... you put on the new registration stickers. This is the first time we have climbed up in that area and it just reminded us how dirty the hull sides are. We're going to really have to apply ourselves to getting those black stains off and returning the hull to at least something close to clean and shiney.
We sat down one evening earlier in the week and made a realistic list of what we really have to do before the boat goes into the water. On Saturday, we tackled a number of the easy things, easy, that is, until you really have to do them.
We started with the new water fill deck fitting. We got the crappy old composite one out but had to hold onto the water hose. If that slipped down below the deck, we'd have to go hunting for it. You can't beat ViseGrips when you need an extra hand.
We bedded the new deck fill with BoatLife caulk but, of course, the new deck fill is slightly smaller in diameter than the old one so we'll have to come up with a little adapter before we can screw it down.
We know. The deck looks very dirty. We'll get that all cleaned up soon.
Next was the navigation lights. Ours were the dimmest we've ever seen so we bought a new pair at the Defender spring sale. The lights that were on the boat were definitely OEM junk and the ones we bought during the Defender sale were new Chinese exact copies of the originals. The mounting location meant that we needed lights with a 45-degree angle of exposure and these were the only ones that did that. At least the new lights had gaskets where the old ones didn't or if they ever did, they had long dissolved.
What we really wanted was LED navigation lights but we couldn't come up with any exact replacements. We thought we'd buy these from Defender and then change the bulbs to LEDs. Wrong. The LED bulbs for this use are $17.75 each from superbrightleds.com. Since we paid less than $20.00 for both of the new navigation lights, we'll stick with old fashioned bulbs for now.
Next was the aft bilge pump. We have two: one under the floor near the galley and one aft, in a well. The aft pump was on the boat when we bought it. Once again, we gave in to the Defender sale and bought a new Johnson 2,000 GPH pump to replace the aft pump. We mounted the new pump and wired it to the existing Rule float switch, which seems to work perfectly.
The Johnson pump is made in the USA and has an excellent warranty. There are still things we do properly here in America.
As I post a picture of the pump well in which that new Johnson pump is mounted, I can almost hear readers saying, "Ewwww.!
True, that spot is full of old oily water, caused by the PO over 30 years of spilling oil into the bilge while changing oil filters. We've installed remote oil filters that let us change the oil without spilling a drop.
We'll clean that pump well with some Simple Green when we get into the water.
Cleaning and waxing the hull
On Sunday, we began this project in earnest. We're using Shruhold Buff Magic, a paste-like compound to try to bring the hull back from years of neglect. That's to be followed with wax.
We got many recommendations for Buff Magic and even watched the videos to see how it worked. Needless to say, the boat in the video looked brand new after only 10 minutes of video. That wasn't our experience but we have a much larger boat and the gelcoat on the hull may be in much worse shape than the boat in the video.
We began on the starboard (sunny) side.with a couple of relatively small test applications. We tried applying it by hand and with a polisher. There didn't seem to be any difference. We tried removing the Buff Magic by hand with a soft towel and with the polisher. Again, not much difference.
The hull after Buff Magic was very smooth, almost like glass, but there were still patches of what must be old, oxidized gelcoat. Not bad, but not like a mirror.
We spent 5-1/2 hours on this today and got 3/4 of the starboard hull done. We used a few muscles that have been dormant this winter, so that's a good thing.
As we left the boat this afternoon, we thought that it was about time to clean up the cabin and put away our tools.
Did we really use all that stuff over the winter? I guess we did.
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