Projects
Since I bought Illusion in May of 2008, I’ve been working on projects to make her more seaworthy, more attractive, functional and suited to my needs. She’s my first boat and most of these projects are my first attempts at anything of their kind. There is a lot to learn about old boats.
Luckily, her engine was pretty well maintained and her hull had a pretty good coat of paint.
mmm...seafood
When I had her hauled to check out the bottom, we had her bottom sandblasted to get the years of oysters and barnacles that had grown on the bottom off. Then they sanded and put on bottom paint.
clean bottom, before the keel had been cleaned
Then we added the Garmin GPS MAP 3206. It’s wired to a through hull depth transducer which is in front of the keel. Illusion is 5′9″ deep, a pretty big draft for her size. The depth sounder keeps me off bottom, unless I’m trying to get through Folly River and I’m going to bounce of the sandbar anyways. I’ve got charts for all of the US and Bahamas and will be adding the Central American charts soon. I love where it’s placed, I can use it easily, see everything at a glance and navigate through Charleston’s waterways.
Then began the scraping, then the sanding and well it just hasn’t stopped. I scraped all the cracked, yellow old varnish off the exterior teak and sanded (with a little help from my friends……). Then applied 5 coats of Cetol, I’ve got another quart just waiting for a beautiful anchorage and a quart of gloss too. Future crew members, get excited!
In the beginning of December, I started scraping the interior. Don’t ask me why, must have been made crazy by the cold weather…..I’m almost done scraping and most of the interior has been sanded too. I’m sanding the roof over all the berths to put a nice flat white coat of paint on them and have some more interior projects to finish this month.
Then comes the fun stuff, putting in a foot pump for the water along with a new electric pump, a 3 burner stove with oven, monitor windvane, solar panel and maybe a wind generator. I’ll be setting up a new boom vang, running all the lines from the mast to cockpit to make single handing a little easier and then somewhere in Central America we’ll paint the deck!
There are always things to do, and one of the best parts of bringing on crew members is that they all have different ideas and provide a fresh set of eyes on any problem. I want people to be able to contribute and help make Illusion a better vessel.