FINALLY!!!! It's About BOATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While I am doing the hopefully FINAL sorting of the stuff in the house, I'm working on the Challenger as my sanity keeper. The Venture is still in the drive way but she is full of stuff I have yet to sort through before I put her up on blocks to drop the keel.  This is how I'm keeping my sanity in the mean while. Yeah I'm getting flack from some of the guys over the method and materials I'm using. By their standards and expectations,  I'm cheating like an erring husband on how I am doing this.  For this reason I make an open and honest offer to those who feel very strongly about how I should be using the two part epoxy on these little  fixes. Please feel free to shop and order the materials you think I should be  using and ship them to me. I will be more then happy to use them and even give you a blurp as donator.  Email me for my shipping address.

Having said that, on to the boat.  If you remember I picked this up last summer with the idea of fixing it up for  my son.  Well he is on his  own, several states away and I'm not about to carry it THAT far on the top of my car. I now have another toy to play with . You can tell I'm just heart broken over that development, right? :)~

Finally got her up on blocks to work on.

Sorry about he angle but had us use my cell phone and that aint gonna take a close shot  straight on.


Initial work to be done.

There are some gouges and dings along the keel. This one is the worse with out actually being a full fledged breach.

            Then there is this one which is a                     full blown hull breach.

                         A close up of breach.

Then there is the transom. The story that goes with boat is it got hit by a string lawn mower TWICE.

    Been busy sanding her down. Wouldn't  you know the sander went kapluie. I have go to learn how to replace bushings in these sanders! I do however have a LOW COST idea on how I am going to temporarily solve that  little problem. All I have to do is go digging in the shed which is another spot every thing is stashed in for now. GRRRRR  I'll let you know how it turns out AFTER I try it.If it is successful. This idea is so nutty, I'm not telling in advance.

Now some of you guys are going to hate this but I've been using JB weld products for years quite successfully. I've saved TONS of money using their line. They make water weld and I got some.  So far  I have  2 1/2  tubes invested.  Beats what epoxy cost. Yes, I thought about getting some filler and using the polyester epoxy.  It cost 18.00 plus a can and I have ZERO experience using that kind of set up. Before I do it on a boat I actually hope to be in the water with THIS SUMMER or what is left of it, I went with the water weld.  It's about SAILING remember?


In no particular order here are the current pics.

This is where the sander died . GRRRRR

Almost partially done with the first sanding .

Remember that really nasty hull breach?

That's all for now.
Sail safe but SAIL!!!!!!!!

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