One of my bestest friends in the entire world lives in south florida.  I’ve been meaning to go visit for way longer than is reasonable and decided to take a long holiday weekend to fly down there, work on my boat in Jacksonville a little bit, and spend the weekend with my friend! Unfortunately, I spent a little time working on the boat, had one fantastic day with my friend, and then I caught the flu and spent the next 3 days of my vacation huddled on Jason’s sister’s office guest room sofabed. I hadn’t been that sick in a long time! Fortunately, I did manage a full day and a half of work on the boat before I got sick.  I arrived with a huge to-do list and managed to actually destroy it and finish everything! 😮 (Not at all what I expected to happen!).  The list consisted mostly of removals of systems and equipment that were either already retired in place, or that we want to remove because they’re broken or being replaced later. I’m pretty darn good at ripping things apart, so it’s probably for the best that Jason wasn’t there getting in my way!

The first thing on the chopping block was the chair at the navigation station.  At first glance it looks cool because it pivots out from under the table, however it’s supposed to have a hydraulic system and a controller so that it doesn’t just swing around freely and beat the shit out of people and that was very much broken. Our plan is to remove the chair, foundation, ram, hydraulic pump and reservoir, and electrical control system and use a 12v freezer on a slider in place of the chair.  That way we remove broken (and heavy!) stuff from the boat, and get more freezer space for (hopefully) tuna!

Lets just say that if someone made an official “crescent hammer” I would be first in line for one.  The only tools I had on the boat were whatever rusty castaways that the previous owner left for us.  My trusty rusty crescent wrench saved the day!

The next thing on my list was to remove the single side band radio and other equipment from the electrical panel area. The SSB would have been cool but apparently they’re very finicky to set up, hard to use, need a permit, and overall it just didn’t sound like Jason or I cared enough to bother with it.  I’d rather have a simple boat with a satellite phone and multiple backups than a ham radio to call my friends on.

I also removed a battery monitor, the old radio, and some sound equipment from the top part of the electrical area.

Once I started ripping into it I realized that there was literally nothing in that upper cabinet that we were keeping.. so I removed that also!

It’s pretty impressive what a big difference removing that cabinet made in the interior of the boat. It just feels more spacious in there now!

Since the little diesel generator is busted we’re going to eventually remove that. I couldn’t do it this time because It’s heavy and I definitely need some help.  That being said, I can definitely remove the control and gauge panel that’s located above the trash can in the galley!

That removal was pretty easy except for pulling all of the old wires back. I need a second hand to get them out so it has to wait for later.  Not sure what to do in the galley cabinet with that huge hole. Maybe I’ll put in a tilt out drawer for recycling or something useful like that. Or we can patch it with plywood since I’m planning on painting the cabinets in the galley anyway.

Originally this boat was equipped with an air conditioning system, but by the time we got it, the AC had been removed.  They made sure to leave all of the hoses and wires in place in case they wanted to install a new one. (with old cables and hoses? No thanks!) Since we’re not going to have a generator we have no way to run an AC even if we wanted to, so I went ahead and pulled all of these out of the 2 storage hatches behind the starboard/aft sofa.

At this point I’ve put in a solid day’s worth of work!  I ended up with a pretty sizeable pile of crap that I thought would be a good idea to put right at the bottom of the ladder to get on and off of the boat. (Planning is not my strong suit unfortunately).

So… after all of that entire week spent cleaning the boat with jason, this is what happens in a single day of me being left unattended! Regardless of the mess I made I managed to get everything on my list done! My list for this trip at least…we still have a lot more to remove like the actual generator unit and all the systems and hardware that are being replaced. I’m still happy with my accomplishment!