demolition of pilot house

Mission Demolition: Pilot House

Wednesday October 21, 2015

Matt taking apart pilot house

The good thing about getting back from vacation at  10 am on Monday was that we still hadn’t gotten out of vacation mode yet and were not quite ready to jump back into work.  As soon as Matt’s family had pulled away in their car we were passed out in our bed and recovering from all the activity of the past week.  If we thought working on a boat was taxing, we forgot what sitting in the sun all day and drinking beer all night can do for one’s energy.

The bad thing about getting back was that we still had no access to a working vehicle.  We’d deducted that a new radiator needed to be put in the Kia, and once more we were stuck waiting until it arrived in the mail.  Not so bad when we were waiting for the alternator to come because we’d just picked up a fresh supply of groceries and still had all of our majorly used tools inside the van parked next to us.  This time we had done a full clean out of the van before we were going on vacation so that we were not only not leaving precious and expensive tools inside a van that might look tempting to someone walking by it on the street overnight, but also because we didn’t want Matt’s family to know exactly how much chaos we were living in.  I’m not sure that part worked.

Long story short, just about everything was in our storage unit up the road.  Yes we still had our minor tools such as screw drivers and drills.  Yes, we could have walked up the road to retrieve what we needed.  But that table saw was not light and those sheets of Eurolight were not easy to carry for more than a few steps at a time.  For the next few days we were left with only the things we had right in front of us.

That’s when a project that we had been somewhat dreading and putting off for some time came front and center as one of our only options of what we had the ability to work on.  Rip apart the pilot house so that we could install the foam insulation to the frame.  Truth be told this project needed to be done soon anyway.  The shelf life of the spray once it’s been opened is about 30 days and we had just sprayed the galley three weeks before.  Not wanting to take the chance we’d loose $300 worth of foam because it might go bad on us before we could use it, we decided it was time.  The only part of the boat that wasn’t yet in shambles would now be reduced to a pile of rubble.

pilot house - Trisalu 37

pilot house - Trisalu 37

Matt reorganizing

Matt disassembling storage

 

Although I had been pushing for this project for quite some time now, because although Matt doesn’t always agree with me on this, I do believe in saving money.  (Or at least not wasting it.  Beer is not a waste of money!) Anyway, I had been dreading it at the same time because it meant we were losing any bit of use-able storage space we had left on the boat.  We have been able to move our clothes to their new cabinets, but everything else sits up in the pilot house.  All of our toiletries, parts we’ve purchased but haven’t been able to install yet. Books, tool bags, food from the Canary Islands we still haven’t eaten yet.

Ok, maybe I’m getting a little over dramatic here, but I was sad to not only lose the last area that some resemblance of a finished boat, but I was also losing any bit of organization or sanity I had left. Which is a little laughable since I’m the one who can normally live in complete chaos and not bat an eye, but for some reason this got to me.  Yet I could only stand by and watch as it was torn down piece by piece.  Sometimes you have to move back to move forward.

Stay tuned for when we tear apart the starboard side and add the insulation.

demolition of pilot house

demolition of pilot house

bare hull of pilot houses

Matt in storage area