The next morning, I headed out to start some of the
cleaning. I started by throwing everything
out of the boat that wasn’t bolted down.
Next, the shop vac and I began the tedious process of removing
the water that was still in there. It
took many, many shop vacs full of water to get her dry, but things were looking
up. That was until I popped open the
blue thunder bucket head! OMG, what a
mess. Shop vac, bleach, shop vac,
bleach, shop vac, …….. you get the idea. However, she is nice and clean and will never
be used again! I have concluded a
thunder bucket with a pump out tube is just a bad idea. I am having visions of me standing on the deck in my driveway, after a nice day of sailing with a shop-vac! I don't think that is in the cards. Different times I guess.
The next step was to scrub the deck, it went pretty well,
but some of the stains from the moss remained.
That was the point that made me decide on the pressure washer. Well, that made pretty short work of cleaning
the top side gel coat. In fact, except
for a couple of rust stains she looks great, dead flat and never to shine
again, but nice and clean. Now, I grew
up working in my Dads body shop, and I can tell you that I have never seen a
surface that was any more perfectly prepped for paint. Nice and smooth and pre-etched. Its just begging me to spray her. That would allow me to patch up the many
screw holes she has acquired over the years that used to hold things of great
importance that have since gone missing.
I scrubbed up the sides with Oxyclean and bleach mixed with a bit of
very hot water and it cleaned the crap off very nicely. Someone along the way has painted the sides
(yellow part) However, that still looks pretty good, am not quite sure what to do with that
yet.
I pressure washed all the teak,
some will be saved, some will need to be replaced. No surprises there. What did surprise me was the solidity of the
hull. She is in great shape. I cant find any blisters in the gell coat,
and what is there seems really good.
With one exception; the cockpit floor.
This is amazing considering that when I tip the boat and trailer up so
it rests on the stern, I could see a very vivid water line that went from in
front of the centerboard trunk and made its way aft to the very top of the
transom! OMG this boat has spent a long
time completely filled with water.
Now,
if I took out more than 150 gallons, I am not exaggerating a bit to say there
must have been a thousand gallons in there.
1000 gallons at 8# per gallon works out to 4 tons of additional weight
on the trailer. It’s a wonder the whole
thing isn’t just a pile of junk. Whoever
designed and built this boat was one hell of a designer, she is a robust girl
to be sure. The hand laid glass inside
the storage compartments looks nice and pink, just like it did when it was
new. Under the rear hatch, she looks
great. As I said, the only part that
will need work will be the cockpit floor.
8 hours of clean-up work that day. It was an amazing days progress. I think I have a very solid candidate for
restoration. Its starting to get
exciting now.
Day two: 8 hours work, 14 hours total. $259 invested.
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