Converting the nav station and moving the electrical panel...

Now that my boat is home I have accelerated the work on the electrical system and the nav station conversion. As I outlined in my previous post I wanted a nav station like the later H27's and I want to move the electrical panel up to a normal level, and not on the floor like it is now. Here is the hanging locker as it came from the factory...

The reason is, I want a place to sit other than the setee table, and that electrical panel is in the worst possible position. Not only can you step on the switches and break them (look, one is already broken) but if you take a wave over the stern, that's the first thing that's going to get wet. So, here's the destruction and rebuilding...




And today I bought a $39 copt of the Fein multitool at Harbor Freight, it's an amazing little tool, I was able to trim and cut out the new electrical panel in 1/4 the time it would have taken with a drill and a jigsaw. It's not finished yet, but you can get an idea what I'm doing. I still have a lot of trimming and finishing left to do...

It's Home!

It's still on the trailer because the yards travelift is broken, but it's home! Kind of a surprise too, I called the broker this morning just to see if they got the mast down yet, he tells me not only is the mast being taken down this morning, but a truck is on it's way back from Sodus Point empty, and will be picking the boat up this afternoon, saving me $300 in transport costs, so score and SCORE! Of course I had to work until 9 today, and had to really resist dropping everything, driving out to Rochester, and watching the process unfold. Something I hoped to do next week, but now it's here, and I didn't have to be stressed out watching it happen. So now an hour and 15 minute drive turns into an 8 minute drive...

Sorry about the crappy iPhone pics, was not prepared, don't usually bring the Rebel to work.

It's official! It's ours!

It's official, the boat is mine. I went down today to collect the sails, cushions, batteries,and begin the work. First of all, the electrical system is a joke, everything non-Hunter has to go. The previous owner may have been an excellent aircraft mechanic, and maintained the engine perfectly, but he knew nothing about boat electrical. he has 2 batteries in there, a Die Hard sealed car battery (11.5v) and a "USED BATTERY" (completely dead). Gonna be used as a core for trade in along with the other one. This is where the batteries and charger were before I ripped everything out. I will be moving the batteries underneath the seat just behind the switch panels, and rewiring pretty much everything.

I also gathered the sails and cushions, it has one good sail, the genoa, and 3 junk sails.

Gathering Parts

The last couple weeks I have been gathering parts, a set of ST50 wind, depth, and speed instruments and an 18 watt solar panel. I also painted a section of sailfish hull I kept just for this purpose, it's an experiment on stripper methods. I'm going to try Easy-Off on the deck paint which I believe is a single part paint. The Easy-Off should easily strip it while not harming the gelcoat. I'm not too worried about harming the gelcoat because I plan on painting with a 2-part paint and adding some sort of non-skid in sheet form, like Treadmaster or Nautolex Decko-Dot. Maybe even go ALL OUT and get some Flexiteek, although it's pretty expensive.

Tomorrow I'm going to actually PAY for the boat, and start some work! But not much work as it's supposed to be 20f max. I'm going to measure the companionway drop boards, cutlass bearing, remove the exhaust elbow, change the lock to MY lock, install the solar panel and check the batteries. I might move the batteries as well, I do not like where they are.

Inspecting and making an offer

dealersite_images_rcryachts_vp1324798_2_large
Originally uploaded by eMKayUSA

I saw this boat for sale early this summer and it piqued my interest, it's the year and model that I want, and the price was attractive. However after an initial inspection I crossed it off my list, the deck looked terrible, it was solid but had paint peeling everywhere, and a depression around the mast step, so I ignored it for awhile, then I saw the price was lowered by $1000, still I said nah, too much work. Then after I sold my O'day 192, and after a lot of research about repairing the mast step, I decided to go and look a second time. This time I inspected the interior which was in excellent shape, the sails which were in terrible shape (except the genoa), and the mechanicals which were good and bad. The boat needs a lot of cosmetic work, and I need to repair the mast step as water has penetrated the core there and the step is deformed.The boat is listed as being mechanically sound, which it really isn't. So I made a list of what it needs that were not mentioned in the ad, totaled them up (parts only, if I included someone elses labor the number would be in the negative, I don't think the owner would accept an offer where he had to pay me to take it) and made an offer. The owner countered with a reasonable offer that I accepted, now the real work begins!

There are many good things about the boat, the deck is solid other than at the mast step, the engine runs like a top, and it's dry, no deck leaks. One of the reasons I wanted this particular model over other manufacturers of the same era is, Hunter does not put a lot of hardware through coring material. The chainplates are all attached to the hull through solid deck, not attached to bulkheads passing through cored decks. This makes for windward performance that is less than ideal, but sure is stronger and needs less maintenance. The lifeline stanchions as well, do not go through any core. The areas where I need to worry about water intrusion are the mast step (again), the hardware (there is not a lot of it), and the hand rails along with that little teak strip along the cabintop. These areas are solid but from what I read are just screwed into the core material there, which I believe is plywood. I will confirm that when I remove them to repaint the deck.

The deck, you can't see how bad it is in this photo