What horrible things lurk in our bilge? Restoring an abandoned sailing yacht [Season 2 Episode 14]

Hi everybody! This is the boat we're going to do some work. It's not really cold even inside the boat. So we're just going to have a look at this. I'll give you a bit of a... I'm Andy. I'm Melissa. And I'm Jack. And together we're working on restoring our sailing yacht. Some of you might think we're crazy taking on the challenge of restoring this boat and creating a life less ordinary. And we're sure there will be blood, sweat and tears but it will all be worth it when we embark on our epic adventure around the world. So that day Dad and I stayed warm and dry inside the boat playing chess, watching films and eating chocolate. By the evening the wind had died down and although it was still cold it looked like the next day might be a better day for working. What a difference, eh Jack? From yesterday. And yesterday was like really windy. Like 50 mile an hour wind. Well it was basically 50 miles per hour wind. Yeah, we saw 50 on the wind speed indicator on the boat for a minute. Oh we'll definitely be doing some boat work today. Couldn't do any boat work yesterday as you saw the weather was just dreadful. But what we could do today we can either carry on in the back lazarette which is pretty cold because it's still freezing here, although there's no wind so it's less uncomfortable than yesterday. Or we could strip out we know the anchor locker is going to need cutting out and lots of welding there but what I would quite like to do and I might do this today is strip out a lot of the paneling behind the cupboards and in the floor and under the forepeak bed. Some of the panels are really hard to get out. The wooden panels you mean? So we might be doing some lazarette work today or we might be doing some inspecting the back of steel today. Not quite sure yet but keep watching and find out. Right so what I'm going to do now is start to empty the foreward lockers. We've already had everything out and put stuff back in because there's a limit to what we can take home in the car and stuff each time. But I'm going to empty the forepeak lockers have a look under the front one and try and get to as much of the steel as possible expose much of the steel as possible so we can see what condition the inside of the hull is in up at the forepeak here. So this forward locker has actually got a water tank in it. I'm going to start I think by by removing this water tank because that's probably, I'm suspecting there might be some rust under there. We know that the anchor locker is very suspicious but what I want to see is how far back that all comes. So here you go here is the forward locker that had got the water tank in. Up in that corner nothing. That redness by the way that's not rust that's red oxide paint. No rust there. Like I say this tube here is the drain for the anchor locker which is great because what I'm hoping then is that any rust that's in the anchor locker won't go down below the floor of the anchor locker. It's quite complicated isn't it, all of those ribs. Okay so we've done that forward bit, that's where the water tank was. Really pleased with that, no rust at all. Now we're going to do this locker which is full of old tools and stuff. We have had it all out when we first saw the boat but I'm going to take everything out now and dump it so that we can take it all home. Some of it is actually going to be quite useful. We've got monster tie wraps we've got a piece of wire that'll be handy for lots of things, not least when you feed a piece of rope or something down the inside of the mast with a mouse line you can use that to hook stuff out. Bit of old rag now even I can't find a use for that apart from mopping up rubbish. Switch panel probably obsolete but might come in useful. Little drill just found a drogue look at this might come in handy beach streaming warps OK so this side, no rust at all anywhere. That is a patch of glue that's leaked out of some glue container that bulkhead there goes through to where we just were, where the water tank was and now I'm going to clean out the other side over there. There is a hatch there so rather than have to rip all the furniture out and rip all the floor up I'm hoping if I can take those screws out we might be able to remove that hatch or I might even be able to just lift out. OK so into this side now there's a few bits for me to remove from here and there's water in this container I wonder how the heck that's got there I'm guessing that must just be condensation that's literally dripped down into there but we'll take that off and empty it. There's quite a few screws here and it's really important not to let those kind of things get down into the bilge if you possibly can because those are the kind of things that will clog your bilge pump and broken glass, look at that got to be careful. Let's have a look under this hatch then, see if we can get underneath it. I might need to take the screws out but I don't think I do. Ah, water lots and lots of water. That's going to be a pain to get out. Fortunately I've got a little battery bilge pump Got the little bilge pump running to empty that. I think that water that's in there, I think that's literally what's come out of the water tank because the fittings were all knackered and there wasn't that much water in the tank, there was probably only like a few litres of water left in it and I think what's happened is the fittings have failed and that that water in there is actually fresh water that's come out of the water tanks themselves and it's going down very quickly so that tells me there isn't actually a lot of it. Got all the water out and now I've got to now I've got to give it a clean so I've started just using a bit of detergent and warm soapy water. Well the longer and the shorter it is there's no rust down here that's just muck, that red stuff, that's just muck which I'll get off when I can reach it but this bilge has got no rusting at all it's just perfect it's disgusting but it's perfect. So I'm going to let this air out now leave all the hatches off and the covers open you can see my breath now it's getting very cold Hello What shall I call you? Viewers address yeah viewers that's how we say it. Okay I'm going to do a little bit of a tour around the boatyard. Okay so find a massive Bruce Roberts I think yeah I think that's Bruce Roberts, some long keel which is the same with a full keel except it's just a bit smaller, it doesn't go all the way up to here and massive, massive boat. I think that happened from, well I think the beast from the east did that. The storm that came here two years ago that's a fisher, see here designed to be a motor sailor and then people actually discovered they were quite good at sailing nice little quite like it nice well nicely designed ooh does that have two propellers or is it just an illusion, yeah it's got two propellers. By the way I've got a question for you guys because one thing that I just don't really understand is if you come over here there's this another, well it's a catch and I just don't understand there's a boom there but there's another, it looks like there's another boom here if you do know can you tell us in the comment section. Oh and also please subscribe and like the video. Okay so moving on over here well if you haven't watched season one where we have Aeolus um snapdragon 24 um she has a bilge keel and if you don't know what a bilge keel is for um well or what they look like, they look like this two small little keels which help they're quite common in Wales and places like that because well they're common all over the world of course but well they're common around here as well have I said common too many times? um because the sea goes out and there's a bunch of sand, a bilge keel and a triple keel will help you balance on the sand so long keel or full keel yeah long keel, full keel or thin keel well anyone with just one keel they'll just tip over okay what my point is bilge keel is better on a place where the sea comes out not a thin keel or a full keel okay that's all I'm saying well that's been quite simple, I could have just said that I'm just making a massive discussion about that, I should have said that and then here's a boat that my mum kinda likes a moody that person, whoever named that boat is um quite correct well whoever named that boat is definitely correct because you buy a boat you put it, well you might have to fix it up, but you put it in the water you get your money wet because your money is the boat because you bought the boat so that's quite true, slightly duller so basically you're not getting your real money wet but you are basically getting your money wet my hands are freezing my hands are really red, your hands are red yeah I've got hot aches you've got what, hot aches you've got hot aches now, that's how cold it is it's freezing right enough jack cam for now, okay so we're getting to the end of the day again, it's going dark got some lights on but it's getting towards the point where it's too dark to carry on working so I'll just show you what I've achieved today literally just under the forepeak bed I've removed the water tank I've taken everything out, I've got under the floor panels, I've given everything a good clean as much as I can today there'll be more cleaning once it's dried out a bit and yeah, come and have a look at what I've done down here so yeah, this is the forward locker under the forepeak bed looking forwards you can see right at the end over there right at the end there that is the solid bulkhead going into the anchor chain locker so that's a watertight solid bulkhead going into the chain locker if we look across to starboard side you can see there's some red oxide paint so obviously at some point I think what's happened there is they've welded on some tabs to screw something to or something, it's painted over with red oxide there's a couple of rust stains there that are just where the water level has sat in the bilge for a little while, I've been scrubbing those off but they are coming off slowly but they're literally just like a watermark on your bath where the water level has sat, there's not a speck of rust, those little bits are literally just water stains like you'd have a ring around your bath pan around, looking good looking good and from what I can tell the whole of the rest of the boat looks to be in this kind of condition apart from the aft lazarettes and the chain locker at the front, and obviously there's exterior blisters which need tarting up and treating and repairing and painting let's have a look at the other bits that I did this is underneath the starboard side of the forward cabin not a speck of rust there we are let me turn the light round there we are that is just beautiful paint again a little bit of red oxide on that tab that's been used to bolt the bulkhead on the wood's dry and a little bit of mould to clear up similar sort of story welds all look good tell you something I really like about the construction of this boat as well, I don't know if you can see but behind all the ribs there's actually gaps so water can't sit on any of those stringers or ribs anywhere there's periodic gaps and holes in the ribs and the stringers so that any water that does sit on those stringers runs down into the bilge so that's really really good happy with that starboard side, sorry the port side of the forward blocker no rust again metalwork looks great there's a skin fitting there which according to the last survey isn't being used, it's just blanked off I don't even know why it's there presumably it was there for something at some point but what I might do is stick a bilge pump in this forward section and just take an extra bilge pump to there because that wouldn't hurt so next we'll just have a look down there at the bit that was full of water from earlier and I'll show you what I've managed to do with that so we've got no rust again it's all very manky but I've given it a bit of a clean or as much of a clean as I can there's no rust pan around nice and slowly that's just watermark like you'd have on your bath it shows where the water had come up to in that bilge that was just accumulated rainwater and leakage from the tank that hole there goes through into the bilge where the water tank, the forward water tank is, so that's where the pipe had come through and that's looking the other direction no rust now the question is I don't see the sense in ripping out the whole interior when all we've got to do is paint clean this up and paint it I don't like it being painted in black I think that's a silly idea so I want to clean it thoroughly and paint it in a light grey or a white even I can't see the sense in ripping up the whole floor just to do that, if there was welding required then I would rip the whole floor up and again some people have said right from the start why aren't you ripping out the whole interior well I don't need to and I don't want to and if I need to, if there's bits of welding that I have to rip out furniture to get to, then I will do exactly that so there you go, there's the end of another episode for you you've got to be mad to enjoy watching this stuff really, apart from Jack Cam Jack Cam I think makes the episodes worth watching but what have we done today well we, I Melissa's been at work and I've cleaned out the forward bilges under the forward cabin and I'm absolutely delighted they're in really really good shape the metalwork is like perfect no issues whatsoever the only thing I don't like is the fact that it's painted black, which I think is daft for a bilge, I think it should be painted light so you can see what's going on so I'm going to paint them out and I'm actually going to install new bilge pumps of course, and new plumbing and new pipes and new water tanks hello Jack, hello, it's the end of the episode have you had fun yeah, watched a bit of Star Trek done a bit of Lego can I also say thank you very much to one of our patrons Dennis Small thank you very much for giving us well, you the Lego's for you I think so what's the Lego that you've had erm, the Sol Solomon Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that's right, yeah who's Frank Lloyd Wright a famous architect in America, good good good so we're going to read up a bit more about him aren't we because he's really important really important guy and along with that amazing Lego we also got some lovely sweets and some jelly which you call jelly, which we call jam it's jam, but it's called jelly which is amazing oh Frank, Jack's going to get something else he's called Frank now, no Jack's going to get something else and a lovely hat for Jack, are you going to get your hat, yes oh you've put it down, we're packing to go so I think he's put his hat away ready for us to go I haven't it was in the forepeak ok, well we'll wear it in a minute when we walk up to the car, don't worry about it bye hope you enjoyed this episode yeah, thanks, bye as always thank you so much for watching we'd like to thank all of our patrons especially our new patrons this month, Pamela Bennett Jim Trevethan David Olsen Madley and Mac John Elmore and Kevin Brooks and our friends and supporters we are genuinely humbled that you would contribute your love, support, time and actual money towards what we are doing we couldn't do this without you, thank you