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On my old 25 the rudder was one solid piece and I removed it for trailering. It simply hung off of pintles at the transom and had spring pins through holes in the mounts to keep it in place. It wasn't bolted. When I sailed in strange, shallow lakes I would leave the spring pins out and if it hit ground it would pop out of the pintles and float. I kept a rope tied to the tiller so I could retrieve it. Mine was solid, so I eventually cut it in half and build a hinge mechanism just below the lower pintle

Regarding a nautical GPS & Depth Sounder, the latter of which is arguably WAY MORE important where I chiefly sail, in the shallow and shoally Potomac, I wouldn't dismiss nicely-kept older equipment out of hand. My 26X conveyed to me with such older, but still perfectly serviceable gear as briefly described here
https://macgregorsailors.com/forum/view ... ps#p318522.

It was basically a then decade old hand-me-down Lowrance LMS 525-C DF GPS/sonar unit once owned by my boat's previous owner's son, who was some kind of pro fisherman down in Florida. He'd passed it on to his Dad in a box with all the fixin's (GPS antenna, depth transducer and all the cabling) after he'd upgraded to whatever was then the latest and greatest new system. To say that that now elderly one's been perfectly adequate for the likes of me since I installed it is a massive understatement. I just adore the damned thing. Those fish have nothing to fear from me or the unit's fish finding prowess. I'm just happy to know precisely where I am and avoid those shallows. Visibility of the display is superb at all times in all light, and unlike a snazzy new system, which might run you a "boat buck" or three (1 boat buck = $1,000), you can snag such older ones all day long for less than a couple hundred bucks. Not that I am specifically recommending my LMS 525-C DF model above all others, but a quick googling of that model number found several units out there for sale on FleaBay or craigslist for about $150, some even with depth transponders, an antenna and other needful ancillary doodads. I'm just saying, if you're on a budget there's nice used stuff out there that'll handily do the job.

Of course, there are LOTS of free or inexpensive GPS and other nautical apps out there for phones, tablets or laptops, and the Forum Archives are chock full of recommendations and reviews (and I also use some of them too), but that depth sounder was really my "must have" gimcrack for peace of mind.

Ok... rudder perfectly ok with just “hanging” off the end. Mine had a bolt secured with a nut on the rudder post, and one more nut after the bolt to prevent it from popping out. I will make sure to carry a wrench to tighten it a few turns to it will not fall off. It is a prevailing torque type nut.

My next question is the topping lift, and boom vang. Is anyone using a topping lift on their rig or just the little tag off the back stay? What is the advantage/disadvantage of either way? My boom vang seems to be missing as well. I have a hole in my mast where a bale could go to support one, but it’s missing. I am also seem to be missing any deck hardware for the rigging at the base of the mast. I have 2 cleats at the mast, I assume this is for tying off the sail halyard and maybe the jib/Genoa but I have nothing like any of the rigging I have researched. It seems everyone has a quite different setup, but everyone seems to have deck great I don’t. I know pics would help... I’m still working on that, I got lost in a running rig rabbit hole last night and never got around to opening GIMP to fix the files.

Looks like the cable through the deck is the best option. I wanted a flush mount fitting, but this will work, and what I was leaning to when I couldn’t find the deck piece. I know they are made the US Navy has them!


So tonight I got to fiddle around both inside and outside the boat. But before that... last night, I removed a whole mess of duct tape from the cowl of the engine. I was thinking the previous owner of this boat was the owner of a racing boat team, and should have been able to easily fix this cowl. Then it dawned on me... they were a hydroplane racing team, and when they poke holes in those boats they fix them with duct tape...200mph tape! I should have known! Here is the engine with the hole in the cowl.
So yea... I found someone selling a Johnson cover on eBay for a good price and I bought it. Same year and almost the same model as my engine so it should be good to go.

Next I started cleaning the interior. I am about half done at this point, I got a bit distracted from the new addition of water in the bilge after vacuuming it all out the night before. Grrr... I have a leak at my forestay anchor and also my bow light. Looks like I will need to tackle that here soon too! So here are a few pics of my starting point and progress.
Looks like I can only attach 3 pics per post, so I will post the clean up pics a bit later when I actually finish my clean up.

So I get to eliminate one of the things on my list of to-do's. I came up with a name. Her new name is Water Lilly. That's it... now that I posted it I cant change it or I will have bad luck! I shall not upset Poseidon by breaking the naming rules!

What else... Oh, I took the cushions to the Upholstery shop to get an estimate on the work, and I also brought him the Bhimi top to have the snaps replaced as they don't want to stay snapped. I will do the deck snaps myself. That's it for now... I did have a mess of a time getting insurance, but I will tell that story in the morning...

Here are a couple more pics of the mess inside.
And one of some of the cleaning I have done.
OK, off to bed for me.

Making Progress! Boat actually looks pretty good for her age. I've seen worse...

Keep up the good work and keep those pics coming.

Nice. As Jimmy said, I've seen MUCH worse. Power washers seem to work well.

It's always fun to see a boat come back to life.

BTW, an easier way to post images is to click the "Add image to post" button just below the editing box. I think there isn't a limit using that method.

Ok so the insurance story...

I called green lizard insurance and got a quote. I liked the BoatUs membership that came with the insurance and was about ready to buy, but as a good consumer I decided to shop around to see what was what. Flo insurance was a bit cheaper, but no BoatUs membership, and I liked the coverages of Lizard insurance a bit better. Khaki wearing insurance guy was the most expensive (sorry Jake) and I won’t bore you with the details of the others I called.

So I decided to go with Green Lizard insurance. I called back and said let’s do this. We were going through the process and she asked me if the boat was seaworthy, and I said yes it was. Then she asked if it needed any repairs, and I said it needs a good wash and I want to replace the running rigging. She asked what was wrong with the rigging? I said the standing rigging is fine but the running rigging was sun faded and I wanted to give the boat new lines. She admitted to me that she didn’t know what standing rigging is, and that the boat isn’t seaworthy with the rigging messed up... WTF? I only said I wanted to replace sun faded lines. So I tried to explain to her that the standing rig is what would be dangerous if bad, and the running rig is replaced every now and then as lines chafe and fade, this is normal maintenance. She got all pi$$ with me and said her manager said no, so that’s that... then she said she is just customer service and if I wanted to talk to sales I could. Yes please. I was put on hold for about 20 minutes, when someone picked up and then dropped the phone or something because I heard background noise then nothing and a minute of so later the busy signal sound.

So I call back... get someone in sales this time and try to buy my insurance. This guy read me the notes the other lady put in. She said the rig is damaged and must be repaired before I could purchase insurance. I told the guy that the rigging is fine, the ropes for the sails are just sun faded, and I want them to look good again. He went to the underwriter who also had no clue about sail boats (it seemed like a poo sammich of a show there) and said I needed a Coast Guard rigging inspection and certification before I could buy insurance! WTF? I could understand this if it was a charter, but a boat that’s not much bigger than a day-sailer... oh and the nearest coast guard station that does inspections is over 4 hours away. So all this for a normal maintenance item, because someone selling insurance doesn’t understand what they are doing with sailboats.

So I call Flo insurance back and ask if I am going to be denied a policy because a rope on my boat is sun faded! When the gal on the line asked what I was getting at so I explained that while Green Lizard insurance was a bit more expensive, they had better coverage and I wanted to buy there, but they wouldn’t sell to me. I ended up getting a bit better coverage, and still a better price, but unfortunately no BoatUs membership. I told her that denying insurance to me over the sun faded ropes is like denying auto insurance to someone because they need to wax their car.

In the end I now am covered.

Ok time to get outta bed, eat chow and get back to cleaning!

It is looking better with every post. Keep showing us your progress.

VHF is line of sight so higher will be better if you want to talk to another boat more than a couple of miles away. I have one antennae on top of the mast and another mounted on the stern railing to use if I don't have the mast raised.

The coast guard has very tall towers so you will be able to hear (and probably talk to) them from a very long distance regardless of how high your antennae is mounted. I can hear stations over 150 miles away in my driveway.

Russ wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 6:37 am Nice. As Jimmy said, I've seen MUCH worse. Power washers seem to work well.

It's always fun to see a boat come back to life.

[...Snip!]

Just to concur with Russ, I further discovered that those cheapo sub-$100 electric pressure washers sold by Harbor Freight (current 1,750 psi model shown here: https://www.harborfreight.com/1750-psi- ... 63254.html) are just the right "Goldilocks Level" of craptastic for boat cleaning, meaning they're just not powerful enough to hurt anything but more than insistant about sending those dug-in cruds on their way.

Oh, and forget the pricey boat cleaning wonder potions. Just raid the laundry room for some Wisk laundry detergent. Use one cup per bucket of water. Swab it on, allow to marinate a bit, and scrub-rinse or blast away with the pressure washer.

So today is a good, bad, and ugly type of day. The good is I got the mast up and even the main sail. I also found out that I have a Genoa and a sail cover. All my sails are in good condition so even better! I also discovered that I am not really able to raise the mast by myself. It’s simply too much on my knees to step up the cockpit to the deck while trying to balance the mast. I am going to drop the $300 on the gin pole kit here soon... really soon.





How does my rigging look? I am just guessing this is how it’s supposed to be, but since I have no experience with this boat... or sailing anything larger than 24” I look to you all for guidance.




And now the beginning of the ugly... looks like my keel winch was wrapped loose and then took a load. I cannot get the cable out of the spool and that spool is really rusty. I would like to replace it, or at least treat the rust and refinish it, but I don’t want to cut the cable without any way to replace it. So I will have to work on this one some more. The winch was also cockeyed in the way it was mounted. Mine was only held in by the 2 bolts at the step in to the cabin. It looks like it could use another mount point on the bulkhead.

More good! And yes there is more ugly as well... bad too. Here is the V-berth all nice and clean, this was the last spot that needed cleaning.



So here you can see I got the bulkhead and winch out of the way. All nice and clean now, and my fenders even arrived and are sitting in the storage well. Well it became nice and clean where the bulkhead was a few minutes after I took these pics.




And now some really bad stuff. Here as you can see is the aft bulkhead. It is rotten and weak. It’s also bowed under the weight of the keel. In the pics you can see where the wood was beginning to crush.




So this was also causing an interesting thing to happen to the hull. Before I did any of this work, I had no problem sliding the companionway cover over the hatch cover. There was actually a 1/4” gap in the middle and the padlock latch would not line up unless I messed with it a bit. I ruled this out to old boat, no biggy, the overhang will prevent water from getting in. Now that the winch is out and the bent and rotten bulkhead is gone, so is the gap between the top and side hatch pieces. In reality the top is difficult to get over the door part. Once it is over, the padlock pieces line up perfectly. My boat was bent!


And here is one of my hatch covers. It is the worst of the 5 covers, it is wet and rotten, I found it in the bottom of the hull all moldy and nasty. There is a second moldy one that was dry, but had been wet and one that was perfect all around! The perfect one was used as a pattern to create 5 new hatch covers. Oh, yea the bow covers were fine, but the screws that hold them in have stripped holes, so I am going to drill new screw holes for the new hatches. Maybe if I can find it, some stainless nutserts so I don’t have to thread a sheet metal screw into the glass.


Wait a minute here... did he say new hatches? What do you mean new hatches? Yes I found some stupid expensive plywood and I used the existing hatch covers to make new ones. I got 5 new small covers, and a new cooler cover. I also used the bent bulkhead, clamped and flattened out to pattern a new not-so-bent and not-so-rotten bulkhead. I am going to stain these pieces and then cover them in epoxy to protect them from the elements. The epoxy will have to wait till the next paycheck, but no biggy there too. Pics will come tomorrow as I ran out of daylight to get any today.

So many of you know about this unit right here... the factory electrical panel. I guess it did the job back in the day, but that day is gone, and that ship has sailed! Yes pun intended! The other issue I have with this unit, is the switches are all corroded and nasty . The outside actually looks pretty ok, but the other side isn’t.



Now I’m planning on changing up the lighting in the boat a bit. So I got a new switch panel, with breakers, and lights. It even has a volt meter for the battery.




Speaking of battery... does a group 24 battery really fit under the seat? It looks too small in there.

So as you see there are now 6 switches. Here is my layout.
1. Radio Master
2. Cabin Lights (area around the galley)
3. Forward Cabin Lights (Vberth and head area)
4. Running Lights
5. Cockpit lights (I’m planning on installing some lights in the cockpit area so it’s easier to see what’s there at night)
6. Stern Light (is actually lights I’m going to put in the stowage area under the cockpit)

So there ya have it. And this is the end of the road for me tonight. I’m sore and tired. As I was working on the boat today a friend of mine brought his Suburban over to work on fixing an oil leak. So I was also assisting in that adventure. Tomorrow, I plan on rebedding the forestay, sanding and staining the new hatches, and also working on the mast. Stay tuned.

I do enjoy this kind of post.

The story of trial, failure, and success makes for good reading. Keep posting!

Massey wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 11:13 pmYes I found some stupid expensive plywood and I used the existing hatch covers to make new ones.

Yea, I'm thinking of selling my bitcoin and investing in plywood. Lumber prices are insane.

BTW, for your backstay, I have a simple line from the top of the mast with a clip to the boom. 2 settings, one lower for sailing and one higher that keeps my head from hitting it.

Progress is looking good.