She is a huge boat and although she has no rot, the corrosion is pretty bad on all the metal areas exposed to the outside. I spent a good part of the day checking the metalwork and then the woodwork.
On the wood side of things most of the vessel is solid except where the stantions meet the deck on the gunwales. I am sure this is down to the fact she has been on a mooring for a long time and has possibly had fresh water lying on her decks, if anyone has any other ideas let me know.
The metal work is in a hell of a state but on a positive side nothing is rusted through, it seems to be solid once the surface is detritus is removed. I think that if I remove the surface rust at the moment then I would have problems as its going to take some amount of time and paint! to get right so it will safer as is.
We still did not manage to get her upright and it took two hours to pump her dry.
After hoping that the pump would cope with the ingress when the tide came back in, it was a fools errand. The gunwale and the deck amidships were badly split and needing caulked, although I am sure its not the worst place I am positive it is one of them.
So guess who's going to be patching and caulking tomorrow (On the assumption that the tools and caulking twine ordered last week arrive).
Thankfully my chief bilge rat was back today, full of excuses about being 'tired' and 'sleeping' through a Saturday but at least he appeared!! The rest of the crew were down and being as helpful as small boys can be on a big climbing frame, so plenty of biscuits and juice were on hand to keep up spirits and that along with the beautiful blue skies and the thought that one day we would be afloat on her.... well lets say it was a better day than yesterday.
Today was really the first time I have been inside the main hull and had access to the accomodation and engine room. The interior is caked in oil and has plenty of sea-weed rotting in the bilges (The pump choked a couple of times and it was F'n awful to clean!) so it made for a slippy dangerous rummage around. I think that steam cleaning is going to be the only way to clean her up.
She has lovely white painted wood forward and the accomodation was all unpainted bare paneled dark wood. I hope that it all cleans up well.
The battery went flat on the camera so I only managed to get a couple of pics before the thing went dead. We will be back on tomorrow so I will get more detailed photo's then.
Sadly thats it today, hopefully some more positive news tomorrow (and better pic's!).
Aye
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