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Log for the Week Ending June 1, 2003

Sunday of Memorial Day weekend turned out to be not nearly as bad as had been predicted.  It started out gray and drizzly, but the rain ended by mid-morning, and it remained mostly cloudy for most of the day.  In the afternoon, the sun even broke out here and there, and after determining that the inside of the boat was dry enough to use power tools, I set to work with my Sawz-all and about 10 new blades.  

Read more about the latest round of interior demolition here.

The rest of the weekend was pretty lousy, weatherwise, although the rain is good to "pre-soak" all the remaining components in the boat!   All this interior demolition is gearing me up for the upcoming task of deck removal--something I am anticipating with much excitement.

I finally worked to straighten the boat out a bit on her stands.  It's been driving me nuts.  Because the boat arrived after dark in December, and was placed on a compound incline (slanting in two directions), she ended up badly tilting to starboard, and bow-down.  The stands were a bit precarious, but I was scared to do much of anything without a spare stand.  Once Glissando was launched, I had extra stands, so finally I got around to straightening the boat a bit.  There wasn't much I could do about the bow-down attitude--that's a function of the blocking as much as anything--but I did straighten her out to close to level athwartships.  I also repositioned and straightened the stands, so I feel much more comfortable about the boat's support at this time.  I like my boat hauler, but I don't love how he sets the stands up--kind of haphazard.  On Glissando, I always reset the stands once the boat's home and the truck has departed.   However, with Sea Witch, as I mentioned, the boat was tilting so badly that I was reluctant to try--plus, the boat was snowed in from the day after she arrived until March.  

Now, though, I decided to go for it.  I had a quiet afternoon on hand with not much to do, so why not?  With one extra stand, it was easy to move the stands as necessary to position the bases better, and I slowly loosened the stands on the port side, while tightening the starboard stands.  The boat moved so far to port as a result of being stood up straighter that my electric cord, running through the air between the garage and the boat and loosely hooked inside the boat to hold it (you can see it in the interior photo above), became tight, whereas before it contained a catenary.  Mostly, I straightened the boat because I was sick of looking at the goofy tilt.  It really makes no difference at this stage of the project, since only removal and destruction is currently ongoing.

I went to the town office to obtain my building permit for the barn, but the inspector/building permit guy was out on inspections, so I left empty-handed.  I'll head back early next week and get the thing.  Time to light a fire under me and really get this process underway.  Time's a wastin'!

I got the building permit for the barn on Tuesday morning--no problems.  Unfortunately, though, my excavation contractor can't get to the job for about 8 weeks, so it looks like things are on the slow-down plan.  I called another local company, but as of this writing have heard nothing back.

Late Tuesday afternoon, I did some more work on the interior demolition, ripping away most of the vee berth plywood and cabinetry.  (Boy, that's using the term loosely!)

Read more about this portion of the interior demolition here.

By the time Tuesday had ended, I could tell that it was time to move onto the next--and certainly most drastic--step in the process of converting this boat into the Daysailor.  Yup--I'm talking about removing the deck.  My friend Nathan had expressed interest in being around and helping with the deck removal, so we bandied about a few potential dates that might work for both of us.  As it turned out, Nathan was unexpectedly free on Wednesday afternoon, as was I, so we decided to plunge into the job.

Read all about the deck removal here.

Sunday afternoon, I  finished cutting away the remains of the toerail and other bits of remaining deck left over from our major deconstructive surgery the Wednesday prior.

Click here to read more about the toerail and remaining deck removal.

Steve Morse showed up Wednesday afternoon to move the boat back to my designated toxic boat work site.  I know it seems silly to move the boat now, only to move it again later once the barn is built, but since the barn is at least two months away from being built, the boat's old location front and center in the dooryard was starting to hamper my ability to do some of the dirty work (paint removal, grinding, etc.).  I only want one dead spot in my yard, after all.  So we moved the boat back, and things look much happier in the yard now.

 Click here to see a few photos of the boat in her new temporary location.

During deck removal, I discovered that the fuel tank was full of old gasoline.  Into a pair of gas cans, I siphoned  10 gallons of nasty, bright yellow-colored gasoline for later disposal.  With the fuel removed, I could pull the tank, along with the twisted remains of the copper fuel lines and small Racor filter, out of the boat for temporary storage with the other demolition debris.

As I whittle away slowly at interior and parts removal, I continue to discover interesting things about the boat--and some general Triton construction details that may be of interest.

Click here for more.

With the boat now in a good location where I can work on such nasty chores as grinding the hull (inside and out), I made moves in the direction of accomplishing just that.  I'm trying to get the rest of the garbage stripped out of the interior, so I spent some time with a Sawz-All--equipped with my new favorite, if expensive, carbide-tipped blade (awesome!)--cutting out more of the remaining bits and pieces.  I got rid of the aftermost bulkhead--the one that had been beneath the forward end of the cockpit, and finally tore out the head platform.  The stubborn head seacock pad remains for the time being, with no easy way to remove it in sight.  It looks like I'll just end up grinding it out when I get to work with my big angle grinder inside.

I got fed up with the nastiness in the bilge.  The old bilge had been filled with a sort of oily, dirty sludge, and over the past few weeks I had made some inroads towards getting it clean.  Still, it managed to remain disgusting, and the thick ooze would collect all manner of paint chips, sawdust, and general nastiness.  Without floorboards, moving about inside the boat is often made easier by walking through the bilge, and I was sick of the sludge.  I decided to give it a soak with some detergent-filled water to loosen the sludge and clean things up a bit, so I plugged the small existing drain hole with a bolt sealed in plumber's putty, filled the bilge with water and Dawn dishwashing liquid (the only suitable soap I had on hand--I didn't want to go to the store), and let it soak overnight.  I agitated the water to make suds, and scrubbed the area with a brush to loosen the grime.  With the bilge full up and sudsy, it looked like a sort of freakish sno-cone.  The new hit flavor, perhaps?  Bilge sludge.  Coming to a 7-11 near you.

Anyway, the soaking had a modicum of success.  The bilge is much, much cleaner than before, and I managed to get out all the remaining sludge and paint bits with a shop-vac.

Cleaning the bilge out is really a mere preparation for one of the next jobs I look forward to tackling:  beginning to grind the inside of the hull to remove any paint, remaining tabbing, and remaining bits of structural members.  With the amount of dust that job will create, I didn't want it to stick to the junk in the bilge--plus, I don't want to grind dirt and oil into the fiberglass with a grinder.  Better to do at least a high-level cleaning first.  I had hoped to do a trial run with the grinder one afternoon, but rain got in the way--I need that barn so I can keep working!

I finally managed to remove the stem casting, and to cut away the last tiny bit of the old toerail and deck.  I also cut out the old engine beds.

Read more about parts removal here.

Ready for something new to do, I decided to set up some staging around one side of the hull and work on paint removal--both above and below the waterline.

Read more about sanding the hull here.

I'm afraid there is no progress to report this week.

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