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During our pre-purchase survey, our surveyor Scott Peyerk inspected our boat with copious use of his trusty hammer. Basically, a survey in progress sounds like this: Whack! "That's interesting..." Whack! "That's interesting..." I swear, for every time he said, "That's interesting" it has cost me $1000 in repairs. Its made me a bit jumpy about anyone uttering those words around my boat. One of his "interesting" finds with the hammer included popping off a couple of the nuts from the keel bolts. The bolts were so rusted, that the only thing holding some of them on was a bit of adhesive goop. Our diver, Les Vasconcellos, had noticed some "smiles" (cracking) around the keel, however that's pretty common and not always cause for concern. Now that we had our boat out of the water, we could see that, like a plumber working under a sink, the keel had smiles on both ends.

One of our main motivations in planning our haul-out was to get the work done before Ala Wai Marine had closed up shop. We'd had bad experiences with Keehi Marine Center, which was the next closest haul-out point for recreational vessels. KMC had kicked us out of a permanent slip there for "no reason." Once KMC had heard that Ala Wai Marine was being shut down by the state, they raised prices for their haul-outs. And so, the state's cash-cow of harbors, the largest harbor in our state, is going to be without a local haul-out point. Gee, thanks state.

When we had work done on our other boat, Tropic Moon, dropping the rudder consisted of removing one or two bolts. The rudder then popped out. Of course Tropic Moon had tiller steering. Tempo has a steering wheel and an emergency tiller that you are supposedly able to use despite the complete lack of room in the cockpit for a tiller due to the steering column. Sean had actually spent a lot of time early on in our haul-out to free the rudder from the clutches of the steering transom. Since then we'd been waiting for Charlie and the boat lift to lift the boat high enough to get the rudder out.

Our boat surveyor, Scott Peyerk, once told us that a thru-hull is nothing more than an engineering hole in your boat. Our boat had five below the water thru-hulls. If you count the prop shaft, the rudder shaft, and two transducer thru-hulls then that brings the total to nine holes. So, of the nine thru-hulls, five were operable, having valves on them to allow fluid to move one way or the other. Of the five operable thru hulls with valves on them, all five valves were stuck. Yep, we had five engineered holes in our boat that we couldn't control. Holes gone wild!

By the time I arrived that morning there were four new holes in my boat. Apparently, Sean and Adam had an early start and were going gung-ho with the hole saw. To make the job easier, they had made a wood template off one of the motors so that they knew exactly where to cut the holes. Line up the template in the tank, mark the holes, repeat on the other side, drill the holes, and bingo-bango, you're in business. Of course, Murphy's Law reared its head. The port and starboard motors had slightly different pipe positions. Of course, they didn't discover this till they were trying to dry-fit the motors in the holes.

Originally we thought we'd just stay on the boat during its haul-out. We'd lived in worse conditions. It'd be just like camping again. (shudder) However, this didn't seem very practical as we didn't have ready access to water on the boat, electricity was limited to a single extension cord, and the shower facilities were a long, long walk away. Blessed with many friends, we did have a decent number of options for where to stay while our boat was laid up.

By the time I arrived at the boat in the morning, the shaft was already removed. Sean told us that had we wanted to keep the shaft and prop, we would have had to pay $1500 for new parts. However, we wouldn't be needing those parts with out new engines. The prop itself was corroded badly, chips of orange corroded bronze breaking off the leading edge. We could see that the zinc was still in relatively good condition that we'd had Les Vasconcellos, our diver, install. With the prop shaft out, Sean could seal up the shaft's hole and we'd be one step closer toward our electric conversion. Unfortunately, sealing up the hole isn't as straightforward as jamming some epoxy inside and going to lunch. Of course not! Heck no, what fun would that be?

A couple weeks prior Sean had taken a look at the engine. I had long since given up hope of getting it started. I'd previously put seafoam in the cyldinders and freed it up for rotation. Yet when I had tried to start the engine, the starter motor had merely made the engine turn a few times lamely. The starter sounded good, but those old batteries were lame. Since then we had installed new batteries. Sean came around and placed his palm on the engine, muttered some incantation and told us, "All is good now" and the engine fired right up. Well, it happened something like that but involved him bleeding the injectors. Since then I had scrubbed and scrubbed the engine, sprayed it with OSFO, and scrubbed some more, oiled it with WD40, and scrubbed more. The difference between the old rusty engine and the shiny metallic engine now before us was like night and day. Now, Sean had returned the tear the damn thing out.

Tempo sits up on stilts with its keel resting on thick wooden blocks. As the boat is used to having the keel pull down and not pushing up, some of the interior has shifted a bit. A crack or two in the interior fiberglass (not structural) has widened and the door to the head is sticking. To get up into the boat I have to climb a rickety aluminum ladder which has apparently broken in several places in the past and is fastened back together with pieces of reinforcing strips of metal. After several trips up and down on that thing I finally found my wrench set and tightened down all the loose nuts making the ladder just a tad safer.

All that night I had nightmares of increasingly unlikely catastrophic boating accidents, motor failures, boat sinkings, and so forth. The morning of the haul-out had arrived, ready or not. And we weren't ready! Michael never showed up, and Paul showed up late. (Apparently 8 o'clock is the new 7.) Still, we were grateful to have his help, late or not. He'd gone out of his way to come to our rescue. Being the lifeguard that he is, that's par for the course. Now, we just needed to get that motor mounted and haul ass over to the lift point for our 9 am haul out.