When I was a kid, Gyo Fujikawa's book Oh! What a Busy Day was my jam. I can remember studying each illustration over and over to spot all of the little surprises - a tiny snail tucked in a cabbage leaf curl, a gray squirrel hidden under the bench. I especially loved this page. The shabby tree shanty stuck [...]
Under the engine is an isolated part of the bilge. There's a pipe that runs from the forward cabin to the aft cabin where the primary bilge pump is. I didn't understand why this was important until I thought about it a while. The engine can leak oil, diesel, and any number of other corrosive [...]
There was a bench on either side of the center pilot house that I suspected might have some termites. The center pilot house sits above the engine midships. The seating was in pretty bad shape so I thought I'd check it out and see how much needs to be removed. One of the seats had [...]
The floor stingers need to be painted on all six edges so it was easier to do that before installing them. The ends actually weren't painted because they will be epoxied in (which is a universal primer) and then painted. This photo also shows the initial coats of enamel in the bilge below the galley. [...]
With everything in the main cabin gutted and cleaned, it was time to paint the bilge and basically everything under what will be the sole (floor) First the forward Head (bathroom) and Chain Locker. The areas that aren't painted are where the floor of the chain locker in the very front, and the storage just [...]
After a bit more work, the flooring in the Galley has been removed exposing the fuel and water tanks. It isn't obvious from this view but where the white squares are near the center of the image is the bilge whereas either side of that are the Water and Fuel tanks. There are two potable [...]
The other side of the galley is the table and sitting area. This is also where the main AC/DC distribution panel resides. I just want to get it stripped out without damaging the trim. Like the other side of the galley, this was fairly uninteresting. The only possible exception being the wiring under the after [...]
The only thing that really remains in the main cabin is the galley. Everything else in there isn't really connected to the flooring so the disposition of that can be figured out later. A few lockers, the head sink, etc aren't really a concern at this point as they're in pretty good shape and don't [...]
The original plan was to pull out the floor in the salon and replace the strings that we suspected were bad. And boy, were they. The aft-most stringer was just gone so the one next to it was taking a beating and eventually broke. But in the course of that process a plague of termites [...]
The Salon was removed first to figure out why there was a large, disgusting hole in the floor opening into the bilge. That revealed the biggest termite infestation I've ever seen (and I've lived in New Orleans the last 15 years - native land of the termite). Then I cleared the storage area and chain [...]
