The Joys of Buying an Old Boat

Wiring rats nest under cockpit - one of several

My previous boat was the same age as Ayala. I sorta knew what I was getting into when I took on another 35 year old boat. There would be layers of wiring done by different owners and boatyard workers who just wanted to get something working and weren't particularly concerned with doing it neatly. Sure enough, there are several rats nests of wiring, battery posts and switch terminals with lots of wires attached instead of run to buss bars or terminal strips.

To add to that there are mysterious hoses that run from one place to another. A few dead end without being connected to a thru-hull fitting or a sink drain or anything else that makes sense. Fine! Yank it out. But there is also a puzzling amount of plumbing having to do with the head (toilet to you landlubbers). I am hesitant to do anything to it until I am sure I am not going to have raw sewage discharging into the bilge. It is not fun to clean up and the odor lingers – and lingers. There are valves to direct sewage to the holding tank or, when I am well away from land, directing it overboard. There are more valves for the backup bilge pump located under the cabin sole (floor boards). The pump can pump water from the bilge in the unfortunate case where there is water in the bilge and the electric pump cannot handle it. This pump can be switched to pump the holding tank overboard when I am offshore and there is no pump out facility available. In the case of pumping sewage overboard, we are talking about being at least 25 miles offshore.

The fresh water system has a mysterious ailment. First – some explanation about how a fresh water system works on a boat. Since it is often not hooked up to the city water system, fresh water is stored in one or more tanks on the boat. To get the water from the tank to a tap, something has to supply some pressure. That “something” is a small electric pump containing a switch that senses water pressure. When I first put water in the tanks, I turn on the pump and it pumps water into the tubing on the boat that takes water to the taps and the shower. Since they are closed, the system soon builds up pressure and the pump turns off. When I open a tap to get some water, some water flows out and causes pressure in the plumbing to drop and the pump comes on. When I close the tap, the pressure builds up and the pump turns itself off.

When I first moved aboard, the pump supplied pressure as it should but it would not shut off when I closed the tap. Last week, I replaced the pump. That seemed to fix the problem – for a while. Now, sometimes it shuts off properly, sometimes it keeps on running. If I open the tap for a few seconds more, water comes out but at very low pressure – or not at all. The pump sounds like no water is coming in to it – as if the water tank were empty. But I know the tanks isn't empty – I just filled it. After 10 to 30 seconds, the pump starts sounding like it is getting water again, the pressure builds up and when I turn off the tap, the pump stops running. My current theory is that grindylows live in the water tank and are hoping to drive me mad or trick me into opening up the tank so they can pull me in and drown me. (Don't know what a grindylow is? Read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.)

Looking down at the water tank in the bilge

Today, the water system problem got to the top of the to-do list. Not only does it have the problem with not shutting off properly, it leaks badly around the shower valves. The water tank lives in the bilge (basement) so I started by pulling up most of the removable sections of the cabin sole. That leaves the cabin looking a lot like the picture at right (taken looking down into the bilge) except that I also had tools scattered around the edges and stuff sitting on the benches that I haven't found homes for yet. In short, the cabin was a humongous mess!

The tank should have one hose running into it to fill it, one running out so I can get the water out and one to allow air to leave as the tank fills and re-enter as water is taken out. As you can see from the picture, the way it oughtta be is not quite the way it is.

Manual bilge pump and mysterious filter (top center/right)

I started following hoses. What is this? In the second picture, toward the top you can see a black hose curling around. It runs into a thing-a-majig that looks like it might be a strainer to keep dirt in the tank from getting out where I might drink it. I pulled out the filter element. Disgusting! It was covered in slimy green stuff. I cleaned it and started to put it back together and realized that there was only one hose attached to the filter. Hmmm.

After some head scratching and tracing the hose run more carefully, I realized that it had nothing to do with the fresh water system. It was part of the system that supplies cooling water to the air conditioning.

Air conditioning compressor

“Air conditioning!” you say in amazement. Yes, Ayala

used to have air conditioning. A couple of owners back in her history, Ayala (under a different name) was based in South Texas on the Gulf of Mexico for some years – an area well known for its hot, humid summers. The former owners apparently disliked sweating, usually tied up at marinas at night and apparently had money to burn. The air conditioning unit (shown at right) doesn't work now and I have neither the money nor the desire to have it fixed. It also takes up most of a highly desirable storage area.

I removed the newly discovered filter and the attached sea water pump and the rest of the plumbing that lead up to the air conditioning unit.

Seeing that I was not going to get to the bottom of the problem of the run-on pump before dark, I thought I would take a quick look at the leaky shower faucets and come back to the original problem tomorrow. I needed to have the boat a bit more straightened up before I would be able to cook dinner. Additionally, I don't like to leave the cabin in a condition that might cause me to fall into the bilge when I get up during the night to drain my bladder.

The leaky shower faucets

I tightened a few things here and there – but the quick fix did not work. It still leaks. I started tracing the plumbing to see if there was a shut-off valve. I want to pull the faucets apart to see if they need new pieces or if I have to replace them. In the process of (futilely) searching for the shutoff, I discovered that the valves that decide whether the head pumps overboard or into the holding tank are frozen. They are old and will most likely have to be replaced. The valves that select whether the manual bilge pump (the big round thing at right) pump out bilge water or holding tank contents are also frozen – and the pump itself doesn't work. Try as I might, I cannot budge the pump handle.

OK! Enough already. Time to put everything away. Make a big pot of spaghetti with Puttanesca sauce and wash it down with at least one glass of wine. All of this will be waiting for me tomorrow. I am hoping that answers will come to me in a dream tonight – and that I will remember the answers.

Buying an old boat can be a way to have a high quality boat at an affordable price. It can also be the gateway to a myriad of headaches. But the process of fixing the problems both gives me better knowledge of the boat and gives me a sense of truly owning the boat.

Ayala is a beautiful boat. It gives me great satisfaction to also be part of making her a smooth running, save boat. Fortunately, I take a perverse sort of enjoyment out of tracking down these problems and fixing them. I sense a lot of “enjoyment” in my future.

Moving Aboard

Moving into a new space – whether it is an apartment, a house or a boat – brings me agony. Where should things go? Some of it is obvious. Some of it is arbitrary. It is most intense on a boat. I want things to use the space efficiently. I want things to be easy to find. I want the items that I may need quickly to be stored where I can reach them with minimum delay. I want heavy things stored low in the boat and near the center line, if possible, to preserve the boat's stability. Things have to be stored so they don't shift when the boat is under way and starts to rock and roll. Too often, these requirements are in conflict.

Normally, when one moves into a land based dwelling, it is stripped bare of everything that does not uniquely belong to that dwelling. This is my third boat and I have found that not to be true for boats.

My first boat, Chatelaine, did come to me pretty much stripped bare. In fact, the previous owner removed some equipment after I made my offer – most notable, gorgeous clock and barometer set that had adorned the bulkhead forward of the dinette table.

My next boat, Laelia, came with a confusing wealth of miscellaneous stuff ranging from junk to surprisingly valuable things. Lots of extra lines, blocks, and a plethora of bottles of liquids devoted to maintaining the appearance of the boat. Lots of duplicates – several bottles of clear plastic cleaner, fiberglass cleaner, metal polish, etc. It wasn't all that hard to understand since the previous owners were not buying another boat.

When I sold Laelia, I left everything that was specific to her – spare parts for the wind vane, hoses, engine parts, etc. Although I had no intention of buying another boat, I took with me all the optional extra parts. I figured that eventually I would get around to selling off the items I took with me. Had I known what lay ahead, I might not have left behind quite as much gear as I did.

The move-in begins

The day after I signed documents to purchase Ayala, my daughter, Lane, helped me move two loads of boxes in her 4Runner. That's not a lot of stuff but it left the cabin stacked full of things I was bringing aboard. I've taken the approach of first putting away my clothes in drawers and locker space that obviously is intended for clothes storage. Then came the galley. I need to be able to find my food and cook it. That, too, is pretty obvious.

Then comes the hard part. A cruising boat needs a lot of “stuff” to keep it going reliably. If something breaks when the boat is well away from a marine supply store, it ranges from inconvenient to fatal if the needed replacement part is not aboard. I had brought assorted blocks and shackles, wire, ham radio equipment, etc, but given Ayala's utilization of storage space, I expected no problem finding room for my equipment.

Understand that Ayala was designed to be a serious cruising boat. That means that there is very little unusable volume in the interior. Although she has nearly identical length and beam (width), Laelia had not nearly the storage space. The builders had put her together in a way that left significant amounts of volume inaccessible or unusable for storage of gear.

Ayala is replete with drawers, cabinets, lockers, removable panels under the seat cushions as well as space under the cockpit. I had spent the better part of the week before I closed the deal on Ayala living aboard, doing some cleanup and poking through storage areas. I realized that there was a lot of items left aboard but I only pulled things out of storage if I needed to see the condition of the boat – evidence of leaks or rot.

After stowing clothes and galley gear, I started hauling stuff out of all the remaining storage spaces. I was dumbfound at the results. If I were to put a replacement value on the items I have found, it would run well over $1000. I found shackles and blocks. I found power tools – multiple circular sanders, a heat gun, and one as yet unidentified power tool. I found spools of wire, light bulbs of all descriptions, connectors for wiring, a charger that takes solar panel output and charges 12v batteries, small inverters for converting 12v DC to 120v AC. All good things to have but, given that I also had all of my gear left to stow, it has gotten to the point that each time I open a new storage area and find it full, I almost wish it was empty instead – almost.

At the end of day two

All of this is a long essay to designed to inform the reader that the move in process is going slowly. But, it is progressing. By the second night, I had pretty much put away my clothes and galley items (see right). When I initially put everything aboard, I could hardly walk from one end of the boat to the other. Two days later, there is nothing on the cabin sole (floor) to obstruct my peregrinations. However, there still is precious little space to sit in.

In the first euphoric hours after I signed the papers to make Ayala mine, I thought I might be able to throw everything aboard, cast off and head south. I had visions of rejoining friends in La Paz and spending sunny, warm days getting Ayala cleaned up, varnished and ship shape. Hah! Not a chance! I will be doing good to be in shape to sail in less than a month. Not only do I have to finish moving in and getting ready to go to sea, I have to wait for paperwork to catch up with me. It takes the Coast Guard about six weeks to process the documentation and get a copy to me. Then I have to deal with the foreign government paperwork – visas, permits, etc. All told, that may make the idea of going foreign any time soon a pipe dream.

Once again, patience is required – not always what I do best.

A New Voyage Begins

My romance with Ayala started when I was already involved with another boat. I was living aboard Laelia at Westpoint Harbor in Redwood City. As I would walk to and from Laelia, I would pass Ayala and feel a powerful attraction to this beautiful lady. She is a Robert Perry design - a Tayana 37. She was built by builders who seem to think that they should build her like a wooden boat that just happened to have a fiberglass hull. She is replete with beautiful teak and mahogany on deck with a small cockpit (highly desirable for offshore work), a low trunk cabin (ditto), a Monitor wind vane, solar panels and a wind turbine. All in all, a very competent looking offshore cruising boat. She was a bit forlorn looking. I never did see her owner and it looked like she was not being kept up.

Time marches on. I left Westpoint Marina to go off on a circumnavigation. The gory details are documented in my blog at VoyageOfLaelia.BlogSpot.com. Suffice it to say that eight months later I returned to the San Francisco Bay with plans to swallow the anchor and sell Laelia. By the time I had her ready to sell and received an offer for her, I realized that I couldn't give up boat life. On the evening before Laelia's sea trial and survey, I was leafing through Latitude 38's classified ads and discovered that Ayala was for sale. I called her owner and found that he had already accepted an offer for her but if I wanted to take a look at her, she would be in a boatyard near Laelia.

As luck would have it, Ayala was scheduled to be hauled for her survey just ahead of Laelia. As we were waiting for our turn, Ayala's owner, Antonio, came up to me and said that the prospective buyer (a first time buyer) had gotten cold feet. Ayala had some maintenance issues that he didn't want to deal with. I made a tentative offer on the spot. Antonio made a generous offer (and a good sales move) to let me stay aboard as much as I wanted to evaluate her in the next few days.

I arranged for a survey and a sea trial. In the meantime, Laelia's prospective buyers accepted the survey and the deal was closed. I camped out on Ayala for the next few days and did my own survey while waiting for the formal survey. I found lots of small things - deferred maintenance items that had come about due to Antonio's hectic work schedule as well as a change of heart about the boat he wanted for his cruising boat. Most of the items that turned up were things I could take care of myself. I was willing to go back to work, if needed, to earn the money to take care of the rest.

The sea trial sealed the deal in my mind. We sailed from Alameda to a point about a mile outside the Golden Gate Bridge. The tide was going out and a fairly stiff 15 - 20 knot breeze was coming in making steep, lumpy seas. Ayala dealt with it all with no fuss. She stayed surprisingly dry on deck and was easily controllable on all points of sail.

The formal survey the next day showed pretty much what I expected. There were a items related to rot from leaks around chain plates and other fittings. Her batteries were in sad shape. She needed a thorough cleaning and a lot of paint and varnish.

I emailed Antonio a modified offer and practically held my breath until I got a reply. Antonio suggested we meet for breakfast the next morning and discuss the offer. We met and after a fairly short discussion, settled on a price. The next few hours were spent racing around Alameda to various offices to get the paperwork handled. By mid afternoon, I was the new owner of Ayala. I was so exhausted by the effort that I came back to the boat and crashed for several hours.

Now for the move in. I've been sort of camped out, living out of duffle bags and a backpack. I pulled things out and put them in their new homes. My daughter, Lane, will be here with a car tomorrow AM to rescue some more of my belongings from the storage bin where they languish. There will be a few more days of chaos while I get settled in, but already it is starting to feel like home.

I did some research on the meaning of the name Ayala and came up with the fact that it is a Hebrew word meaning doe or gazelle. It also is the name of the first Spanish explorer to find the San Francisco Bay. I like both of those associations so I am keeping the name but changing the hailing port from San Francisco to Alameda to make it possible to differentiate between the two boats.

As I am getting settled in, I will be looking at what comes next. The possibilities are many. Things will begin to solidify in the next week or so. Stay tuned...