After the yard puts the boat in the water to reinstall the mast, they’re going to be spraying the transom with a fresh coat of paint. The old paint isn’t adhered well and is flaking in some spots. Also the old name of the boat is still visible and since that’s bad luck it’s got to go! The boat used to have a ladder bolted through the back of the boat, but we’re removing it. We mixed up some epoxy and filler and filled the old bolt holes so when we prep the transom for paint, it will be all smooth! (didn’t get any pictures of this though.. sorry!)
We got a few boxes in the mail a few days ago and inside one of the boxes was the new VHF radio and accessories. Jason got to work on that and filled the last hole in the navigation station panel that I made!
There are still a lot of holes in this boat. Looks like I need to get another 12v plug to put next to that radio!
The other day I removed all of the additional insulation from the fridge/freezer, which was gross. One problem we ran into was that there is a low point sump in the far corner for water to collect and go down the drain. The previous owners filled this with some sort of hard mystery substance that had cracked. There’s no point leaving that there to collect water so I crawled back into the hole (mehhhhh… noooooo….) and went to town with a mallet and chisel.
I also had the chisel fly out of my hand at one point and cut my leg, which was awesome. Had to improvise a bandage with a piece of cloth and duct tape. #medicalprofessional
After I got tired of chiseling glue out of a hole I decided to work on the lighting. I’ve had new interior reading lights for the living room for a while now and just recently ordered some small lights to replace some of the square ones that weren’t working or just generally looked gross. I decided to start in the master bathroom since it was the room least full of random shit and I had the most room to work! (fun fact: it’s time to clean the boat again…)
A lot of the wires were corroded and the fixtures had been “upgraded” to LED, but I feel like it was done right when LED conversions were the fun new thing and therefore old tech at this point. They didn’t work very well, some flickered, etc… So I bought some cheap new fixtures from eTrailer of all places (they also have RV parts…). Aside from the annoyance of having to drill new mounting holes, I think they’ll work nicely!
There are only 3 lights in the bathroom so I had those finished before lunch. After lunch I moved aft to the master bedroom. There’s only one of the small square lights in there, so I thought it would be easy. As usual, the boat fought me a little bit and I found a few more things that I’m hoping aren’t going to turn into real issues. At this point I gave up and went to have a sandwich. When we got back from sandwiches, I didn’t want to deal with it anymore, so I installed one of our new lights in the living room instead! It looks WAY better than the ugly square fake wood monstrosities that our otherwise very modern 2001 boat came with.
We worked until about 3 today, so a much longer day than usual. We were making good progress, but once the temperature hit 85 in the boat with no airflow, we had to call it a day. Since it’s the 4th of July, we got some delicious Chinese food to celebrate!