Saturday 5th Jan A moment of joy for the new to me engine ran for the first time in the boat. But I am running way ahead of the tale, so lets get back to where we left off.
I had had to potter around for the last two seasons. The old Perkins was really reliable but sooooooooo slow. That said it was only using about a gallon (oops…sorry… 5 ltres an hour) This might be very useful next year when the derogation ends, but what the heck.
The boat is kept in Port St Mary and as there was no room for me to have her lifted out onto the quay there, we took her to Castletown as there was a space in the Yacht Park. That was interesting as there is a rather low solid road bridge that is only passable for larger boats just as the tide is rising so you can float through but not too late as the wheelhouse will catch under the bridge. Actually that is a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea. Then it’s into a very narrow dock, again only accessible when the tide is full in.
The boat was lifted out; I wanted to put thicker blocks under the keel but they said NO……as the oak keel band is damaged, more of that later, and needs repairing.
The boat was then stripped out for the winter, all the bits stowed away at home. Then the work began. All the engine connections were removed and I had a length of chain and a couple of stainless shackles ready on the lifting brackets. Came the day. I had a friend of a friend come with his Hyab (Costing me two bottles of Lambs Nay Rum) and with a minimum of fuss out she came. Dropping the engine onto a palette I hastily screwed the two together, and wound some rope around both as a safety measure. Then he kindly delivered it to my house where it was neatly placed in my garden.
Here's pix of the old engine in situ
Next thing was to remove the years of crap from the engine bay, and wash it out with some good detergent. All done and dusted. Takes a lot less time to write about it than do it.
As the instrument panel had to be moved we thought it would be a good time to make a silk purse out of a sows’ ear. By that I mean that the boat was just a basic work boat without any real refinements, besides which I am toy freak. This meant re-jigging the whole of the interior of the wheelhouse.
Here's the wheel position stripped out and a start being made to put it right.
The previous winter we had spent many months just dragging her back from the point where it is easier to say ‘ Forget it ‘ to making something very nice and respectable. I suppose it was a case of thinking how nice all the real leisure boats look inside. Those which I was totally unable to afford, and ending up with a boat I could say was at least three quarters of the way to excellent.
We had started from the bilges and worked our way up. Work included ripping out a lot of rotten timber such as the cooker work top which had soaked up a lot of water and was starting to crumble away. So now was a golden opportunity to get it right.
She is built with the wheelhouse more forward than most, which gives an excellent view over the bow, but leaves no room for a decent dash as the windscreen is but 6 inches from the wheel bulkhead, and rather than hang all the toys all over the place blocking the view, I decided to make the dash run down the side rather than across the boat.
Next will show the new to me engine in position.
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