Gutting a 45' sailboat

[Nibiruwayne]

Having owned a steel pilothouse cutter for 12 years, I'd put her on the hard. Lease a spot for a year. I would secure a close by storage shed in the yard so I could store parts, joinery and tools. This means haul out which you'd have to do anyway at some point. Any sub-contractors would likely prefer the yard for access and not need a dinghy or tender to get to her. Cheaper on the hard.
Before you do anything I'd get a surveyor and invest in a hull sounding to make sure there's no lack of structural integrity in the steel from prior rust, perhaps filled with fairing compound. Make sure the bones are good on the hull. Sandblasting might be necessary. At times I used a rust remover hammer nail gun to get after serious rust spots. Must faster and efficient than sanding and grinding and doesn't remove good metal. This is good to use against the ribs and stringers inside where its hard to access. You must do this, paint with ospho and then use a quality primer and paint to prevent future problems. I'd not worry so much about areas that don't show rust as they probability don't harbor bilge water so much.
There's much to learn about maintenance on these boats. If you're in a cold clime, your paint maintenance will be less than if you are in the tropics. Our boat was a sweet sailing yacht, safe and comfortable. The only downsides to her were the constant paint maintenance and rust control. Added to that, one must be cautious about electrical shorts against the hull, so we had a marine plywood battery bank box we built to prevent any water into the electrics. Isolation transformer is a good idea for safety, as well.
Suggestion on interior: if you like the cabinetry, don't trash it. If you don't want to tackle it, take it to a good joinery carpenter and repair and refinish to reinstall. Far cheaper than building new.
I could go on and on, but will stop before I seriously abuse the thread. Good luck.

[darwinsound]

Hi , we had one of those boats (briefly) and would advise you that they are not worth your time, efforts, and funds. If you want to live aboard just tidy up, clean, and cope until you find a worthwhile boat. We built one from a bare hull when we were young and inexperienced, and were fortunate when someone bought the boat for a fraction of what we had invested, just happy to stop paying moorage!

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by s/v Moondancer

It is very easy to buy a $30,000 boat spend $100,000 and end up with a $40,000 boat!

People who have not done it would consider this hyperbole.
I've done it three times and what you read above is nothing less than gospel.

[Fore and Aft]

Its gospel for sure Boatpoker. Nothing wrong with doing it, but try and get some use out of the yacht after you have blown your money on her. To many times I see the owner broke, disillusioned and just wanting to unload their nightmare. So the boat goes to a new grateful owner who gets the benefit of all your hard work for a fraction of the cost.
Cheers

[Icarus]

Even if you know how to to a completely rebuild and fit out a 45ft hull,you are looking at 2 years on the job every day, supposing you have the cash .
If you have to go to work to pay for your upkeep and materials for the boat it will be a 20 year plus project.
I am a shipwright and build about 15 complete yachts in my time so I know a little bit of how much time and money it takes to rebuild a boat.
By the sound of it the Bruce Roberts has not been looked after in the first place so you bought something you have to basically strip bare and start again.
Better save up for a while and buy a boat you can use.

No doubt there will be others telling you how romantic it is to consider a project like that and so on.
Anyway good luck

[David Vidler]

I have been restoring a Clipper 21 for 18 months and still have a few months to go, the end result will be beautiful . My biggest advice is to make a list that starts at the bottom and works its way to the top. Prioritise what is important to keep a realistic budget as you will blow it. Think seriously about where you want your wiring for all of you equipment sterios to go so you can run the wiring before you put in hood liners carpet atc, enjoy your journey dont give up but please look at the date you want to be on the water or you will struggle to meet that deadline, great sailing Dave

[Norman_E]

Best plan: Fumigate the boat, clear it of any debris, rubbish or personal effects of the previous owner. Then sell it and find a boat that you can go sailing in.

[BenBowSirocco]

Originally Posted by Norman_E

Best plan: Fumigate the boat, clear it of any debris, rubbish or personal effects of the previous owner. Then sell it and find a boat that you can go sailing in.

Here here!

[geozeck]

Boats are to sail on not work on. Please report back to this board in 5 years.

[lituya1617]

If you have to ask, find a boat that is ready to go when you buy it. A smaller boat may give you all you need at a much more reasonable price. To gut and rebuild a 45 footer is a project for an expert with a lot of money and free time. I built boats professionally and rebuilt a 45 footer myself once. It is a huge project and it costs big bucks.

[thomm225]

When I bought my $2,000 Bristol 27 to rebuild/refit in 2011, I found a site where another guy was refitting his as well.

I had mine in the water in a little over a month and have been working on it the entire time since then but also sailing it the entire time. ( had owned 12 other boats in my life before this one)

He is still refitting his after 11 years. He bought his Bristol 27 before I bought mine.

I did nothing structurally on my boat besides a small spot in the cabin sole. The pictures you posted show lots of water damage. Not good.

Repainting my boat is 2019. see pictures. Cabin sole repair just forward of the bilge hatch. Plus original picture when first opening up the boat after 5 years on the hard.

And my boat still need lots of stuff. New standing rigging, a new lower hatch board, additional reef points in the new sail I had made in 2011, etc, etc.

I have put maybe another $10,000 into my boat and to cruise it I'm thinking at minimum another $5,000 and that is with using my 5 hp outboard as the main engine

Plus my boat was loaded 5 anchors, two with new rode and chain, 2 GPS, depth, VHF, autopilot, almost new jib, etc, etc

Here's the link to the site where the guy is still working on his boat.

Bristol27.com » Projects

and this is what James Baldwin says about boat refits.

A final word of advice to the novice sailor - resist the temptation to undertake a major refit and extensive modifications on your new old boat right at the start. It's best to make only the obvious repairs needed and go out and sail locally and on some limited coastal passages to learn exactly what is and what is not needed for you. Otherwise you may end up spending years and many thousands of dollars more than expected modifying your boat and then find out on your first ocean crossing that the boat is not right for you or those great ideas you had during the refurbishment did not work out that well at sea.

This is his site.

https://atomvoyages.com/planning/goo...oats-list.html

[StoneCrab]

I think a lot of owners get caught up in the "romance" of the rebuild, trying to achieve some mystical measure of perfection.

Perfection is always the enemy of progress. Time spent on deciding what the real goals are is the most important step in the rebuild. If the boat is completely trash requiring a total replacement of the interior, electric, auxiliary engine... it is probably not worth starting. If it is basically a solid boat, but needs to be cleaned up, fumigated, and a few electronics changed out; do that, don't start with some over ambitious, unnecessary plan like tearing out the cabinetry, removing all the electric, etc.

What happens when you do the overly ambitious, unnecessary projects is you sink a ton of money into some aspect of the boat which really doesn't improve is value and you still have an un-sailable boat. You may be satisfying that image in your mind about what a rebuild means, but you don't necessarily end up with a better product in the end. Especially if you run out of gas, money and time with major deficiencies still unaddressed.

You can't measure yourself or your project against what you think other people do / have done etc. Every boat starts at a different starting point, with different assets and different problems.

As a point of reference here, the OP states that he will rip out everything electrical... I'd ask why. Normally you would have a few points of corrosion that could be addressed, but the remainder of the system is fine.

My suggestion would be to make that initial assessment to see if starting is really worth it. Then triage the systems that effect safety and proper operation. After that use the boat and decide whether it is really worth ripping working systems out and replacing with new.

There is a real cost of ownership, and a cost of time. If you dive into a project that is likely to take years. and buy today's latest technology, because that is what excites you, but it takes years for you to finish the boat, you will have a very expensive rebuild with the best of yesterday's technology. This will of course offend that part of your nature which drove you to overdo the rebuild in the first place. End result is that you will never be satisfied or happy.

It is always better to have a working boat than a yard queen that is never completed. Get it working, go sailing and work on it between sails. Forget the total rebuild. Go for great maintenance and minor upgrades. Enjoy the boat in the water, not the yard.

[CapnCrunch]

I gutted a 44' Lancer and possibly the smartest thing I did was to carefully remove the old wall sections so that the edges of the thwartship walls that meet the the hull could be used as patterns. When you think about redesigning, remember that there are damned few straight lines, plumb verticals or square corners. And, if you're going to finish your new walls with varnish or poly, I cannot recommend wipe-on poly strongly enough. Trying the brush on method drove me nuts with runs, sags and skips. All these problems are virtually eliminated with wipe-on and I don't have any brush lines either. The only down side is that the wiping method produces thinner coats so you will have to do more coats (it took me 5-8 per wall).

[aerocanard]

I have done this twice. On a 1980 50' prout catamaran and now on a 1990 Jeanneau / Lagoon 55. We did not live on ether boats and it was done behind my house at a dock or partly on the hard. The Prout was not as much work just needing engines, some electrical work, paint, some rigging, hardtop, enclosure for the cockpit, and lots of cosmetic work. Had that boat 5 years and had a lot of fun with it using it while we did the refit.

The Lagoon was a totally different project. 3 plus terms in charter 15+ years. Lots of Balsa rot, all systems needed replaced, most of the plywood floors, fuel tanks, engines and all the rest. We wanted a hull and rig and we just got part of that. Paid less than 100k for a almost salvage boat. Carefully brought it back from the BVI's to FL home and then put it on the hard and completely Gutted it, pulled genset, engines, rudders, windows, hatches, port lights, wiring, plumbing, walls, floors and so on. Spent 18 months full time fixing all the balsa rot and then decided to cut the hulls off and move the engines back 2 feet so they could live in their own engine room instead of being partly under a bead with a wall between the V-drive and engine. That added 6 months just to cutoff the hulls and do the extensions so the outer hulls could be faired and painted while on the hard.

We then splashed the boat using Sea Tow to tow us back to our dock with no rudders, engines, most of the systems but the rig was put back on with new paint. Just a floating barge. Then I went to work for Mack Sails full time working on the boat every day after work 2-3 hours M-F and 20 hours on the weekend. I have done this from Aug. 2011 until now. I was told 5 years into the project that I should atleast get most of the systems done and atleast start using the boat. At the 6 year mark we did that and did some shake down on the boat and then did our first trip for 3 weeks to the Bahamas. We have done that every year till now because of Covid closures.

My best advise to you is not to do this unless you have the funds to do this over the time you will think it will take. Do you try to do this at anchor. That is not a good plan. Do not live on the boat if you plan on gutting it. You need systems to work like bilge pumps and so on. Without a good plan and the ability to finish this is bound to go wrong and you will end up with a piece of sea trash worth nothing for the coast guard to remove out of the waterway. Put the boat on the hard and tent camp somewhere close and see it that works for you.

Lastly. If the boat was free and does have some hull value? You can go overboard on spending too much on the refit and never get it back. Our boat is valued at over 500k without doing all the custom work I did. I am no where close to that amount in the refit not counting my many thousands of hours of work. So when the day we plan on selling her because we are done on cruising her full time. We will come out fine on the selling price.

Hope that helps

Check out my facebook account for all the pictures of the refit

Jeff Russell
S/V Vitesse Jeanneau 55S
Mack Sails Rigging Manager.

[jeepers]

Warning: 11 Highly Addictive Boatie Project Boat Sailing Channels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np5r4g_w1RE&t=8s

Ahhh. But for the enthusiasm & energy of youth. Becomes experience. The educator that utilizes our 6 Common Senses.