My wife and I liked the room on board and the layout. It is fairly well built. The most important thing to me is that it has scratches and dents! The plan is to head south when we retire. I know we will bang it up at various marinas. To go it in a shiny gold plater just to have a rusty dock nail scrape along the side would bring me to tears. This boat is a great lake vessel, never seen salt. The guy who I bought it off did some horrible work. We are finding, as a rule that everything he did needs tearing out. He purchased a new MarineAire 18,000 BTU air conditioner, which is great....but... he bought a garden pump from Harbor freight and garden hose to plumb it up. What a mess. I ripped it all out. I ditched the crappy pump and ordered a magnetic 550 gallon per hour pump from MarineAire. I purchased a large Groco bronze strainer and the correct heavy duty, approved hose to do the plumbing. I had one tri- fitting that had to be 3/4 NPT, 5/8 barb, 3/4 barb. When I hobbled something together, it looked ridiculous. I decided to purchase a block of 316 stainless and carve out a one piece fitting on a 4 jaw chuck. It came out nice. As of today I am just waiting for the hose to show up. I still need to run new wiring to a separate 120 volt plug (something else he screwed up) I want to concentrate on the 'bones' as much as possible and hold off on things like up to date instruments. I would like to do that prior to retiring, thus giving me a warranty while underway. The only other strainer in the boat is a plastic bowl built by SC Marine. Never heard of them. This is the strainer for the Yanmar and we decided to bite the bullet and change it too. I purchased a 600 dollar monster. 1 1/2 inch fittings to match the intake hose. The supplier said it was overkill but I argued that the intake is 1 1/2 on the cheesy factory unit, I figure there is a reason for that, such as making sure any garbage that gets sucked in makes it to the basket.
Bronze strainer porn!!!
Holding the combo pump and strainer from harbor freight, note the grey garden hose.
ALSO, please note our lovely flooring, it is bamboo from home depot. YES, that is going too. All in good time. One good thing about the crappy work done by the idiot who owned it, it is easy to reverse and I got the boat for a grrrreat price!!
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The next big SNAFO involved a thru hull. The knot meter has a two inch transducer. I would guess that a lift strap caught it, the flange cracked and we had water in the bilge. We motored the boat back to the yard and pulled it.
That's not good!
The one on the left is missing that 'flangy thing" Scary stuff!
I would like to thank everyone who showed interest in my O'Day 30. She sold very quickly. It appears the boat will stay on Lake St.Clair. here the happy owners sail her away.
The big news is, I bought a new boat, a Catalina 42. It is a 1991 Mark 1. As with all my boats, it needs work. I will cover that work here. I spent the last week waxing and polishing. The prior owner was an idiot. Everything he did was done cheaply, outside of that it is a good solid boat. I plan to go right thru it and up date as required.
Away we go!
2 gallons of bottom paint. one week of cleaning compounding and waxing.
