Square One

So my boat had finally arived... Now what? For starters The boat was still a mess and reeked of Beer and who knows what else. I attacked the boat with broom, mop and various cleaners, ending day one with the boat looking just slightly better and myself feeling slightly... soiled.

I also noticed that the forward hatch was gone. Somehow, somewhere, the hatch had flown off during the drive up, leaving only the broken bits where it had torn from the hinges. As usual,one step forward leads to two steps backwards. As I was still flat broke from the move I managed to cobble together a workable hatch to keep the rain out from scraps of plywood I had kicking around.

Temporary crappy forward hatch... off to a good start....

Several Days later I replentished my funds, picked up a few sheets of marine grade plywood, some cedar slats and a little varnish and cobbled together something a little better

Next I took a look at the electrical panel... It looked something like this:

after spending a few days working in that aweful, swealtering, dirty, itchy space I had made enough headway that I more or less knew what every wire was for, replaced the worse ones with new marine tinned stuff that cost an arm and a leg and felt confident enough to try hooking up a battery... The boat caught fire instantly.

After putting out the flames and clearing the cabin of smoke I set back to work. Apparently someone had rewired the battery switch into a major, unfused short. Now I knew what Darryls backup plan possibly was if he hadnt managed to get rid of the boat in time.... A half hour later the electrical was finally sorted and everything worked!