We have been pretty busy as of late which has kept me away from updating the blog, so my apologies. The last two weekends have been spent continuing to remove the interior panels, bringing them home, and now the electrical stripping has begun. I figure we have one more trip to bring home the rest of the pieces.
So far we have managed to remove all of the 12 volt wiring, as well as the 110 volt wiring on the starboard side, from the nav station area forward. The port side is back to the main cabin bulkhead between the foreward head and the main cabin. It is amazing how long it takes to actually get this stuff out. The old electrical boxes are badly corroded and the majority of the screws are pretty rusty. The AC wiring is some of the thickest, most hard to cut stuff I have seen in a long time, but seeing as how it is 38 years old, it has to go. Which means that even with all of the interior panels out, we still need to twist and contort to odd angles and positions in order to remove it. It is fastened very well! We have also had to go a little bit deeper into the removal of panels than I was originally intending, but hey, in for a penny, in for a pound!
Over the last couple of months the battery bank has slowly gone down more and more so on Sunday I decided to try to charge it a bit using a standard automotive charger seeing as how the electrical is 1/4 gone and I have loose wires hanging everywhere, I am unable to plug in the shore power of course. The little charger managed to put a bit of life back into the batteries, we will see just how much this weekend. However it gave me enough that I was able to pump the bilge out, and just for the hell of it, turn the ignition key.
The good news is that the engine turned over – barely. So at least we know that it is not seized and that the starting system is correct. if we decide to try to keep it, we have are a little farther ahead, but it will obviously require a lot of TLC before we try to start it for real.
Our basement is slowly becoming inhabitable. It is filled with more boat parts than I care to mention and at some point we are going to need to take a boat day, and use it to organize the basement so that we can start making some progress on rejuvenating all of the bits and pieces.
I am eagerly awaiting for the day when we have enough of the interior removed and stripped away, that it makes sense to pressure wash inside to remove the years of grime and filth. Almost there I think, not counting the engine room yet.