Update...Someday

Someday, sometime soon, I am going to get back on this project. I will post information when I do. Sorry for the lack of progress.

 

 

Getting Back To Work

After several weeks of no activity, I hope to be able to get back to work on the boat this week. Since my last post, I have been to Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. I haven’t had much time to work on anything else. I expect to work on it some this week and I am going to take several days off in the next few weeks to work on it.

 

The next course of action involves destruction. I am pretty good at that. I plan to remove the motors and gut the interior. I hope to have this done before the middle of June so I can start building everything back by mid-summer.

 

I’ll post some pictures of the destruction later this week if all goes well.

 

 

 

No Progress... Again

Last week was pretty busy so I did not get anything done on the boat. I am going out of town this week so nothing will be done until I get back.

I am going to Weslaco, TX (between McAllen and Harlingen) to install some software, then over to Rockport, TX to update their software and install some additional software they just purchased, then up to Austin, TX to meet with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation about possibly purchasing software for their investigative team.

If I get back by the end of the week, I hope to get something done this weekend, otherwise, I may be in south Texas over the weekend and won’t be back to work on it until the middle of next week.

Weekend

My brother Mark and I connected a hot battery and tried to start the motors on Saturday. They didn’t start (which we did not expect them to) but they did turn over which we took as a good sign. We were also able to tell that the gauges seemed to work for both engines. That was good news also because the wiring for the motors seems ok.

We cut a hole in the floor to check if there was any water in the hull at the back of the boat and there did not appear to be. Most of the stringers we could see seemed to be in good shape except for the one in the middle. It will definitely need to be replaced but the others (two on each side) seemed to be in pretty good shape. There may be areas that need to be fixed but I don’t think they all will need to be replaced.

Mark is going to put a trailer next to the boat so we can start tearing stuff out and putting it on the trailer to haul off. Hopefully, we can start doing that later this week.

I’ll post some pictures of the destruction when we get started.

Latest

I have not done much to the boat in the last week or two. As I posted before, what I thought was going to be a structural problem and was causing a major leak turned out to be a very minor hole. It was covered with about 2 tubes of caulk from the previous owner, so it looked worse that it actually was.

It seems the water was actually getting in around the hatch in the front storage area. There are 2 ports that drain water from area around this hatch and both were clogged and did not drain at all. We got these cleaned out and I think we have the water problem resolved. I removed the depth finder transducer from the bottom which left a one inch hole that allows the water to drain, so either way there will not be any water collecting in the hull for a while.

The next steps should be the easiest. I plan to remove all the light fixtures, switches, outlets, cabinets, etc. Then we will be ripping out the wall coverings and floors so I can get to the stringers in the floor which I expect to have to replace. From there I can start building the interior back.

I found an operator’s manual which provides quite a bit of information on the original Nauta-Line boats. There is a link to it on the right if anyone is interested in looking at it.

Update

I have been out of town again and haven’t done any work on the boat since Saturday. The rest of the week will be pretty busy also so it will probably be this weekend before I can do anything else. When I get back home, I’ll post the remodeling plan for the work from this point on.

 

Transport Crew

Here is a picture of the transport crew. Mark McNeil and Bennie Chastain are on the ground and Howard Bagley and I are on the boat. Keith Bagley is talking the picture so he is not in it.

I really appreciate their help.

Loaded and Ready

Here is a photo of the boat behind Mark's truck. When we got to this point, I think we were wondering if we were getting into a little more than we bargained for. Mark and Bennie won't admit it, but I know they were thinking the same thing.

Hole Patched

I think we have the hole temporarily fixed until we are ready to do some more fiberglass work on the hull. I still think the rain water may be coming in from other places also. It seems like a lot of water for such a small hole.

More On The Leak

When we removed the putty and sealant that was put on by the previous owner, we found that the hole was only about the size of a quarter. Strange, because the “patch” covered about 3'. It should be easy to temporarily fix with a little caulk until it is time to get the fiberglass work done.

It is good to know that the hole is not nearly as bad as I thought, but now I am a little concerned that maybe it is leaking somewhere else. I guess we will see what happens when it rains again.