The boat was pretty inexpensive in the grand scheme of things, considering COVID pricing on all things outdoors. Because of the price, we made the choice (albeit possibly a poor one) to not get a survey. We had a “come what may attitude” towards the lack of the survey. Call it COVID craziness, a high risk tolerance, or just plain stupidity it was a choice we might come to regret.
We’re 3 weeks in and as they wear on and the boat project list grows, so do our fears that this is going to cost us a lot more than we thought. We knew we were in for surprises…just not this many.
The first projects centred around cleaning. Mark must have put in 10 hours of bilge cleaning alone! He got them so clean that the aft bilge area started flowing into the forward one. Then he found out that the prop shaft leaks (cool, another project). It fills up the aft bilge but the float switch kicks in and no problem…except that bilge now runs into the forward because there are no clogs. With no automatic float switch in the forward, this is leading to a bit of a panic. Time to add a float switch ASAP!!
We’re running on a trend of do one thing, break something else right now.
Moving on from bilges, Mark decided to work on the water system. He got the system to finally pressurize. Surprise, surprise, the hot water tank leaks… into the aft bilge.😑
We replaced the main halyard and did some testing in order to go up the mast to check out that hornet’s nest of problems (legit found a hornet’s nest in the main) and found out the self tailing winches don’t self tail anymore, the lines slip. Cool, cool, cool.
We could go on but I’m sure you get the drift. The boat seams to be an onion of problems (we’re considering renaming it Onions). We signed up with that “come what may attitude”, while sometimes it’s frustrating, we’re having a good time.
It’s not all bad though. We did find some great replacement sails, took a ride in the dinghy that we’re calling Danger Dinghy, and have enjoyed some lovely beers on our floating trash pile.