...and then smitten again - bilge full of oil and water. Empty bilge bucket by bucket, buckets to be hauled up the hill to the haz-mat barrel. Scrub bilge again and again until all ugly oil smell finally goes away. (We are kind of fond of the mink, beaver, blue herons and other birds that make their home around here. No oil in the lake if we can help it.)
...and then smitten again - unused wiring strung all over the bilge, bare ends hanging, electron bridges to nowhere. Hundreds of feet of damaged, spliced, mystery wire tracked, unstrung and tossed into the trash. Remaining wires rerouted (some apparently run by a mad-man on cheap drugs) and secured where they will not be rubbing on sharp edges or lying in water.
...and then again - sump tank leaks, float switch missing, sump pump throws the breaker at you when you try and turn in on. The good news is that spending a day grudging around in the bilge gave me a chance to figure out how the water system is supposed to work. Now all I have to do is figure out why it isn't working.
...and again - lights throughout the boat do not work; some with broken bulbs still in the sockets, some just burned out, and some inop for reasons yet to be determined.
...and - the bimini (which looked pretty good in the pictures) is barely hanging onto its frame; stitching shot, seams failing, straps dirty and stiff. The frame itself is about 6 inches too high, looks weird, and will certainly feel the gentle ministrations of a cutting disk before too many weeks go by. The pictures also showed a solid brace from the aft arch to the stern pulpit, such brace nowhere to be found now.
Then there are the surprises, as in opening up a box and wondering, "What the hell does this thing fit, or do? Why is it on this boat? The stove is a mystery. I'm afraid to try the on board heater until I get a chance to look over the gas lines and valves...at least I think the heater works off the gas. Maybe it doesn't? The things I don't know about this boat far outnumber the things I do know.
And yet as I type this we have moved most of our stuff from Nomad to The Tartan. At least part of the shore power system works; music is playing, the heater spins up once in a while to keep off the chill, the 'fridge is running and the coke is cold. We are secured to the pier port side to and resting on two stern, two bow and a spring line. A constant parade of friends have been aboard and the universal consensus is that we did pretty well for ourselves. This will be our first night in our home to be.
Now if she will just tell us her name...
...and then smitten again - unused wiring strung all over the bilge, bare ends hanging, electron bridges to nowhere. Hundreds of feet of damaged, spliced, mystery wire tracked, unstrung and tossed into the trash. Remaining wires rerouted (some apparently run by a mad-man on cheap drugs) and secured where they will not be rubbing on sharp edges or lying in water.
...and then again - sump tank leaks, float switch missing, sump pump throws the breaker at you when you try and turn in on. The good news is that spending a day grudging around in the bilge gave me a chance to figure out how the water system is supposed to work. Now all I have to do is figure out why it isn't working.
...and again - lights throughout the boat do not work; some with broken bulbs still in the sockets, some just burned out, and some inop for reasons yet to be determined.
...and - the bimini (which looked pretty good in the pictures) is barely hanging onto its frame; stitching shot, seams failing, straps dirty and stiff. The frame itself is about 6 inches too high, looks weird, and will certainly feel the gentle ministrations of a cutting disk before too many weeks go by. The pictures also showed a solid brace from the aft arch to the stern pulpit, such brace nowhere to be found now.
Then there are the surprises, as in opening up a box and wondering, "What the hell does this thing fit, or do? Why is it on this boat? The stove is a mystery. I'm afraid to try the on board heater until I get a chance to look over the gas lines and valves...at least I think the heater works off the gas. Maybe it doesn't? The things I don't know about this boat far outnumber the things I do know.
And yet as I type this we have moved most of our stuff from Nomad to The Tartan. At least part of the shore power system works; music is playing, the heater spins up once in a while to keep off the chill, the 'fridge is running and the coke is cold. We are secured to the pier port side to and resting on two stern, two bow and a spring line. A constant parade of friends have been aboard and the universal consensus is that we did pretty well for ourselves. This will be our first night in our home to be.
Now if she will just tell us her name...
 |
| Yes, it's really that long. The stern is flush with the sterns of the other boats in the row. |
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| Stern-to Nomad |
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| Home Sweet Home |
9 comments:
congrats again guys!!
If you can give me some kind of hint about what is wrong with the water system I will try to help.:))
Bill Kelleher
Wow you guys really cleaned her up nice ... much nicer than when I saw it in Chicago. con grats
Thanks for all your help and encouragement Joel - we really appreciate it!
Kevin it was a long tough Saturday cleaning the oil out of the bilge. For a while it looked like a construction project inside the boat!
Bill - according to the horribly inadequate manual the sump box system is supposed to have some "air bell" with a filament line on it. I gather that this somehow tells the pump when the sump water is 4" deep and turns the pump on, but the air bell was broken in bits and the filament line was nowhere to be found. Are you familiar with this system?
I had one that had "air bell" which was connected by a hose to a diaphragm switch which would turn on the bilge pump when the water got high enough to build up pressure in the hose and trip the diaphragm switch.
If you can't find another one just replace it with a bilge pump float switch.
Bill K
Congratulations !! She's a looker!
She is isn't she? Hope we get to sail her to you guys next summer.
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