Saturday, December 14, 2013

The work has begun.

 In the few weeks that I have owned the boat, I have spent a lot of time cleaning it. The owner before me was a sailor, and not living aboard. So he had many extra sails, rope, life vest etc... So first I had to empty it of most of its contents and began scrubbing.
The kitchen came complete with everything to cook, but I have not had the time to begin going through this quite yet. The stove looks new, and he said the fridge works great, but I have not confirmed that as of yet. I have not even looked into the water, its tanks, toilet, or sinks.
 I did however begin a cleaning regiment. I started in the bedroom area, and emptied it. First I went through the compartments, finding more rope, a bozeman chair, a nice mini vacuum, and a crispy $100 bill.
 I then scrubbed the walls with bleach, oiled all the wood, vacuumed the mattresses, put new sheets, added pillows and put about 10" of comforters. The bedroom is super comfortable. There is 110 power, and a old 1970's style light fixture. That will have to be changed. It has a large hatch to air out and stare at the stars at night.
Looking out from the bedroom, you have a head to the right and cabinet dressers to the left. There are 2 beds to the left, and two beds to the right. Pass the kitchen, and captains chair, there are two more beds for the crew. One on each side of the engine compartment.
I have been cleaning a bit more on the ceilings, walls and wood. But things came to a hault as I had a electrical problem.
One morning I borrowed a battery to jump my truck, and upon returning it to the boat, the 110 did not work. I ended up rewiring everything from the plug in to the switches, finding that the only thing that is wrong is somewhere between the battery charger, batteries and switch. That will be my next project.
Two good things happened due to the rewire. One is, I learned a lot about the function of the vessel, due to crawling around and locating and replacing wire. The other is, I found lots of things that I did not know about.
I am still on cleaning and organizing mode, but here is a list of items I need to do before I move it to a dry dock for bottom paint and surveying. I am sure there will be some added things to fix, and or needed maintenance.
Go through plumbing, learn bilge pumps, change oil in engine and do all maintenance, Go through engine wiring and fix charger, scrub top deck and grease all winches.
The plan will be to have my friend who is a experienced sailor, to help me sail it to the haul out across the Bay. I hope to do this before Feb 1st.