Quick update on our progress so far. I say quick because it’s past 10:00, we’re physically exhausted with throbbing feet, mangled hands and a boat that looks like a bomb went off in it. Fun times here in the yard.
We’ve come a long way in the past three days, but still have SO much more to do. It seems like it takes forever to do just the smallest of projects. Like removing the teal pin striping, which took me a full day to scrape and clean the adhesive. Then there’s the daily runs out to West Marine to pick up additional supplies – it’s always some small stupid part that we didn’t know we needed until we were elbows deep into a project. That’s an hour wasted there. Then there’s the physical exhaustion of long days and hard, sweaty work, that seem to be slowly eating away at our pace and our gumption. We were originally supposed to go back in the water tomorrow, but we’ve decided to push it to Tuesday to give us the weekend to finish up.
SO, what have we been up to?
All of the thru hulls are in! All eleven of them. I locked it down from the outside as Matt attached & tightened the pieces from the inside. Then I had the messy job of meticulously wiping clean the goopy marine adhesive that oozed out of the edges. Move on to the next one, repeat the process. Ten more times.
Matt’s started on the plumbing. He was on a roll until he ran out of hose and had to run out to – you guessed it! – West Marine. That’ll be here tomorrow so we can finish hooking everything back up. We upgraded to the thick black sanitation piping for our head hoses. We flush with freshwater to begin with, but the original 14 year old hoses had started to deteriorate and the smell was permeating through the hoses. By replacing the hoses (and continuing to flush with fresh water) there is absolutely NO MORE POO SMELL! Totally worth the upgrade.
BTW – did you know it’s not what goes IN the toilet that causes that horrible head smell, but rather the water you flush with? By flushing with seawater, you’re picking up tiny bacteria in the water that die when no longer exposed to sunlight, and THAT, my friends, is what’s actually causing the stink. By flushing with fresh water (either by having it plumbed directly to pull from your FW tank, or by the method we use – keeping a cup by the sink and pouring a bit of water in when we flush).
The bottom is painted! Several coats of barrier paint, followed by several more of bottom paint, and it’s ready to roll. Seeing the bottom done made us feel like something big was finally DONE, however, our old bottom paint was also black, so it was a bit anti-climatic since it looked exactly the same. We’re going to have the marina guys move the jack stands so we can hit the bare spots tomorrow.
Notice that the teal boot stripe is also missing? After all of the *major* work we’ve been fdoing this week, to me, the best is getting the cosmetics done. I think because it’s progress I can actually see and it makes the looooong days worth it.
Underwater lights are in. Can’t wait to throw some food scraps off the back of the boat when were in the clear blue waters of the Bahamas and watch the feeding frenzy below. Plus they’ll be awesome for some night swimming.
The hull has been scrubbed, metal has been polished, and we’ve started on the grey pin striping, which looks amazing! We still have one more hull to do, so more on that on the next post. I need to hit the scum line above the water line where the guys had put their painters tape. Just seeing how clean and sparkly it is gave me a quick win to keep on going. Noa and his crew wet sanded a small section of the hull and it looked like a brand spankin’ new boat. Holy cow, what a difference. That will be our project on Sunday/Monday right before we go back in.
Meanwhile, we’re living like the Beverly Hillbillies out here at the marina. We removed our mattresses so we could access the engines and wrapped them up in plastic, which are sitting on our trampoline. Along with our holding tank covers. All in the parking lot of the marina restaurant, where people are dining on the deck a mere 15ft away. With an 8ft ladder propped off the side for us to get on & off the boat. Classy.
