Worst Thing a Previous Owner Did to Your Boat ?

[Davey1000]

Originally Posted by xymotic

The PO of my boat stripped her down to do a refit, and then died before he had a chance to really get-r-done. I dunno how much of his repairs are jury rigged in the middle of the pacific vs, part of the refit.

He Spent a few grand making nice rails and davits professionally fitted, then cut them half-assed in the middle to make a dive platform?? With a heavy load, the davits sway side to side because of the missing chunk cut-out. Mounted the main captain's chair on a piece of 1" pine. (there's no support underneath except at ends) Looking at it makes me think "dunk tank" And you gotta appreciate the Autopilot rudder reference C clamped to the board and tied to the tiller with string.



Spent a TON of $$ on new portlights, but then installed them without actually fixing any rust behind them (steel boat)

Look under the right side, the pink is bondo:


And the little white pieces are chunks of Aluminium epoxied over a rusty hole.

Thankfully though he didn't always use Aluminium for his steel repairs, sometimes it was stainless or wood:


No worries though, cuz the bondo will cover that right up!!

Sometimes though, if the cancer area was real bad, he'd grind to fresh metal, then screw a stainless plate into an epoxy sandwich. and screw the whole thing into the steel.


I don't have a good pic of the power inlet, but it was 45' of wire that went into at least one splice, and then straight through the hull to the panel. No plug. On the back-side of the panel the ground terminated into a free-floating screw and nut, and was disconnected from the boat ground:


Then, as we move past the panel, every single circuit has the neutral and ground crimped into a single lug, and tied to a ground buss:


The Boat is 15 or so tons, and has hydraulic steering, (and a tiller as well) so naturally you'd fit a tiller pilot to it, right?


This was 'new' work he'd not yet finished. It goes witout saying that if a tiller pilot can't keep up, the simple solution is to add another to the other side, right?

Yes, that's two complete pilot systems, installed in the 'new' setup.


Again, didn't fix any rust behind the panel or paint anything back there. Oh, and the panels he picked for the refit are interesting too. All top of the line blue seas stuff, but using two different types of fuses.

I don't wish him dead or anything, He bought really nice 'stuff' to put her back together, and so I get the best of all possible worlds, a great deal, many of the parts needed, and I get to go through and do it my way from the beginning. but...


holy crap man

Hi from across the pond! The wiring is dreadful but as to the tiller pilot it looks more like the power jacks that are used to move satellite dishes or operate small cranes. Some of these jacks are rated for 250 kilos of thrust or more so that should be plenty enough to move the tiller. As to stainless, it is a very dangerous material to have on a steel boat. Take a Royal Navy ship that I heard about. At its first survey when it was three years old it was condemned for scrap as all the welds had been eaten away. The problem was the ships "anodes". The build instructions had stated "attach four 8' x 4' x 1" sheets of zinc to the bottom of the hull. Instead of zinc, stainless steel had been used! Did someone have a grudge, was somebody ignorant or did the shipyard employ communists? Oh well look on the bright side, they did get three years use out of the boat which did have a longer working life than the Titanic.

[MarkSF]

Well the previous owner of my boat looked after THE BOAT very well. He didn't go in for electronics, but that's no big deal. I get to put brand new stuff in, just as I want it.

But he and everyone back to new (boat is an 84), spent virtually nothing on safety equipment.

The boat came with :

First aid kit from 1986. Think those medicines might have expired....
Collection of about 50, of 4 different sizes, out-of date flare cartridges, some as old as 1985, but with no gun to fire most of them from.
An immersible strobe lamp with a pretty recent battery, but a blown bulb.
VHF radio was ancient and had a bad antenna cable so range was awful.
No smoke, LPG, or CO detectors.

And last, but not least, no less than 12 fire extinguishers, some of them dating back to 1984, not one of them serviced in the last 10 years. It took me a few weeks to find them all, just when I thought I'd found the last I'd find another in the corner of a cupboard.

What you need in a fire is ONE good fire extinguisher. Not 12 small ones that don't work.

What I have now is one new one in each cabin. One under the lazarette, one in the main salon, one in the V berth.

The main point of safety equipment is that it works when you need it, in an emergency!

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by xymotic

The Boat is 15 or so tons, and has hydraulic steering, (and a tiller as well) so naturally you'd fit a tiller pilot to it, right?


This was 'new' work he'd not yet finished. It goes witout saying that if a tiller pilot can't keep up, the simple solution is to add another to the other side, right?

Yes, that's two complete pilot systems, installed in the 'new' setup.


holy crap man

Even worse........That's not a tiller pilot!!! it's a raymarine BELOWDECK linear drive!!!!!!

[Matt Johnson]

Originally Posted by Sailmonkey

Even worse........That's not a tiller pilot!!! it's a raymarine BELOWDECK linear drive!!!!!!

Which the instructions say to not expose to water.

[xymotic]

Originally Posted by Sailmonkey

Even worse........That's not a tiller pilot!!! it's a raymarine BELOWDECK linear drive!!!!!!

Originally Posted by funjohnson

Which the instructions say to not expose to water.

Awseome

Thanks guys, I honestly haven't even looked at the thing past just shaking my head at it. I have a second drive unit in storage too.

[Capt Phil]

When we bought our beatup old Transpac 49 close to 20 years ago, she had just returned from sitting on the hook somewhere in Mexico and had been used as a live aboard by an individual who was hiding out, drinking and whatever for about a year. She was brought back to the US by a paid skipper who was hired by the bank to repossess her.
It was such a fantastic deal and the survey showed she was sound but dirty and neglacted, we thought we could bring her back for a reasonable amount of cash and a lot of elbow grease. We concentrated our evaluation inspection on through hulls, propulsion system, electrical and electronics and standing and running rigging, refrigeration and deck condition. After our ridiculously lowball offer was accepted and we took possesion of her, I went shopping for bits and pieces to start to spruce her up while my wife and her girl friend undertook the job of cleaning up several years of trash and removing it from the boat. I arrived back after a couple of hours of shopping and R&R to find my two helpers sitting in the center cockpit with an assortment of a couple of hundred of the rauchiest video tapes I've every seen! I'm not a prude but this stuff was really over the top and my wife and her mate were cracking up reading the jackets of all these very expressive descriptions of the contents. Along with bedding and some other questionable personal items we managed to fill two dumpsters at the head of the dock. Interestly enough, the next morning there wasn't a single video tape left in the dumpster!
It took several months of scrubbing every surface with bleach, repainting, reupholstering, new headliner, cushions and mattresses, sanding and varnishing from top to bottom, replacing, refreshing wiring and electronics but we ended up with a seaworthy, comfortable and clean vessel that we cruised and lived aboard for over 5 years. If you have the time and a few dollars, you can turn a diamond in the rough around and make her very liveable and presentable.
We sold her for what we had invested in her to a new owner who cared for her equally as well as we did. She is still sailing in Southern CA. Capt Phil

[Dockhead]

My previous owner? Nothing. Nada. Whatever he did, he did right. He was either a superb craftsman himself or hired first rate pros. And didn't go out much - 830 hours on the engine when I bought her. And - the PO is the main reason I bought the boat, and paid full asking, near the original new price. I bless my PO - whom I never met - almost every day, then the designer, then the builders, who left me with absolutely nothing stupid to deal with. Well, almost nothing.

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by kthoennes

Boy, that's not a project boat, that's a disaster. You have more time, hope, money, and optimism than I do, that's for sure.

Ditto from here man.

Whew!

[C4 King Cobra]

Boy after that I better count my blessings.

[Sam Plan B]

Previous owner lived 3 hours from boat. Boat spent 10 years on the hardstand with rain water collecting in the bilge. Somewhere along the way it became a swamp down there. After cleaning it out I found the keel bolts were mild steel and were mostly lumps of rust. The hardest physical thing I have ever done was to back them out. I used a truck ratchet with a 24" handle and pushed with both feet.

[MarkSF]

Originally Posted by Sam Plan B

Previous owner lived 3 hours from boat. Boat spent 10 years on the hardstand with rain water collecting in the bilge. Somewhere along the way it became a swamp down there. After cleaning it out I found the keel bolts were mild steel and were mostly lumps of rust. The hardest physical thing I have ever done was to back them out. I used a truck ratchet with a 24" handle and pushed with both feet.

I once had to use a 24" bar, with a 6 ft scaffolding pole over it, and me jumping on the end of the pole. I am 280 lbs, so it took 1680 lb/ft to break the nuts loose! That's what you get when you put an aluminum nut on a steel driveshaft.

This was on the nuts holding the driveshafts to the hub, on a fwd Citroen.

My dad had to stand on the foot brake pedal with the engine running, while I did the jumping on the bar, otherwise the car would roll along the drive, driven by my weight, WITH the parking brake on and in gear.

[deckofficer]

Originally Posted by C4 King Cobra

Boy after that I better count my blessings.

Feel the same way. The worst thing I had to deal with was the name he gave it, "Breaking Wind".

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by deckofficer

Feel the same way. The worst thing I had to deal with was the name he gave it, "Breaking Wind".

Can we assume you changed the boat name or did the potential for bad luck force you to keep it.

[deckofficer]

I kept it, VHF comm was self deprecating though.

Me "Long Beach harbormaster, this is s/v Breaking Wind, channel 16"

LBH "Coming in from Mexico?"

[xymotic]

Today's boat project was to figger out how to make the windlass work. Sure, you might think that would be a simple task, but let me remind you that this boat has a few Electrical demons lurking below...


But once I understood that ONE of the black wires was ground, then it suddenly became clear that the OTHER black wire was hot. (duh! Gosh why didn't I get that immediately!???)

And, the windlass, like pretty much everything else; is actually grounded to the hull.