When we bought this particular boat, one deciding factor was that it was a hella good deal and an order of magnitude cheaper than the other boats of this particular model. The reason, though, is that in 2003 this boat was damaged in a hurricane and sunk to the floor boards. (there had to be a catch, right?) Overall the fit and finish looked slightly more used than the other boats that we had seen, but she was otherwise in good shape.  The previous owners had spent a lot of time fixing the boat up and had cruised her extensively for about 6 years, so she’s proven and safe. However while cleaning all the nooks (and I got in there goooood), i found that there was some damage to the structure that hadn’t been repaired.  This wasn’t a deal breaker, just an annoyance that now has to be dealt with.  The good part is that the repair of the boat with the fiberglass is the same procedure that we used to build our fiberglass camper and we still have half a roll of the fiberglass we need to do any repairs to the boat. So aside from the inconvenience of working in a tight space (i’m pretty sure that’s gonna be me… dangit) it should be a straightforward repair.

It’s really only about a foot at the widest part of the crack and it only affects 2 bulkheads. Still slightly disappointing.

I also realized while cleaning that one of the lower storage lockers had about 4″ of standing water in it with no obvious path that it could have taken to get into the boat.  Jason went and got a hose and started spraying above deck while I laid awkwardly upside down in the hole to see where the water might be dripping from.  We finally narrowed it down to 2 places in the propane locker.  The first was the actual drain fitting, which was haphazardly patched with some sort of goop. We will probably replace the drain fitting and do a small fiberglass repair to make sure it doesn’t leak again.

The second place it was leaking from was where the wires and propane lines were run through the side of the locker.  They were bent and went through at an angle with nothing to seal the holes so any time water ran down the side of the locker (the lid isn’t sealed, so this is any time it rained…) water would pour into the boat and end up in the storage locker below. That explains some of the mold and the musty smell.  We are actually removing the propane system from the inside of the boat, so we pulled those lines out entirely and put some duct tape over the holes until we can fix it properly when we get to the boat permanently.  This area is going to get some fiberglass repair as well!

So as far as we’ve found so far, that’s the extent of the damage to the boat that’s left.  We’re going to go through each system very thoroughly.  A lot of parts are just generally old enough now to start to fail and need replacement, sinking or not. We’re going to replace all of the critical systems with new because I don’t want to be in Bermuda and have the freezer crap out. 😉