Worst Thing a Previous Owner Did to Your Boat ?

[SabreKai]

As an update, I have to say the PO was an idiot. I've been gutting the boat over the winter to put in a new engine, shaftlog, stuffing box, shaft, prop, fuel tank etc.

Every single piece of furniture in that boat has been bolted to the frames then the bolts buried, new panels epoxied over the bolt heads and then screwed in place with 3-6 different types of screws and then veneered over with formica or ply.

My best tool for the demolition is a sawzall. He built the interior in between 1978 and 1982 or so. Since then, nothing has been removed, nothing has been maintained. As I pull stuff out, I am finding large amounts of rust from standing water. After I pulled the engine out and removed the bearers, I crawled in to remove the stuffing box. As I put my screwdriver onto the hose clamps, the entire inboard end of the shaft log broke off in my hand. The shaft itself is useless because the engine was too low for the shaft to clear the lower edge of the shaft log, and wore badly. The stuffing box had been torqued down so much that the shaft was abraded there too.

Anyway, I am almost to the point now where I can start moving forward again.The weather is getting better and I have to be ready to launch by the 29th of April.

Wish me luck.

[Rhapsody-NS27]

I've seen where people say the worst thing a previous owner ever did was own a boat and that got me thinking. I'm not so sure the worst thing for the PO was owning it, never know, it may not have come to me if he didn't have it in the first place.

I'm beginning to wonder how much the PO used the boat or maintained it. When I got the boat, the PO said it just needed some cleaning up, replacing one fitting on the standing rigging (not even the broken one was mentioned), and it was good to go.

So far, I've cleaned up a mess from bee infestation, replaced flax in stuffing box, replaced gasket material in leaking portholes, working on stopping leaks from handrails, found a thru-hull/seacock that used wood backing that was very loose, no telling how long the boat was sitting on the trailer, exterior wood was previously finished with CETOL and was old and flaking off... Now thinking of what other surprises I might be able to find. I was hoping to do a few things and be in the water in a few months. Now it looks like it'll take much longer. Now, I'm seeing some sort of oil leak where it's just pooling around one area that I need to figure out, even though the engine does run pretty good. Oh, and speaking of the engine, the fuel tank needs cleaned out/polished as there is some stuff on the bottom.

Even though I'm finding more work to do on the boat, I am still enjoying myself. Just wish there wasn't so much to do to get it in sailing condition.

[Dustymc]

Originally Posted by drh1965

I'll second this one!

Third.

My PO did nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Paid slip fees.

That's it.

For 5 years.

Five long years.

Nothing.

The worst thing you can do to a boat is nothing. Worse than 5200 holding the silicone on the lamp cord that plugs the home depot garden pond throughhulls.

Much worse.

But, then he sold her to me for a pretty good price, so I figure he's an alright guy anyway. I mean, he never lit her on fire, or sunk her, or got all crazy and decided she was worth 10x her real value, or anything like that. Hell, he never even wired the starter with lamp cord or sealed up the fridge with 5200 or nuthin. And he has pretty good taste in boats.

Prick could still come up and help me fix that nasty 5-year-old varnish though....

[GaryMayo]

I see this is an old thread. Any life left in it.? ??

I purchased a 32 foot boat without a walk on. I banged on the hull, and the trailer was worth two grand, so I gave two grand for the boat and hauled it home. I don't do ladders. Back at my business, I went up the scissor lift to discover the PO had glued and screwed laminate floating flooring on all the walls of the cabin. HORRORS. Unbelievable. There was also a 75 gallon water barrel sitting on what should be a pull out berth, plumbed in and all set to use. The ad stated a hot water heater, and when I asked him about it, he went into his garage, and a heard sawing, and water dribbling, and he came out and handed me a hot, hot water heater, said his brother was borrowing it.

Latter purchased a good old sailboat, same model, and I use the first one as a parts boat.

[Astral Blue]

Originally Posted by GaryMayo

I see this is an old thread. Any life left in it.? ??

I purchased a 32 foot boat without a walk on. I banged on the hull, and the trailer was worth two grand, so I gave two grand for the boat and hauled it home. I don't do ladders. Back at my business, I went up the scissor lift to discover the PO had glued and screwed laminate floating flooring on all the walls of the cabin. HORRORS. Unbelievable. There was also a 75 gallon water barrel sitting on what should be a pull out berth, plumbed in and all set to use. The ad stated a hot water heater, and when I asked him about it, he went into his garage, and a heard sawing, and water dribbling, and he came out and handed me a hot, hot water heater, said his brother was borrowing it.

Latter purchased a good old sailboat, same model, and I use the first one as a parts boat.

Gary, I like reading your posts -- as they always have a tendency to add an interesting element to my day. And when I saw this thread, I couldn't resist this...

Imagine selling your boat years into the future and the new owner joins CF, sees this thread, revives it after a decade long hibernation, and writes the following:

The worst thing the previous owner did to my boat was to replace the marine toilet with a household one, fill the drain hole with plaster of paris and render it nonfunctional as a toilet, and have a bunch of baggies available for placing in the bowl and depositing our poop into -- only to have us tie up the baggie full of poop and store it in what was once the water tank?

For those unfamiliar with what I'm referring to, read this thread.

FWIW, that thread was one of the best reads I've seen in any forum. I forwarded it to a zillion people!

[ArtM]

This one is a party favorite, you have to be patient and read to the end:

When I bought my boat it had a persistent diesel smell in it. I used to worry that the swaying motion I felt on land was due to the diesel fumes. Another liveaboard I worked with told me don't worry about it, but I worried about it anyway.

About a week later of living aboard, I noticed that in the morning there was a kind of oily "sheen" on my toilet, just floating on the water - strange... maybe that was the source of the smell? But why in my toilet?

At the end of the next week, I was waking up to a dark brown oily liquid in the bowl "OK", I thought, "the holding tank is full and it's backwashing." But still, it was confusing why it had that oily look to it.

So I pulled the boat around to the pump station and I went up on the deck and found the deck inlets with shiny silver caps marked "water" and "diesel", but nothing marked "pump out" or anything of the sort. More oddly, in the place where my holding tank should have been was what appeared to be a second "diesel" tank.

Now that got me really scratching my head and crawling up and down through the saloon till I was really very confident that in fact, the boat did NOT have two diesel tanks, and that I had actually found the correct pump out port.

It wasn't until I had the cap off, and inserting the nozzle into the hole when it hit me...

Someone had put a cap marked "diesel" on the pump out port, and someone else put diesel fuel into my holding tank - and apparently never managed to get it washed out. That oil was somehow floating backward through my toilet tubes and collecting on top of the water overnight!

[Lagoon4us]

Originally Posted by Astral Blue

Gary, I like reading your posts -- as they always have a tendency to add an interesting element to my day. And when I saw this thread, I couldn't resist this...

Imagine selling your boat years into the future and the new owner joins CF, sees this thread, revives it after a decade long hibernation, and writes the following:

The worst thing the previous owner did to my boat was to replace the marine toilet with a household one, fill the drain hole with plaster of paris and render it nonfunctional as a toilet, and have a bunch of baggies available for placing in the bowl and depositing our poop into -- only to have us tie up the baggie full of poop and store it in what was once the water tank?

For those unfamiliar with what I'm referring to, read this thread.

FWIW, that thread was one of the best reads I've seen in any forum. I forwarded it to a zillion people!

Totally agree there Gary get's my award for making me smile at his antics, a good bloke!

[GaryMayo]

Originally Posted by Astral Blue

Gary, I like reading your posts -- as they always have a tendency to add an interesting element to my day. And when I saw this thread, I couldn't resist this...

Imagine selling your boat years into the future and the new owner joins CF, sees this thread, revives it after a decade long hibernation, and writes the following:

The worst thing the previous owner did to my boat was to replace the marine toilet with a household one, fill the drain hole with plaster of paris and render it nonfunctional as a toilet, and have a bunch of baggies available for placing in the bowl and depositing our poop into -- only to have us tie up the baggie full of poop and store it in what was once the water tank?

For those unfamiliar with what I'm referring to, read this thread.

FWIW, that thread was one of the best reads I've seen in any forum. I forwarded it to a zillion people!

Lolololol

Remember, I did not remove anything except a 20 year old sears portapoty. It hit the dumpster without regrets. It was pretty past it's prime, but still your post brought tears to my eyes.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Our transom is large enough to accommodate our dinghy and the area below it is encapsulated, with a collision bulkhead. A pipe to the bottom of this cavity leads to the other side of the collision bulkhead so that any water can be pumped out of this area if ever necessary.

When we first moved aboard we were very puzzled by the faint sound of water sloshing behind our heads. Eventually we found that the PO had assumed the pipe went overboard and had connected the bilge pump from the engine bay to it. We eventually pumped out 300 litres from this area!!!!!!!!!

[kirsi]

How about Sell it to us?

[sloopdogg]

He let the raw water pump leak salt water all over the back of the engine making it a big blob of rust and forcing me to replace a running engine. By the time I would have gotten it apart and removed and replaced all the bolts and casings i was over half way to a new engine. If he couldn't repair the pump leak, imagine what else he neglected. If you go to the atomic 4 site and look at photos that show how bad it can get inside the atomic 4, mine was just THAT bad. So, I guess that is more a lack of doing something. On the other hand he installed $1000.00 charging system. The surveyor never picked up on the corrosion. I didn't see it until I got my head all the way back in the engine compartment while changing the prop shaft and stuffing box.

[Lagoon4us]

Whilst fitting a new battery monitor we disconnected the house batteries at their terminal to make safe. To our surprise the lights in the cabin were still on!

Checked engine start and they were isolated, then realised there's a charge circuit coming from the bow-thruster battery feeding back.

Fantastic if we had a fire on board and dived for the main switches to isolate only to find power was still up........

Sometimes!!!!!!!!!!!!