I did like most auto shop owners..........I blocked 3 working bays with my boat last weekend! I am always so amazed how many auto shops are full of the owners toys. I have a very productive 4 bay shop. I cannot afford to fill mine up with my own projects. I would much rather have my wonderful employee's making me money so I can afford to renovate Redwing! So I towed her home after the surgery!
Last weekend my goal was to remove as much of the power train and steering apparatus(at the stern) as I could. I felt that removing the engine and marine gear would not only lighten the boat making her easier to move about, in what will be a very tight working space but also will give me easy and free access to all her structure amidships. Removing the prop, shaft, cutless bearing and the rudder will do the same for the after portion of the bottom plus the extra clearance will make snaking her down into the EZ Bree Z ship yard much easier.
Good friend Neal Naigus and brother in law Tymn Madden were on hand for the festivities. It was quite a challenge to snake her into the right position in the shop. At the shop we use a cherry picker for engine removal. This project required a chain fall to be hung from a beam. Due to where the beams were in relation to lifts and various other pieces of equiptment bolted to the floor I had to snake the boat in all catty wampus. I still ended up having to temporarily remove one of the big high bay ceiling lights!
The actual removal was quite straight forward.........much easier than on a 21st century front wheel drive all electronic luxury car! All the nuts and bolts came apart quite readily. It looked as if they had all been originally assembled with some sort of "never sneeze" The actual lift went without a hitch although seeing 700 some lbs of iron hanging 12 feet off the floor was a bit unnerving!
The prop shaft and rudder each had a small challenge to be overcome. The head of the bronze pinch bolt on the tiller was severely buggered and unable to be engaged with a tool box full of tricks so I simply cut the bolt through the slit which relaxed the tension enough to let me remove it. I can go after it with an EZ out sometime in the future. The companion flange on the prop shaft would not yield to heat and a puller so out came a thin abrasive cutoff wheel which dispatched it quite readily with nary a nick in the shaft. I was a bit sad to have had to destroy the part(which will just add to my costs)but I know I did my best before relenting to destructive disassembly.
The next step now is to begin to carefully disassemble the severely rotted sole stringers saving as much as I can for patterns to duplicate the crown of the sole. This will also allow me to remove the stainless tanks which I have calculated to be 55 gal each. At that point with the entire bilge exposed to light I think Redwing will really begin to revel her secrets.
Each success is a joy, each problem is a challenge to stretch the mind.
