I suppose the usual idea is to buy a boat in the spring and then use it during the warm summer months. As you can likely already tell that’s not what I did with my boat last summer. 🙂

First step was to start to take it apart and clean. The boat was really grimy. The more I took apart the more there was to clean.

After a lot of taking things apart and scrubbing everywhere the boat started to get clean. A funny story from this early stage: One of the first things I did was clean the bilge (the bottom of the boat). When I was done the bottom would be clean and dry, but the next morning there would be more water in the bilge. Some mornings enough leeched out to actually make a puddle on the floor of our garage. I started to look for the source of the water. First I pulled up the ice chest area. It was a little grimy, but not bad. Forward of that is where the battery goes. It was FULL of smelly, brown, nasty and gross water. I got a cup from somewhere in the garage and began to bail out the battery hold. The water really stunk and the leaves settled on the bottom were mush. I was almost completely done pulling out the water and suddenly I saw something move. I thought I was seeing things, but then it moved again. There was a tadpole swimming in my boat!

There is a drain at the back of these two compartments, but both were plugged with grime and leaves. I cleaned them out as best I could. No more water drained from the boat so I finally found the source of water.

Next post: A list of things that need to be fixed.