Since this boat sank (just a little!) at one point, the diesel engine probably got blasted with sea water. There’s considerably more flaking paint and surface rust on this engine than comparable boats and that’s just not acceptable! I demand perfection at the cost of personal sanity! (more on that later…)
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to remove the engine from the boat to clean and repaint it properly. I just have to do what I can with it in place, which will be unpleasant and cramped. I worked on getting most of the crap off of it while chasing wires and plumbing with Jason. I got a pretty good start. There was a lot of rubber dust from the alternator belt all over everything that was easily brushed away. A lot of the engine room sound insulation is disintegrating and starting to fail. It leaves disgusting foam dust everywhere, so I pulled off a lot of the worst pieces and cleaned the residue and glue off of the engine enclosure. My wire brush took care of a lot of the obvious rust and flaking paint on the metal on the engine. She still has a long way to go, but there was a little progress!
Because I’m easily distracted, I tend to follow my rabbit hole around the boat in circles. I might start with the diesel and end up in plumbing in the heads. Whatever works as long as I’m being productive, right? That being said, I managed to remove a bunch of other random stuff from the boat in my travels.
So far the boat’s been treating us pretty well! There are so many things on the boat that we’re redoing that it’s pretty easy to remove a bunch of wires and equipment without caring what they go to. I’ve taken 2 full trash bags of wires and control boxes to the dumpster already. My knees hurt from kneeling on the deck and usually from trying to kneel by shoving my kneecap onto a tool I neglected to move. (ouch! this happens all day…) The hardest part is having to cram my body into awkward positions to be able to access whatever it is that I’m doing. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the aft storage lockers. Back there the hull of the boat flares up so you just slide down the sloped hull sides unless you jam your legs onto something to hold yourself up! I’m actually pretty sore!
This is my impressed face…