Well We've done it!

We bought a Yacht! I went and looked at the boat on my own and bought it there on the spot pending the survey condition of the hull and deck gear. I knew the engine was shagged and all the electrical's "She had been under water" Shock gasp 🙈🙉🙊 Everyone's response to this has been "No way I would have bought a boat that sank.

But I look at it this way. I have a boat with new ropes, reconditioned engine, freshly de-fouled, sanded and painted hull (below waterline) 3 sets of sails including a storm sail and four reef main for $12,000. I bought it without Shibby even taking a look at her. I walked on deck and knew she would love it (and she did!)

The Boats name is Hawkeye She is painted in a terrible yellow colour kind of suited to a life boat type colour. You cant miss her. We will change the colour but keep the name. Hawkeye is a 40 foot Steel hull of Group finot design (1982) with and aft cockpit. Her home of origin is the USA "San Francisco" She is a Bermudan Cutter with the head sail on a furler. She sank because the previous owner left a seacock open and went home for the weekend and a fitting under the sink broke and filled her hull with water. The bilge pumps kept up for a while until the batteries ran out of power and she eventually sank on her mooring with only a couple of meters of mast hanging out of the water. The salvage team bought her back up and let her dry out.

At the moment Hawkeye stinks of a combination of salt, diesel and rotten food. The first day on her was taken up with Shibby cleaning the salt encrusted walls and cupboards out and me changing halyards and pulling out the totally seized engine from it's home. The water tanks were filled with food waste, God knows why but they were. The fuel tanks have water in them so there is an extensive cleaning program to be performed there also. At least one thing about her being underwater all the cockroaches are dead, I have found a fair few corpses and egg sacks. We still have a long way to go
with the living areas of the boat but that is part of the journey. I also got stuck up the mast for a bit because Shibby let the rope tail go back around the winch she was hoisting me up the mast with and I had to use another halyard to help her untangle the mess so that I could get back down. Pissing down with rain I might add. But we both declared we had a great day.

The following day turned out to be a challenge to say the least. I haven't been sleeping well, I would say I have only been averaging 3 hours a night for the last two weeks. So I decided I wouldn't set an alarm and sleep until I woke. At 2am I woke up with a thousand things running through my head so I got up and did the one thing that makes me sleep. I sat in front of the telly. I ended up dosing here and there until my mind got the better of me and I got up and got ready to put the new motor into Hawkeye. I went to work which is an hour away in the opposite direction to Hawkeye I lifted the new engine into the hull of my pleasure cruiser and tied it down on a pallet. We then headed off to fit the new engine. We got on the water at 3:30pm on Sunday afternoon and were expected to be at Hawkeye by 4:00pm but noooooo. The last time we used our boat, I flushed the engine and in the process I had forgotten to put the plug back into the seawater pump line ( have never done this before) so 10 minutes into the trip steam was billowing out of the engine compartment. All we had were our 500ml bottles of water that we had filled at the boat ramp and nothing else. We let the engine cool for about half an hour and the removed the coolant cap and started to pour the water into the heat exchange. The water was swallowed up in seconds and we needed more. I cut my water bottle open with the timber saw I happened to have on board (in case we needed to cut timber in Hawkeye to fit the new engine) I then scooped all of the overflowed coolant from the bottom of the hull and returned it to the engine. We were still short but so I drained some of the coolant from the new engine for Hawkeye. It worked and we hadn't destroyed the engine so we were on out merry way again.

From here on in it was pretty much easy going. We lifted the new engine out of the boat onto Hawkeye using her boom (so glad I replaced the halyards) and put the old engine back into our boat. I made a few measurements and we headed home only to find we had a stuck starter motor on the boat and had to give it a tap with a hammer to get it to work. WHAT A DAY!

I am sleeping easier now Knowing that Hawkeye has a new bilge pump, a lot of battery power and the seacocks are closed

Just want to thank Shibby's son and his Girlfriend for helping up put the new engine in. You guys rock!