ihopeitfloats
Cadet
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2012
- Messages
- 14
Hello. I recently purchased my first-ever boat, at what I thought was a bargain price, on Craigslist. I see from the reading I've been doing here that this is common, and what has happened since--a list of pressing problems that gets longer every time I look someplace new--is also common. Since my stubbornness is bigger than my common sense, I will probably try to fix all the stuff that's wrong and I am humbly asking for some guidance, since I've never done this before and am hoping to not make anything worse than it already is.
It's a 1978 27-foot Sport Craft C-Eagle. It has a cuddy with only a v-berth (no head, no kitchen, no other stuff). I believe it's had two owners. The original owner (OO) bought it new, and over the years did less as he and the boat got older. Finally (circa 2010-2011) he could not use the boat any longer and sold it (very) cheap to the guy I bought it from (SO), who I suspect thought he could fix a couple of easy things and fish on it for a season. He did, and sold it (very very) cheap to me (dummy or TO, whichever you'd prefer), who thinks I can fix a bunch of stuff and use it for a first boat for me and the family, which includes two kids (6 and 9) who love to fish.
The engine is old, but starts right up and runs and doesn't quit. I'm hoping it will last next season, and then I will figure out what to do about a replacement. But for the other stuff:
1. The cuddy's floor is the bare fiberglass, which has been painted a few times, which leads me to believe it's been bare (not carpeted) for a while. Way up at the notch of the V-bunk, there is a 3 inch gap in the floor. It is part of the channel under the floor and leads eventually back to the engine compartment via a 4-inch square cut into the bottom of the engine compartment wall. The channel under the cuddy floor can also be accessed by a 3-inch hole (about midway through cuddy) and a small (3/4 inc) hole (just as you step from cockpit into cuddy), and I would like to seal up the gap at the notch of the v-bunk, as a)I can't figure out what function it could possibly serve since I can get into channel other ways if I need to and b) I'd like to lay carpeting on the cuddy floor so as to make it more pleasant to be in for the kids, and if the boat rocks forward, water sloshes up from that notch and would saturate the carpet. Can anyone see a problem with my closing this up?
2. One of the previous owners removed the engine temp gauge wire. The mechanic who came over to winterize the engine and show me how to do it said that I could just run a wire from the little screw on the engine back behind the dashboard to the temp gauge display. That seemed so easy to me that I figured I must have gotten it wrong (because nothing on this boat seems easy, see below). Is that all there is to it?
3. The deck is pretty much shot, and so are the supports under it. The stringers are fine. I tracked down someone who seemed to know a thing or two about older Sport Crafts, and he said that the original boat did NOT have vertical supports under the deck (I don't know what they're called on a boat; in house-building they're joists), so at some point (my guess is--later in OO's ownership) someone stuck 'em in there because the deck was sagging, and didn't glass them, so now they're rotten as a month-old banana. So the big project I need to do before spring boat season is to rip up the deck and replace it. But that's another post, for another time.
4. When I hook up something that needs to be hard wired, How do I do it? If it has a positive and negative wire, how do I hook those up? Can I connect them to something else that is currently hardwired (like a light or a pump), or do I need to run the new thing directly to the battery, and if so, do I just connect the positive and negative hard wire to the positive and negative battery terminals? Sorry for the basic-ness of this question, but I just plain don't know and don't want to muck it up.
5. Can I hook up more than one bilge pump to an exit port, or will that cause backwashing of one flow into the other hose, if pump #2 isn't on when #1 is?
I have enough problems for at least a dozen more questions, but I will start with these. Can anyone help? I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks.
DJ in NY
It's a 1978 27-foot Sport Craft C-Eagle. It has a cuddy with only a v-berth (no head, no kitchen, no other stuff). I believe it's had two owners. The original owner (OO) bought it new, and over the years did less as he and the boat got older. Finally (circa 2010-2011) he could not use the boat any longer and sold it (very) cheap to the guy I bought it from (SO), who I suspect thought he could fix a couple of easy things and fish on it for a season. He did, and sold it (very very) cheap to me (dummy or TO, whichever you'd prefer), who thinks I can fix a bunch of stuff and use it for a first boat for me and the family, which includes two kids (6 and 9) who love to fish.
The engine is old, but starts right up and runs and doesn't quit. I'm hoping it will last next season, and then I will figure out what to do about a replacement. But for the other stuff:
1. The cuddy's floor is the bare fiberglass, which has been painted a few times, which leads me to believe it's been bare (not carpeted) for a while. Way up at the notch of the V-bunk, there is a 3 inch gap in the floor. It is part of the channel under the floor and leads eventually back to the engine compartment via a 4-inch square cut into the bottom of the engine compartment wall. The channel under the cuddy floor can also be accessed by a 3-inch hole (about midway through cuddy) and a small (3/4 inc) hole (just as you step from cockpit into cuddy), and I would like to seal up the gap at the notch of the v-bunk, as a)I can't figure out what function it could possibly serve since I can get into channel other ways if I need to and b) I'd like to lay carpeting on the cuddy floor so as to make it more pleasant to be in for the kids, and if the boat rocks forward, water sloshes up from that notch and would saturate the carpet. Can anyone see a problem with my closing this up?
2. One of the previous owners removed the engine temp gauge wire. The mechanic who came over to winterize the engine and show me how to do it said that I could just run a wire from the little screw on the engine back behind the dashboard to the temp gauge display. That seemed so easy to me that I figured I must have gotten it wrong (because nothing on this boat seems easy, see below). Is that all there is to it?
3. The deck is pretty much shot, and so are the supports under it. The stringers are fine. I tracked down someone who seemed to know a thing or two about older Sport Crafts, and he said that the original boat did NOT have vertical supports under the deck (I don't know what they're called on a boat; in house-building they're joists), so at some point (my guess is--later in OO's ownership) someone stuck 'em in there because the deck was sagging, and didn't glass them, so now they're rotten as a month-old banana. So the big project I need to do before spring boat season is to rip up the deck and replace it. But that's another post, for another time.
4. When I hook up something that needs to be hard wired, How do I do it? If it has a positive and negative wire, how do I hook those up? Can I connect them to something else that is currently hardwired (like a light or a pump), or do I need to run the new thing directly to the battery, and if so, do I just connect the positive and negative hard wire to the positive and negative battery terminals? Sorry for the basic-ness of this question, but I just plain don't know and don't want to muck it up.
5. Can I hook up more than one bilge pump to an exit port, or will that cause backwashing of one flow into the other hose, if pump #2 isn't on when #1 is?
I have enough problems for at least a dozen more questions, but I will start with these. Can anyone help? I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks.
DJ in NY
