deck from the stern.

 Top view of the deck from the bow.

 Our buddy Guy, after he helped us to lower the mast. Notice the rails are all down.

Jeanne removing screws!

One happy girl!

- The Captain

Railings Down

Started removing all hardware on the top deck. Railing and life lines all down. Now we can get the mast off of the deck of the boat finally and have some room to remove the rest of the hardware so we can start working on the bow pulpit and prepare the deck for painting.

- The Captain

Thru-Halls Removed

With the help of our good friend Guy, all of the thru-halls and seacocks have been removed. We found some interesting things digging through all the nooks and crannies. After counting, we have 12 holes in the sailboat now. That's WAY too many. After reading through the schematics I got from Gene Gammon at Irwin Yachts, there should only be 9. And, since we are eliminating the forward head, that should be 3 less. Looks like some fiberglassing is on the way.

- The Captain

Cleaning Out The Sailboat

The sailboat has been cleaned out. We went through the entire sailboat and removed everything. We found quite a lot of good things tucked away in all the compartments that went into the SUV. We also threw out about 12 bags of junk. What a difference it makes having an uncluttered work space now.

- The Captain

Sailboat Purchase

After six exhausting months of searching, calling, stepping onto different sailboats, we finally found the right combination of price, size and layout. Though the market is currently flooded with many sailboats, our criteria came down to this. First, we had to have a center cockpit. We love the layout with the aft stateroom. Second, we were looking for an older boat that had good bones where we can do a major refit. And finally, we wanted to stay within the 35 to 40 foot range. We narrowed our range down to the Coronado 35, the Irwin 37 and some Morgan designs in that length range. What we finally found and purchased was a 1976 Irwin 37 center cockpit MK III, in the sloop version. What's even better is it was already on the hard at Salt Creek Marina, a marina near us that is designed for do it yourselfers.

I laugh at Jeanne's 3 step plan. Step 1: Buy boat. Step 2: Make boat float. Step 3: Make boat pretty. Step 1: Check. Step 2 consists of the following projects: Remove and replace all thru-halls and seacocks. Remove all hardware, railing, teak, everything from top deck. Fix or replace bow pulpit. Fiberglass/fill any holes that will no longer be needed or need to be fixed. Sand entire boat. Paint entire boat. While all this is happening, we need to purchase and rebuild a new (used) engine. Once engine is ready and top-side paint is finished, we need to coordinate the lift to pull old engine, insert new engine and re-mount mast. Once done, re-mount hardware. Once these steps are finished, we will then paint the bottom and launch.

Once the boat is moved to it's destination, which will either be Gulf Port City Marina or Jeanne's best friend, Lynn's sister's house, we will then start working on the interior.

In the weeks to come, we will start showing before and after pictures of each of our projects.Wish us luck!

- The Captain