photoI haven’t had much opportunity to post in recent months–let alone do any work on the boat. Seatoad sits in the driveway under a mantle of snow and ice. this winter has been particularly harsh–over eight feet of snow in Boston and still a month to go until spring. A few weeks after Christmas I pulled off the cover long enough to lay a bunch of planks across the gunnels. Good thing or the snow would have collapsed the cover long ago.

This afternoon I finally got around to starting a preliminary spring to-do list for the boat. There’s a lot that needs doing.

  • Refinish the hull inside and out–The exterior hull has lost much of its shine while inside the deck has almost no shine at all. This boat needs a major effort to restore its finish. I bought a nice variable speed Dewalt buffer and the chemicals I need. Just need to pads (which are surprisingly expensive!).
  • Install a fuel gauge in the console–Been wanting to do that for years. The OEM Wahoo! method of checking your fuel level (lifting up the seat cover and unscrewing an access port hatch) is pretty stupid.
  • Refinish all the wood–As much time as Seatoad spends in the sun, seems I need to do this every other year.
  • Replace the screws for rail mounts–I’m pretty sure these are the originals. almost all of them are rusted badly and the rust is leachimg out intro the surrounding gel coat. Last year I tried loosening a few and none of them would budge. They appear to be thru-bolted and rusted solid. This will not be easy.

The rest of the items are related–one way or another–to the repower I did last spring. While the new engine itself is great (a Honda 4 stroke) the work done by the service center was awful–sloppy and rushed despite taking six week. They even broke a few things on the boat in the process.

what I need to fix:

  • Salt water in the hull–After getting the boat back from them I started finding salt water in the hull. Never had salt water in the hull before. I need to reseal all of the engine mount holes. It’s possible also that in working inside the hull they cracked or otherwise loosened the tube that connects the sump basin to the outer transom.
  • Fresh water in the hull–I also started getting quantities of fresh water in the hull again–a problem I had solved the year before. Pretty sure this is due (at least in part) to damage they did to the rigging tube when fishing the wires and cables through the deck).
  • Engine mounts–The washers they used with the engine bolst are barely bigger than the nuts. I don’t trust them to distribute stress adequately on the old transom.
  • Prop–They experimented with several props before settling on the one they gave me but I’m still not happy with the result. The new engine didn’t deliver the speed I expected and the prop made a gurgling noise like it was cavitating. Need to experiment with a sharper pitch.