Floor Pic

Heres a photo of the floors progress. We have about 5 coats of Minwax poly for floors on in this shot and plan on two more tomorrow.  We have had a time keeping the dirt and cat hair out of the paint, but I guess it will be a form of nonskid. The only other issue has been near the engine access where some oil has soaked into the teak. The poly there will not dry.

Sole Redemption

Sanibels Sole (or floor) was in need of some attention. As our splash date approached and it became more clear that everything we wanted done at that point wasn't going to happen, we thought that maybe we could finish the interior once we were living aboard. We soon had visions of living in a 240 square foot dwelling with a floor that you couldn't walk on. Well needless to say the vision was not pretty and we decided to push the splash out a month and get the interior of Sanibel shiny again. Now that the rigging, gelcoating, painting, nonskid, epoxy work, rewiring, plumbing, engine installation  and carpentry is more or less done (oh, what a satisfying sentence to write), we knew we could tackle the interior brightwork safely. You may know we have been working on all the teak trim on Sanibel, which has turned out great, but, the monkey has been the floor. The boat had flooded at some point and the water sat 4 or 5 inches above the floor for a long time. The teak was water stained and basically black. We attacked it  with non toxic Home Depot orange stripper we call "sherbet". Then, Bar Keepers Friend that has oxalic acid in it and really brought the color back. Here are a few pictures of the fun we have been having:

Diesel Dilemma

One of the first things on my to do list once we got Saninel to the boatyard last year was getting the engine running. The diesel had never been installed, it was just resting on the stringers when we bought the boat. Actually it was rusting on the stringers due to a bad leak from the cockpit floor. The engine was suppose to have zero hours on it after a full rebuild, but nearly a decade of sitting in the

boatyard had took its toll on the beast. The injectors were just balls of rust, the starter was full of rust sludge, and the rags hanging out of the exhaust ports were wet and probably whisking water into the head. Despite its dismal appearance I went forward trying to get it running. I reassembled it with new injectors and starter, mounted and aligned it and to my surprise, it started.



I haven't been able to test run the engine as much as I would have liked since then, but its time to come back alive has come. I recently installed the control cables, fuel tank and wired it in. After some priming and starter time, she fired up. She would start and stop now but I noticed some drips from the fuel injection pump. Actually, four different drips. I promptly consulted with my friend Google on the amount of drips in a gallon and found at least six different answers, why, who knows but none looked good for our fuel efficiency.

Well, next step was to find a rebuilt injection pump. $1225.00.(Which is what we would probably take for Lorie's entire car) Or they could rebuild mine for $725.00. "Oh, okay" I said, "cool, and do you sell rebuild kits?"  Well, yes. $25.  I'm not a gambling man but I will throw down 3% and give it a try. To be continued.