Well nobody ever said owning a boat would be cheap. Or easy.

I am about to spend a bunch of money on Grizabella, basically catching up on maintenance items that are well overdue. Where to begin?

When I bought her, the surveyor noticed that the engine (a 1983 Universal Atomic 4) had a small head gasket leak. He pointed it out to me and said it wasn't a huge issue, but I should address it before too long. He also raved about what great engines the Atomic 4s are, and how easy it is to replace the head gasket. Uh huh. Riiiiiight.

I figured it would make sense to replace the head gasket while winterizing the boat, so in November, I bought a new head gasket kit from Moyer Marine and around Thanksgiving, I made the 90-minute trek from home to the marina. I first set about getting the old oil out of the crankcase. The little hand pump the previous owner had left aboard turned out to be simply not up to the job. After about 987 strokes and the air inside the cabin turning blue from my many muttered blessings upon that little benighted hand pump, I decided the time had come for a quick trip to the West Marine in Deltaville, to allow them to separate me from yet more of my money in the quest for a better engine oil removal device. There seems already to be the perfected wallet money removal device - its name is "boat."

After an hour round-trip to the West Marine in Deltaville and a wallet $80 lighter, I returned with a nifty engine oil vacuum extractor, which turned out to be worth the expense, because it worked amazingly well. It worked so well it sucked out of the engine's crankcase not only about 2 quarts of oil, but also about 2 quarts of water.

Hey, neato, who put all that water in my engine's crankcase? Last I checked, water in the crankcase generally is not a desirable feature in an internal combustion engine.

I'm hoping it merely was because of the head gasket leak and not some larger problem, like a hole in a cylinder wall. If so, this whole sailboat and engine maintenance thing could very quickly go from expensive to EXPENSIVE. I'm now wishing I had followed up on that old Atomic 4 I saw listed on Craig's list a few weeks back for $150.

I quickly discovered that the standard stud puller I had brought with me was not going to work on the studs for this engine. After fooling around and dismantling what I could, I said the heck with it, admitted temporary defeat and headed home. As a "winterizing" step, I removed the block plugs and drained the water out of the block, though.
Turns out you need a special stud puller made by SnapOn(tm) consisting of two pieces sold separately, so you know that's going to be expensive. So I browsed on over to SnapOn(tm)'s website, and yup, over $80 for the stupid stud puller.

While I was spending money anyhow, I also swung by the Moyer Marine website to see how much of my money they could sweet talk me out of. Let's see - a couple new engine studs to replace the couple I munged up trying to get them out using my cheap puller; a water pump overhaul kit; a new thermostat kit; a couple new gaskets for this and that; a high temperature/low oil pressure alarm kit... hey, lookie that! Three hunnert bucks before you know it.

The following weekend, armed with the new SnapOn(tm) fancy stud puller and $300 worth of Moyer Marine fancy new parts, I once again made the trek out to the slip where she lay. It was COLD that day. It also was just too darn quiet. I need to install a radio, so I at least have something to cover up the cursing and talking to myself.

Using my fancy-schmancy new SnapOn(tm) stud puller, I quickly got all of the studs out, except the two that hold the thermostat housing on. Nice. I then went at the first thermostat housing stud. Which neatly snapped off...

... leaving the threaded section of the stud stuck in my stud puller.

Thus ended attempt number 2 at removing the head.

Being that it's going to take some work to get those last two studs out, and the engine really is in need of a repaint, as the paint is flaking off and rusty metal is showing through, and it's been in there 27 years, I concluded it's time to pull it out and do a bench overhaul.

On Thursday, January 6, Boat U.S. towed her over to the Deltaville Boatyard, who hauled and blocked her (as far as I know - I wasn't there and haven't yet been over there since they did it). This weekend, I'll run up there and work on getting the engine disconnected from everything so it's ready to be lifted out, which hopefully we'll do next weekend. I'll lower it into my truck bed and bring it home so I can work on it on a bench in my garage, which should be a damn sight easier than hunching over a stinky bilge under the companionway.

While she's on the hard, I'm also going to take care of several other matters:

- remove the old abandoned through-hulls from the old marine head and have them glassed over.

- make a new engine box forward bulkhead and cover. I want to get more of an old-timey wooden boat feel to the interior. The bulkhead in front of the engine (in between the two aft quarter berths) is plywood covered with a plastic laminate with fake wood grain. The engine box lid is plywood covered with plain off-white laminate, so it looks kind of like an old diner countertop. Neither one is in particularly good condition; they're looking tired. So I'm planning on making a new bulkhead with raised frame and panel construction, painted off-white to match the rest of the cabin, and a new lid out of black walnut, since I've got some lying around.

- make a new battery box, so that the house batteries are completely covered.

- re-bed leaking deck hardware and two leaking portlights

I might replace the propeller with the Indigo three-blade prop. The current prop doesn't seem right, as the engine never gets above about 1600 rpm. But the new one isn't cheap. Ah well, it's only money, right? And what the boat wants, the boat gets.

And the spending continues...

A few weeks back, I sent the mainsail to Sailcare in PA to see what it might need in the way of cleaning, patching and general repair. It's an old sail and was showing some pretty serious wear and tear. Jerry at Sailcare seems like a nice guy on the phone and willing to spend time discussing everything. His assessment is that the main sail is pretty old and worn out. Turns out he recommended about $1,200 of various repairs. The leech had a lot of sun damage, most likely because the sail cover was old and no longer providing any UV protection. I've been looking into getting a new sail cover made anyhow - I mean, heck, it's only money, right?

Jerry said he could make a whole new main sail for about $1,600. He estimated the sail was at least 25 years old and likely older, so I'm thinking it's time. For the money, it makes no sense to keep patching the old one.

So a new mainsail is on order.

The boat came with a roller-reefing boom, but I'm going to convert to traditional slab reefing. So Jerry will be installing a row of reefing points in when he makes the new sail. I'll fix the rotating boom so it won't rotate and install lazy jacks. That will make it easier to drop the main without it falling all over and making it hard to see where we're going.

I'm sure there's more I was thinking of doing, but I can't remember, and this post is far too long already.

And of course, I want to re-launch by early April, because I'm scheduled to go on a four-day sail with some other guys in mid-April.

It remains to be seen exactly how much of my wildly optimistic plans I'll get done by then...