YOU DID WHAT????!?!?!?!???

So I started out my day of work on the boat by drilling a hole in the bottom of it.  (Yes, insert post title here!)  Here is the reasoning for my seemingly crazy action.  It is winter in Maine now.  That means water freezes.  When the bilge (where water collects in the bottom of the boat) fills with water, and quite a bit of it, then freezes, that is a serious problem.  It can lead to cracking of the fiberglass, breaking the mounts for the ballast/keel, or even pushing a hole in the boat.  The man I bought the boat from had already drilled a hole in the boat to keep it from filling with water, as the hatches are not water tight (or really intact at all, for that matter).  However, when the hole was drilled, it was about a foot above the bottom of the bilge.  That means there was a lot of water that could still collect in the bilge.  When I used a manually operated bilge pump (as I do not have a battery system yet), I filled two 5 gallon buckets with really gross water, with a little water remaining in the bilge.  10 gallons of water turning into ice in a confined space is a recipe for disaster.  So what was my solution? Drill another hole.  You can see it below the original that has the brown streak marks.

Today I also got 5 of the 7 through hulls out of the boat, and will be glassing over the holes when I get a day that is warm enough to do so (think: spring).  I will be glassing over them because the boat no longer has a marine head, as it is illegal to pump waste overboard unless you are 12+ miles offshore.  Since I will likely be living in a marina, I won't be 12+ miles offshore, so need another solution.  More to the point, however, is that with many through hulls, you now have more places for water to breach the hull.  If you notice, there are 3 through hulls all placed together, with one being 2-3 inches in diameter.  Should that through hull fail, you now have a 2-3 inch diameter column of water spraying into the boat.  That equates to THOUSANDS of gallons of water per hour, possibly tens of thousands.  It would only take 20-30 minutes to sink the boat at that rate, if you're lucky.  So removing (glassing over) holes in the boat is a great idea, because it lessens the chance that the boat will spring a leak. Plus, I may be able to sell the seacocks, which are brass, and in relatively good condition, to make up for switching to more modern tech.  More on that later.

Most of my day consisted of scraping paint.  The boat had water inside it for two weeks this spring because the hatches were not water tight, hence, the holes drilled in the bilge/keel.  Because the water sat in the boat for two weeks, the paint peeled off the hull and wooden structures within the boat.  Some of the structures in the boat have been destroyed by the water damage, and have to be rebuilt (pictures to come soon).  Others seemed to weather it okay.  Unfortunately, it means A WHOLE BOAT LOAD of paint scraping for me.  I was planning on scrubbing the remainder of the boat, but realized that it was a better plan to get rid of the paint flakes first.  Tomorrow should be washing day, assuming nothing else comes up, like it did today. 

I got a tip today that there was a lumber yard that had gone out of business, so there was lumber to be had for free.  Obviously I jumped at the chance since I have hatches and an interior to rebuild and am on a budget.  I spent a good chunk of the afternoon rooting through all the crap wood to find a few good boards that might work for building hatches.  For the price, I'll go with it.  If they don't pan out, at least I'll have an idea of what not to get next time!