Buying a boat

A conversation among Whalers
psearcy419
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:52 pm

Buying a boat

Postby psearcy419 » Thu Jun 13, 2019 12:13 am

One of my good buddies and I just recently purchased a 1965 Nauset 16 hull to restore.

We drove to Atlanta in the pouring rain Saturday morning to pick it up. All seemed to be as the seller and we had agreed on, and we shook hands and went on our way.

Made it all the way from Atlanta to Aiken (one hour from home) and blew a trailer tire on I-20. The blown tire didn't scare us too much as we had a spare that came with the trailer, however, when we got out of the car and tried to loosen the lug nuts on the hub we realized that they were rusted on. Sat around on the side of the interstate for twenty minutes trying to think of what to do; then we finally decided to go into the Aiken Walmart and buy a lock and leave the boat until the morning, and hope for the best.

Made it back to the boat from Walmart (it was almost 8 p.m. at this point, already an hour past our hopeful arrival time at home) and decided to try one more time to loosen the lug nuts. Pulled as hard as we could on the wrench, and proceeded to shear off the stud. Enough bad luck for one day. We headed home with our fingers crossed and plans to wake up first thing in the morning to make the hour ride back to the boat and try to remedy our problem.

The next morning, in a truck loaded with all the tools we could imagine as well as with my dad in a separate car, we made our way back to Aiken. While my dad was in town waiting on Autozone to open to buy new lug nuts, my friend and I spent two hours, purposefully this time, breaking off every bolt on the hub. We even had to resort to grinding the nut off on one of the bolts as the bolt had begun to spin. My dad arrived with the new lugs and nuts so we tapped out the old ones, inserted the new ones and bolted our spare on. Good to go. Made it thirty miles down the road and proceeded to blow the other trailer tire.

We were starting to feel like real idiots at this point. Pulled another Chinese fire drill, shearing off all of the bolts and replacing them on the other side of the trailer and away we went. Made it to Columbia 24 hours after we had purchased our boat. So now the fun could begin.

Once we got the boat back we removed the console as well as the old steering cables, wires, and fuel line that had been left in the boat. As a perk, we noticed the boat came with a unused Moeller 22-gallon fuel tank. We removed the corroded drain line. Based on the softness in the deck in some places we knew there was going to be some work ahead.

We drilled a few holes in the deck, starting towards the transom and went towards the bow until the foam we were drilling into was no longer sopping wet. We then proceeded to cut the floor and remove it in panels, removing pound after pound of soggy foam along the way.

We finally found some good lamination on the floor along with dry foam and that is where we called it for today. I am sure that we will be asking lots of questions. We will keep this post updated with progress and pictures as we go. Neither of us has ever re-furbished a boat before. We are both rising sophomores at Clemson.

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Last edited by psearcy419 on Thu Jun 13, 2019 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

psearcy419
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:52 pm

Re: Buying a boat

Postby psearcy419 » Thu Jun 13, 2019 12:17 am

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psearcy419
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:52 pm

Re: Buying a boat

Postby psearcy419 » Thu Jun 13, 2019 12:18 am

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jimh
Posts: 11673
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:25 pm
Location: Michigan, Lower Peninsula
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Re: Buying a boat

Postby jimh » Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:17 am

Please put captions on all pictures. Your narrative of your trip to buy the boat and trailer it home is interesting, and it may provide some insight to future buyers regarding the necessity of establishing the road-worthiness of very old boat trailers.

To become acquainted with the usual problems encountered in restoration of older boats, read all the threads in the REPAIRS and MODIFICATIONS forum of this forum, and read the archived threads from the old REPAIRS and MODS forum. In particular read:

HELP!!! Whaler wet, wet, wet
http://continuouswave.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/001705.html

Also try a GOOGLE Search with this argument:
site:continuouswave.com/ubb/Forum3 remove wet foam

It is not practical for you to start a thread and solicit general advice about any repairs that you will need to make in the future. When you encounter a problem, just start a new thread in REPAIRS and MODIFICATIONS to get advice about that particular problem.

Thanks for the narrative, and don't neglect your academic studies.

Foulweather Jack
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2016 3:56 pm

Re: Buying a boat

Postby Foulweather Jack » Fri Jun 14, 2019 8:40 am

I admire your resourcefulness. Most people would have given up after facing the obstacles that you have.

The Clemson campus is beautiful. I had my first trip there last year after I discovered through some genealogy that my great grandfather had endowed a graduate scholarship in agriculture there about 75 years ago.

I assume you'll be using the boat on the lake.

Good luck with your project: I'm sure it will be a learning experience in more ways than one.