Living Aboard

Hey you guys,


First things first, Happy Late Halloween.

For Halloween I had to work but we did get to dress up. I went as a character I use to write about, Stryker, in steam punk. Her characteristic spider web makeup, the leather corset, I would of loved to get in the full gear with a Nerf gun but of course, I had to be appropriate for work. Stryker also has a mean attitude. :-P



So today is day three of living on the boat full time except for showering at the house. I cook, Eat, watch TV, Hell, I'm even updating the blog from the boat using a long distance wifi adapter for my laptop.

While I am living on it, There are still a few little things that need to be worked on.

• Hot Water Heater Doesn't Work: Replace the element soon*
• Still need to finish Trim on: Walls, Carpet.
• Two burners on the stove wont work
• Trickle Charge for the Battery's Set up 24/7: Right now, I use the battery's sparingly. Only the water pump is "on" to use the battery.
• More Curtains.
• Fix the slideing door and Figure out how to winterize them.
• Seal windows with plastic for winter.
• Paint Frigirator.
• Get seats for back deck.
• Replace The Gass Engines For Diesels(springtime): The diesel will be cheaper to fuel and makes it so you can actually use the boat and not break the bank.

So basically just little nic nacs that need to be done but it doesn't effect me living on the boat.

 

Almost There

Hey Readers,

I am sorry for not updating this as of late. I am now working a lot more and have school from hell.

But! :Drum Roll:

I slept in the boat for the first time last night and have been setting up everything in it the last few days.

While I did sleep in the boat, It is still not finished. We still have to put trim up around the bottom of the floors, and finish the metal cuffs over the top of the stair cases. The Hot water heater needs to be tested as well to see if we need to replace the heating element. Hell, I still have one light to fix and to put up a bathroom door.

Pfft! As long as the floors done, and most lights work, I was going to move my ass onto that boat. For months now, I had been living out of bags.

Much needed Photos! (ps. I'll get better ones once everything actually is put up. Right now things are all over the place as I organize, toss and store. )

So the small circle mirrors were bought, 6 of them for 5 bucks at a yard sale. I think they look awesome.

This is before the bed was put in.

Dollor Tree Find for the White walls that can't hold paint or pictures. I am going to find more stencils!

(I'll get photos of the lights, and how we installed them etc next post. )

Wood Floors Are Complete!

Hurrah, Hurrah!

We finally finished the wood floor section of the boats interior. I just bought some carpet for downstairs and will be putting it in soon. I may or may not even use my indoor outdoor carpet in the back hatch area. Not entirely sure yet. I am just happy all we have to do is put carpet in.

Which mind you was expensive for my tight budget. I am running out of money!!!! There is only so much a delivery driver, college going student can afford.

Floor line. The Back hatch will have rug.

My sofa. I moved it into place on the boat. It looks good with all the blue tint on the walls.

Dad. He got all annoyed when I was taking photos of him.

Awesssome song

I've heard this song before but I wanted to post it here because it kind of fits the bill of how I felt when dad told me he was going to help me buy the boat.

                    

Slowly Coming Along

The boat is slowly coming along. I haven't really been working too much on it but my dad has been busy on the floors in the evenings when he gets home.

The wood flooring is almost done! And when we are done, Trim is going up to cover the problem areas and around the hatches. We decided to put the wood in half the boat and than carpet for where the back hatches are due to the fact that its difficult and a pain in the ass to put wood there.

The last photo is the kitchen table/island I bought for the boat. Its a smallish rolling cart with a fold up table top and two stools stored inside the main body of it. It saves space and yet still provides everything I wanted

Cooking space, Eating Space, Space saver.





 

Sorry for the lack of update. Things have been relatively busy. My best freind came over for a week and we spent three days in virginia beach, going to a awesome concert. Skillet, in this moment, papa roach, weashumans, and shine down are awesome in concert. We also went to the beach, and just relaxed.

 

Not to mention getting back and going to a asian spa for the suanas and things.

 

But before we left, I did work some more on the boat. I finished the painting though I had even more to do once the tape came off. Apparently, it pulled paint off and I had to do some terrible patch jobs. Urgh.

One thing after another it seems.

 

 

After patching the paint, I worked with my father on the flooring. linolium flooring sucks. It doesn't snap together. Nor does it fit straight. My floors are going to have some bad gaps.  urgh. I just hope this boat wont look terrible when its finished. 

 

 

 

And as a side project, I am makeing wine!

 

Painting

Between work, school, and on my days off, I have been working during all of my spare moments to try and get this boat painted and ready for the hardwood floors. I want to be able to move in by next week which will be a hard press as dad has to do my roof, fix the floors, and put the floor down in two weeks while at the same time, he is working basically 7 days a week.

Maybe it will work. Maybe it wont. We'll see!

Before Picture:

After Picture: With Primer

                                     

 
                                 

And now, Some has wall paint.

Reconstruction

Our next step to rebuilding the boat is to do work on the interior. The walls need paint. Cabinets need to be painted. One top cabinet need to be fixed because of a leak in the top Right A.C. We also have to reseal the front large window. Joys!

So, the first step to making the boat livable was getting rid of the old nasty carpet and taking a grinder to all of the little tacks, nails, etc.

We went through two grinder pads getting all of the tacks out of the ground. Who ever put the carpet down put way to many tacks into the ground. It was rediculus. I swear, every time we do something we find out something stupid the other people did. 

\

Like the wiring. We have to have two plugs hooked up to the docks outside in order to run the entire boat. One runs one half of the boat. The other runs the second half. So pops is going to ether rewire some things, or just use two plugs indefinitely.

I think the reason why they wired things differently is to bring more power into the boat to run like...the oven, and a separate cook top.

There is one piece of rotted wood on the boat and that is right by the back doors. We just need peel this piece of wood up and replace it. dads also going to make all the hatches level to the ground for the hardwood floors to be put in.

 

Getting Her To Colonial Beach

In order to get her from Callao to Colonial Beach, We hooked her up to a 80ft trawler and towed her back. It took us roughly 6 hours plus some to do it but eventually she made it here. She spent one week at another dock and than a day sitting beside our big boat before coming to rest in the spot she sits now.


Her back deck faces out along the water so you could sit there on a wicker chair and watch the eagles swoop over the river trying to catch their dinner.

      

All Painted Up!

All Painted Up!

We scraped and painted the bottom Red. This is just the after photo of the scraping. I lost the photo of our paint job when my phone took a swim.

Bottom Work.

Bottom Work:

The boat hadn't been pulled in god only knows how long so pulling her was well needed. We also needed to check the hull for possible reasons she sunk in the first place.

Hows that for a dirty bottom!

 

You can see how bad the propellers are. We need to replace them but are holding off until next year. We will winterize the engines now and than pull them, and rebuild them next spring.

Evaluation

Evaluation.


After we got all the trash out of the boat, We had the joys of finally evaluating the boats condition. We immediately found out that she needed some serious TLC. 

While a lot of the teak on the boat is good, oddly its actually the teak in the areas that was completely submerged that is the best, The rest of the wood would be better off painted than re-stained.

A list of the things that we had to fix: 

• Lights. (We got all of the upstairs ones working. The downstairs five need to be completely replaced.)
• Shower Faucets.
• Stove.
• Floors. (pull up the old carpet, Level out the hatches, Replace floors with wood floors, and stairs with carpet)
• A single rotted piece of wood by the glass door.
• Glass Door handle/lock.
• Window seals need re-caulking.
• Walls needed some tacks.
• One Cabinet needs worked on from water damage in a leak over the top of the boat.
• Stereo replaced.
• Speakers will be replaced inside by our old Bose speakers.
• Paint.
• Engines Need To Be Rebuilt.
• Bottom needed to be scraped and painted.
• New propellers!

You get the point.

Here are some photo's of her all cleaned up.

These are the cabinets that I am going to paint. I could save them but the boat needs a update out of the 80's so I choose to do paint and new appliances.

 
  

You can see here all of the stuff we have to do in order to fix this boat.