Eipsode 2 – The Bilge – Max Gemischtwaren

Lets start with a video! (Benjamins beautiful quick edit, in German though)

Since Benjamin and me both work jobs, we decided to get startet on the boat (for real) taking a week off. We chose the seven days before christmas. Side-Note: Never do that… very stressfull in the end.

We were told that we can not work on the hull (outside), since new paint would need night temperatures above at least 10°C. So the decision was easy. We started with the inner hull and the bilge. The bilge is the deepest part of the boat (in our case the inside of the keel) where water collects. For that role the bilge is a rather wet place in normal sailing conditions and since we are working on a 40 year old steel boat there was plenty rust to get rid of. Very dirty work.

Here is a list of things we fixed and some pictures.

wooden plates that cover the bilge (basically the floor of the boat) – we grinded them and we oiled them with bee wax

we grinded the rust from the anker chain containment

we grinded the the old paint from the front cabin bilge and the the rust, fat and water and urgh…. everything from the main bilge

we emptied the bilge by removing the lead thats kept in it, to give the boat an righting moment —- we calculated 800kg of lead bars…. dirty ones

we cut off the hart-top cockpit…. we wanna go for a classic spray hood, that we can lower on a nice day

we vacuumed the shit out of this boat
wiped down the dust

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Techy-Part:

How do you re-fit a bilge? We actually didnt know. We grindet of anything that was to grind of. Smashed off layers of rust with a large spike. Stuff that wasnt going off, we just roughened, the paint will hopefully gonna bind to it. There is such a thing as “bilge-paint”. Thats the bright white stuff. The orange/brown thin stuff is rust converter. It is thin as water, supposed to seize (kriechen) under the rust and protect the actual steel. And we like this stuff…. it applies like icing to a cake and it remains a tiny little bit sticky…. perfect for the white “bilge paint” to go on top.

rust converter: owatrol c.i.p.
bilge paint: danboline

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Benno took out most the electrical wiring and we checked the lead acid batteries for their charging behavoir. We decided we gonne re-do the entire wiring. Measured sthe windows for new ones and did the same for the hatch. Then we had to take out a shit load of waste from the boat yard to the recycling station and make the construction site “christmas-ready” because we would not be there for at least three weeks.

Here are some more impressions of that week.