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I went ahead and glassed in the old engine controls panel hole and shifter/throttle hole, as they were located in prime leak water into the boat locations. There was also another hatch near the gas fill in the starboard aft cockpit seating that got glassed in, as well as the gas-fill hole itself. This was done with a couple of pre-cured layers of 1708 as a backing plate and then 4-5 layers of 17 oz biax on the outside, with Total Boat Total Fair as the fairing compound. Some images of the process... ...

This girl needed a real new lease on life. It needed a new backbone..err mast compression post step. It needed a new sole. We could rebuild her... we do have the technology. She could be more than just 'no problem.' She could be spectacular.

I'm a big fan of electric motors, and with a high capacity 48v propulsion bank we could go to electric cooking...remove the explosives from the boat. My risk-adverse nature likes that.

I had a plan. It was a systems oriented plan, ...

Even though I'd stepped back, I did manage to, over a year or so, finish out the new sump and engine bay pretty nicely, and even got the nuisance pump (A whale 320 gulper with air pressure switch) installed. I keep a 5 AH RC lithium pack on it for now, to handle the occasional small leak when it rains, though the # of leaks keep getting smaller lately.. it's very encouraging.


I fashioned new laminated engine stringers, ...

I was starting to feel pretty good about the sump situation,



but once you start cutting, it becomes an addiction. There was the Great Rotten Galley Removal of '17..


The delaminated cabin sole liner..
1/3rd way through cleaning here.. (PS when using mineral spirits, wear a vapor respirator. I got sick for 3 days after a half hour of this..)
...

So No Problem needed to come clean about it's past, and if I was ever to get my soon to be wife to come aboard, I had to fix the petrole-mold smell. Unfortunately, much of it was not visible due to the liner arrangement. A couple of biopsies did not go well..



The keel sump had been filled with lead ingots and haphazardly glassed and filled with "great stuff"-like foam. This was of course never going to work, and I also wanted to ...