So I headed off for Aruba and the rest of the family stayed behind in Minnesota. Ali sent me a couple pictures of them off on a hike, and then I never heard from them again. Or, well, Ali never sent me any pictures again.
Hauling a boat out is never fun. They just aren’t meant to be up on land. So it’s always a relief when it’s parked and blocked. A couple of days after Bumfuzzle came out of the water, a huge 67′ catamaran was being lifted, and started to break up with loud cracks. The yard guys quickly lowered it back in the water, took a look around inside the boat, and told the owner they were not doing it again. He stayed floating there overnight and is now anchored around the corner.
Woke up the next morning with a view of a dirty work yard and an airport. Living the dream.
I was more than happy to hire out the bottom job, boot stripe and hull polishing, and they got right to work as promised.
Indoors it was finally time for me to face off with my engine room eyesore. This huge old hot water heater has been a pile of wet rust for years. I’ve just been waiting on the day when the rust finally made it through and filthy water sprayed all over the room. We never did get there, but it was close. This thing is big, so I had to do some rearranging in order to find a hole big enough to lift it through.
Before going any further I made a trip to the hardware store for industrial size garbage bags to wrap this pile of rust up in. What a mess. Once I got it out of this space I realized it was too wide to fit in between the engines to go up through the top hatch. That meant it had to go through the hidden door into the front bedroom, up the stairs into the kitchen, then because it was an inch too wide for the door, it had to go down the stairs into the kids room, and finally up and out through their hatch. Out on deck I was able to unceremoniously throw it over the side.
New piece of wood, some paint, and it cleaned up nice. I wasn’t able to source a proper marine hot water heater, but at least this little thing only weighs a few pounds. It likely won’t last forever, but switching it out when the time comes will be a five minute job.
Another long neglected job was cleaning out the engine oil coolers and heat exchangers. The engine oil coolers were kind of in rough shape, and they weren’t very expensive so I decided to just replace them. Easy enough. The heat exchangers are a lot more expensive, so those I worked on cleaning out instead.
Sheesh. I probably should have done this sooner. Kind of amazing I’ve never had any overheating issues on this thing. Scooped out all that scaly junk and bought some wooden dowels to shove down each of those pipes. Should be running much closer to full capacity now.
Night falls on the boat yard. It’s so quiet around here after five o’clock.
15 Comments on “On the Hard Life”
standing tall. Good work, Pat.
CZ
Pat, just curious. What was the manufacturer of the 60 foot cat?
I googled the boat name and saw that it’s a 90s Lagoon.
Thanks Pat!
Hmm…Lagoon cracked bulkhead issue?
Wow you were lucky to get that water heater out in one piece! That boat next to you in the last picture is HUGE!!!!
A strong mixture of unsweetened HiC works very well as a descaled and bronze cleaner.
There is nothing, but nothing, more fun than messing around with boats. You have just proven it. 🙂 When she splashes down again, you can sit up on the third deck and look down on all of the other boats around you and feel uber-virtuous. Great job Pat.
What are you talking about? It’s so glamorous at the yard on the hard!!
Ha.
Pat, just curious as to the fin stabilizers and if you really notice any difference in performance with them?
They are the single greatest item ever installed on a trawler. 🙂 Seriously. The motion of the boat underway is extremely similar to a catamaran. Just small amounts of jerkiness, but level, with no rolling even with big beam seas. I can’t imagine a trawler without them, now.
So were they on the boat when you bought it, or did you have them installed?
thanks for the reply. love the website.
They were on the boat. Honestly, I didn’t know anything about stabilizers. It wasn’t something I was looking for. In fact, for how expensive an upgrade it is, I’m surprised that the boat price didn’t reflect that at all. It’s not something I could imagine spending the money on myself, but buying secondhand, now I don’t think I’d buy anything that didn’t have them.
Pat;
Unsweetened kool-aid works well to keep corrosion down on the heat exchangers. The other thing you might try is put a “T” in and when you are going to sit in dock / marina / anchor for awhile is run some fresh water thru the engine after securing the sea cock.
A yard in aruba is much better than VA in the winter
I just love the first photo. It’s like you combined a B&W photo with just a bit of a color one. Contrast is amazing.