Re: hullo to all, and hot dawg i got me one!
OK, back to work on the boat. been almost too ashamed to show my virtual face here given my pathetic progress after all you northern guys are doing on your boats, plus i haven;'t yet figured out how to do the photobucket thing and Fear. the. Mob.
anyway, we been having project creep here....had to pull the long teak side rail to get the old throttle controls off. once that's off, might as well do good job sanding thoroughly and refinishing. as long as i 'm doing that one, need to do other so it will look right. once those are out, i realize it's not too hard to pull the lower cockpit side trim boards...wood is not rotted, but ply is delaminating due to UV damage and it looks like dung and Murphy is waiting to drive the splinters into someone's leg, most likely mine. once those are out, i realize it's not too hard to yank rear half of cockpit floor and not have to do some sort of kluge on the area where last 8" is rotted under where one battery was. so out that came. this boat is a wonder compared to the waterlogged ones most of you guys deal with....essentially No water rot but lots of UV damage due to living at 5000' for last 20+ yrs....foam under the floor was bone dry and in perfect shape....i'll probably even reuse it but will stuff as much addtl flotation under there as will fit. transom is rock solid and needs only some fresh oil base paint on inside.
the wiring harness party was less of a bear than i'd expected.....since Starcraft sold the hull as an OB and a bare hull as well as the Murkcruiser version, i should have realized that the "hull" portion of wiring harness (nav & anchor lights, bilge pumps, blower, etc) would be wholly separate from the "motor" harness so it was not that hard to yank latter. ditto separating the "motor" portion of harness from donor boat, altho i did feel like Tarzan Fighting the Anaconda with his Steel Tooth (the dikes...).
doghouse is currently looking like a cheezy 70s resin-casting table due to all the layers of epoxy....i've actually been pouring it on rather than brushing due to how bad the wood had gotten....plan is to make last coat be satin-finish spar varnish to degloss it a bit.
with help of SWMBO, we got the donor boat taken to the landfill....she's MUCH more enthused about the SC now that it doesn't look like a boat junkyard in the lower driveway. FWIW, the idea of sliding donor off the trlr by hitting brakes hard while backing up was a complete non-starter....we couldn't even budge it. $5 in the palm of the landfill employee driving the giant scoop loader worked MUCH better....wish i had some pix of the poor gutted thing hanging from my tow strap on its way to an eternal rest.
OK, all for now. i'l get pix up very soon, i PROMISE.
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