Aft Cabin Part 1: Gutting

Polerys is neat because it’s only a 35 foot boat, but it’s a center cockpit, with an aft cabin. The problem is that the aft cabin has two twin sized beds, with a toilet in the middle. Because there’s nothing like sleeping next to a toilet. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to put a queen sized bed in there. In order to do that, however, I had to remove everything. I want to insulate it, too, so that means removing EVERYTHING.

The first step was to remove all the cabinet doors, drawers, and other misc. hardware. This was more time consuming than difficult. Though, pulling the carpet off the walls took some brute force. Seriously. What kind of sociopath puts carpet on the walls?

 

 

 

 

 

Getting the toilet out was a bit of a puzzle. There were two hoses on the top of the flushing tank which were easy enough to remove. Yet the tank still wouldn’t come out. It was loose. I could wiggle it. Just couldn’t pull it out. Of course it was half full of water, and the flushing mechanism was seized so I had to find a way to get it out, without spilling everything everywhere. Upon further inspection, I realized there was another hose at the bottom of the tank. That went through the bulkhead, into the lazarette, up to a vented loop, then down, back through the bulkhead, and into the toilet.

 

 

 

Eventually, my solution was to cut the hose at the vented loop. The hose was stuck in this position, so I didn’t worry about it falling down and leaking. I then went back inside, got the tank onto it’s side, so the water was below the hose line, then used my big boy strength to get it out of the boat, and emptied it.

The rest of the toilet was easy. The wood was so rotten that I just had to pull the toilet up. I removed the rest of the hoses and valves and stuff.

 

 

 

Now for everything else. The problem was that each piece of wood was sort of Tetris’d in there. Board 1 was screwed into Board 2, which was on top of Board 3. So just haphazardly ripping stuff out ended up being more work. Work smarter, not harder. I made a bit of progress, but this was taking forever.

 

 

 

 

 

My boat guru, Ian, and Shanail came over to help. Well, that was the plan. I ended up having to work later than I expected, and by the time I got there, they had finished. So… I guess I helped put the wood in the garbage.

It’s amazing how much faster things are with help. I spent hours by myself to get one wall off. They got everything else removed in 4 hours.

 

 

 

 

There was one remaining issue. The rudder mounts to the bulkhead that separated the cabin from the lazarette. The bulkhead wasn’t tabbed in, so it wasn’t structural. Plus I’ll be adding cabinets on either side that will help hold the deck up. The problem was that the rudder mounting hardware is a lot higher than I thought it was.

Because of this, there won’t be enough room to accommodate my queen mattress. At best, I can fit about 5 inches of foam, and still be able to fit my fat ass. Oh well.

 

 

 

There were a lot of small things to do. Ian got the three thru-hulls out. I ground down some fiberglass. I filled the blower vent hole for the engine. I’m switching to electric, so I won’t need it anymore. Same with the exhaust hole. I’ll fiberglass the outside, but it’s above the waterline, so I’m not worried about patching both sides. Thickened epoxy and a wood blank will work for now.

 

 

 

Let’s talk about the wooden “racing stripe”. It’s rotten. It’s ugly. It’s a pain in the ass. And it’s in the way. I had fought with taking it off towards the bow of the boat, but made very little progress.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s made up of one piece of wood that is through bolted every foot or so into the hull. Then another piece of wood was glued onto the first piece of wood, then a metal strip is screwed on top of that every 6 inches. I fucking hate this wood strip. I was eating through jigsaw blades like you wouldn’t believe. Now that the aft cabin was gutted, I had access to the bolts. This was SOOOOOOOOOOO much easier. I mean, I didn’t have access to the bolt heads, but the bolts were long enough that I could grip them with a vice grip, then use a crescent wrench to loosen the nut. Very. Slowly. The bolts are right at the deck / hull joint, so there’s no room. Some of the bolts were seized, and I did have to cut them off, but for the most part, it was simply a test of patience. 1/8 turn, move wrench, 1/8 turn, move wrench, hit hand on something, 1/8 turn…

And cursing. A lot of cursing.

 

With both sides removed (in the aft cabin section, at least), I was able to fill the holes with thickened epoxy. Fuck these stupid wooden things, though. Seriously. From the bottom of my testicles. Fuck them.

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway. The fiberglass is solid, but there’s a lot of mold, dirt, loose paint. I started with a wire brush. I extrapolated that that would take about 4523453 years. So I moved up to a wire brush on the drill. That was faster, but harder to control, so I switched to the wire brush on the angle grinder.

 

 

 

 

Lauren had far too much fun with this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s kind of where I’ve stalled out. I still need to get the aft chainplate off, but those bolts are really stuck. I got the nuts off, but the bolts themselves will not move. I have a bit more grinding to do. I have to patch two of the thru-hulls that are below the waterline, so I’ll do fiberglass on both sides. Then I can start painting, installing the insulation, and framing everything.