I must be the only fucker on the planet whose boat has become a mushroom farm.
Now I have seen it all. Through the course of the weekend I discovered a crop of mushrooms growing inside the boat. This is probably not a good thing. We’ll leave it at that for now.
The weekend. I have spent the last 2 days down at the boat and it doesn’t feel like I’ve made any type of progress. Well it didn’t at the time, but looking back I’ve done a fair amount. It’s consisted mainly of filling holes, then sanding them, then filling them again if needed. Rinse. Repeat. All fucking weekend long.
- Just when I think I’ve found all the damage on the boat, I turn around and find more. It’s never-bloody-ending. The aim continues to be to try and get the boat as water tight as possible, specifically the cabin. As soon as that happens we’re good to go. It may even destroy that fucking mushroom crop. I found 4 new bolt/screw holes on the bow. It looks like something has been uninstalled, the holes filled with rubber and left. Those are now filled and sanded. I hadn’t been at the boat an hour before Beasty Botch Job reared it’s ugly fucking head. In the process of trying to clean the rubber sealant out of the holes, I poked the screw driver through and it felt like it was hitting something. I took the screwdriver out, went inside the cabin, saw 4 bolts in cabin roof and proceeded to loosn them, disposing of the nuts. It wasn’t computing. There were no bolts topside, so went back out stuck the screwdirver back in the hole and returned to the cabin. Turns out I was loosening the bow line cleat. Fucking genius.
- There’s a lot of damage on the portside bow which I hadn’t really noticed before as I’ve not scrutinesed that part of the boat as much as I should have. Damage is filled but not sanded, and will probably need 2 or maybe even 3 runs before it’s done.
- I uninstalled the venitlation whatyamacallit. The UFO looking motherfucker on the cabin roof. I suspect it’s been leaking water into the cabin. Upon my arrival on Sunday I noticed a new puddle of water in the cabin just under the ventialtion. So I’ve removed it and covered it in tarpaulin. I forgot to dry the water, so now won’t be able to check whether that was the source or even if my solution has worked.
- All the bolt/screw holes in the cockpit are now filled and sanded. Finally!
- There is one area of concern, massive concern. And I’m hoping there’s an easy/cheap solution to it but I doubt it. When walking on the bow, the port side part of the bow is very spongy/flexible wheras the starboar side is very firm. I suspect that the fibreglass has weakened due to water ingress. I don’t want to think about it too much right now or I will get distracted, or worse, I may try fixing it. My initial instinct is to cut it out and replace it, which will end in a wolrd of shit. Perhaps with all the holes sealed it may dry out. I doubt that’ll allow it to firm up again though. We’ll see. For a boat that’s never actually been on water until now, it sure does have a lot of water damage.
Two videos taken whilst I was having some down time over the weekend.