If you have a boat and want to change something, the first thing is to deconstructed what there is. This is always hard and only with a lot of patience and the right tools you succeed not to demolish a part of the boat. I learned the hard way.
Deconstruction is the art of Boat rebuilding
I have to set myself in a special mood when I’m going to try to remove something that has been there for a long time. It doesn’t matter to much if it is outside or inside. Each has its own torture.
On the outside of the boat, most of the times the things are stuck hard by corrosion, salt-water and sunlight. I slowly learned that I have to have the right instruments to attack whatever. And creeping oils, all kind of, and sometimes a heat-gun. And all the time a lot of patience.
For some days I was looking for the right screwdriver to remove the Genoa-track. The Phillips-screws have a big head, and I remembered that I broke my ratchet-special-screwdriver the last time I put those screws in. Actually it broke twice. But the salesman in the USA said it was guaranteed for life. So, once I got a new one. The second time I never went back. As a result, I was out of the big screwdriver I needed. I think I found the only one available here in Cartagena after a walk under the hot sun for 4 hours. Now I’m the proud owner of the biggest Phillips screwdriver in Cartagena. It cost 3.50$ US.
I immediately tried it, and it fitted perfect. I got out 4 of the 24 screws out the first try. After that creeping-oil and let it sit for an hour. 4 screws more moved. I decided to get some better grip. Unfortunately it was a screwdriver with a round shaft. With a vise-grip on the round shaft never again I try it on the plastic any more I got 10 screws more moving. After a few hours and putting the vise-grip extra tight I got them finally all moving! I’m proud of my patience.
The other deconstruction was removing the wood, without damaging too much around it. I had the wisdom to glue the caprail to the polyester, when I mounted it. I didn’t want to have any leaks, so no screws in my polyester any more. I glued it with epoxy.
Kind of tough to break the epoxy, but with all the screwdrivers I could find being suitable and the chisels and a light hammer I started to have good success in lifting the wooden caprail from its base. I you have a start, and you play with the powers, you even can break the epoxy-polyester bond. Lucky me I didn’t use any glassmat otherwise it would not have been possible.
So here you see that for removing a simple caprail, it easily takes a day for one side. I didn’t even talk about the bolts that I had to remove on the inside. 15 minutes for a bolt, easily. In the most awkward positions you can imagine. That is the torture on the inside. The terrible positions you have to move yourself in to do a small thing.
Is building a boat not easier than rebuilding a boat?
When I started sailing I bought a used boat and started sailing. But maintenance was needed. And not only small things. Indeed, you cannot expect of a boat of 31 years and always at sea that there is no need to replace anything. Even the best plywood needs to be replaced after that time. For sure not marine grade plywood that gets salty wet and tropical hot. And there is a lot of plywood on this boat. Of course the same goes for the sails, the boomkin, the bowsprit, the teak-deck the lines, the electricity-wires, the standing rigging. The only exception are the things of bronze. I like that material very much, if you don’t have electrolysis. (Never combine Stainless with bronze. Only bronze with bronze. Then it will last forever, if the things combined are the same type of bronze…
So you start noticing that you need to do some maintenance. You always have to do some maintenance, but it was not clear to me that it meant that you have to replace everything on the boat, except the bronze portholes in my case.
Slowly but surely you have to replace the whole wooden interior! Besides the obvious things on the outside, like wooden bowsprit, boomkin, standing-rigging and-so-on.
Sometimes I start dreaming: would it not be quicker, easier, cheaper to build a boat, starting with a bare steel hull? I think it is, if you have the experience of maintaining an old boat. Right now I could do it, but not when I started sailing full-time 8 years ago. I would have used the wrong materials, the wrong instruments, and not with any vision on “will it be possible to maintain it”.
I shouldn’t forget to mention that I’m sailing 8 years. The cycle is more or less, 6 months sailing, 6 months enhancing the boat, but still I’m sailing. I never could have made a realistic planning about how much time it would cost me to build a boat. And the 8 to 10 years building stories are well known. I feel OK with what I have achieved in sailing and maintenance, but if one day somebody walks by and offers me a fair price for the boat, I think I go for plan B. And that stands for Building a new Boat from scratch.
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