I was able to take a month in January of 2019 and head to Florida to work on the boat. I retired last year and now have more time and money to devote to getting this project done. I considered buying a catamaran myself and scrapping this project but something in me wants to finish what we have started.
For some of you new to the blog, Wildthing is a 1980 Pan Oceanic 46 pilothouse sailboat. It was purchased in 2003 in Bradenton Florida. The boat was move to a boat yard in St Petersburg Florida where is remained for 3 years. During that time teak decks were removed and the topsides were painted. The mast was pulled and all standing rigging was replaced. Other major work included demolition of the interior, new engine and fuel tanks. In 2008 we sailed it down to Cape Coral Florida where it has remained for the past 10 years.
Past blog posts have attempted to show updates on the work done during these past 10 years. We have had the opportunity to day sail the boat in the Fort Myers/Cape Coral area but have not taken any big trips to date.
The goal during this month was to see if we could finish up the majority of the interior to turn it back into a livable blue water cruising boat.
I arrive and tried to come up to speed on what needed to be done. My brother Brad and I are working on this project together so having two people working definitely helps. We sat down and developed to do list of the projects we wanted to complete. We decided the best use of our time would be to complete the interior tambour wall treatments and finish the flooring in the salon and galley. I had purchased some parts for the auto pilot and hydraulic steering so if we had time we would tackle that installation also.
My brother is still working part time but he has been putting many hours in preparing many of the pieces needed to finish the boat. He has engineered, fitted and cut all the headliner pieces for the salon, forward cabin and galley. These all were painted and prepared for the job. All of the headliner is trimmed out in solid teak pieces. These again had to be cut and fitted and given three coats of varnish. Many thousands of man hours have been put into this boat already. We have not kept track of the hours and I would be scared to guess just how many.
Last fall I came down and cut all the tambour for the salon. So the first thing was to get these pieces varnished with the final coat.
We set up a paint booth in the garage to finish the varnishing.
I prepped all the tambour pieces and Brad set up the spray gun so we could apply the final coat of varnish. We had all the pieces done in about an hour.
We used Epifanes varnish thinned down with a spraying thinner.
We let them dry for about 24 hour so they would cure nice and hard before we started gluing them up on the boat.
Before we fixed these pieces in place we had to give the existing teak trim three coats of varnish. This took a couple of days to varnishing and sanding. We started applying the tambour on the lower sections of the salon. These are small pieces and were easy to glue up.
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| Varnishing |
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| Lower salon |
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| Lower salon |
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| Lower salon bracing in place |
We glued up several pieces a day and used bracing to make sure they did not move. This process was slow but it made sure the panels were attached securely.
We then glued up some larger panels in the seating area and the bulkheads in the main salon. Throwing these big pieces up made a huge difference and things started to take shape quickly. The light maple tambour really brightened up the salon compared to the old dark teak veneer that was on all the surfaces.
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| Aft salon bulkhead |
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| Forward salon Bulkhead with ceiling trim |
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| Starboard Salon |
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| Starboard Salon |
Here are some final shots of the main salon with all the tambour finished.
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| Salon Bulkheads looking aft |
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| Port Side Salon before remodel |
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| Starboard Side Salon before remodel |
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| Starboard side salon after maple tambour |
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| Salon viewed from the galley |
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| Lower salon |
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| Starboard side salon |
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| Port Salon |
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The last piece going into the salon
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| Port Salon with cushions |
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| Salon looking aft |
We were super excited to see all the ugly bulkheads finally get covered up. It is finally starting to look like a boat again. We still have some finish work to do such as attaching cabinet doors and adding some trim to the solid surface areas. A month of work made a huge difference in the look of the boat. I hope to be back in the fall after hurricane season to complete the auto pilot, heads, forward berth and aft berths.
~~~ Sail On ~~~ /)
Mark
