Old Wiring & Interior Damage

I spent about 4-5 hours today tearing old wiring and fittings out of the interior of the boat.  The end result:

The pile of wires, hoses and rotted cabinet doors that I removed today.

There was one section of wiring that I wasn't able to remove.  There is a conduit molded into the the structure of the boat that starts under the stbd settee about even with the back side of the keel and wraps around the front of the keel and comes out in the cabinet under the galley.  There are a couple cables and a water hose that run through it.  I'll have to work on removing these parts later on after I tear out some of the interior.  Here you can see what I'm talking about:

Stbd end of conduit is just forward of the water tank.

Port end of conduit is just forward of the valve.

As for the rest of the interior, it is in pretty bad shape.  I'll have a lot of plywood to replace after I get the deck fixed up.  I'll step you through it starting from the bow.  Sorry for the quality of the pictures, I've been taking these on my cell phone.

First, the v-berth:

Damage to interior in v-berth.

The big problem up here has been the fordeck hatch leaking.  In about an hour of collecting water from the worst drip spot, I collected about a half inch of water in that pink bin you can see in the corner of the picture.  Getting a new Lewmar hatch to replace the old RC Marine hatch is a top priority, along with all the deck recoring.  In the picture below you can see the lovely color of rotten plywood.  This plywood had been coated by some kind of resin system, but it is so old and out of repair that the stuff is just flaking off.  On top of that, the hatches outboard of the toilet on both sides are badly warped and wont lay flat.  I tried to remove the stbd side one today, but I couldn't get the screwdriver to grip on a few screws.  I'll have to come back with the right tools.  By the way,  I'll most likely be getting rid of the head... it just doesn't seem worth the hastle.

The stbd side forward of the companion way:

Stbd side, forward.

Stbd side aft, former location of the electrical panels.

In the first picture here between the two access hatches, near the bottom of the pic, there is some water damage to the plywood.  The area moves under my weight more than I would like it to.  So probably the whole stbd side settee will need to be replaced.  Just aft of those two access hatches is the water tank, which I havn't had a chance to access quite yet.  The second pic is further aft, near the companion way where the electrical panels had been installed.  There was a plywood panel in place over the upper section here, but it was completely water logged and tore right out.  It seems like holes were drilled through all the woodwork here to run the wiring to and from the breaker panels and the radio, but no one bothered to seal up the wood.  Lots of locations for water to get into the plys here.  Also, notice the little pad in the upper right corner of the pic.  It is a lovely piece of work that I'll tell you about down the page a bit.

Port side, bulkhead and galley:

General view of galley and bulkhead.

Close up of damage to bulkhead.

It is hard to see much in the first picture here.  The actual surface of the galley seems to be in decent shape.  The plastic glued to the top of the plywood must have saved it from some water damage, and this is one of the drier places on the boat.  There is some bad damage to the underlying structure however.  I didn't take a good picture of it, but you can see it a little if you go back and look at the port end of the conduit.  the panel against the keel trunk is a bunch of rotten mush.  I'll probably just be extending the settee and getting rid of the galley idea.  The bigger concern here is the damage to the bulkhead.  The two holes you can see are where wires passed through for the galley and head cabin lights.  Once again, it looks like holes were drilled and not sealed.  There also seems to be some water getting into the bulkhead where it intersects the deck.  Not good.  Not good at all.


Stbd side, under the cockpit benches:

Battery box?

I'm not quite sure what this box was intended to be used for.  Maybe for the battery, but we always kept the battery just forward of here under the settee.  In any case, this box is going to have to go.  It is just soaked through.  The joint on the left side of the image had a nice generous fillet of epoxy or something on the inside, but the wood swelled so much that the epoxy just popped right off.  There is also extensive water damage to the bottom few inches of the longitudinal bulkhead under the cockpit floor here.  It is the worst on the stbd side (probably because this box gave water a way in) but both sides have it pretty bad.

Now for that pad that I pointed out earlier.  You've already seen the stbd side one.  Now look at the port:

Mounting pad for port cabin light.

These used to be the mounting pads for the cabin lights.  The first day I was taking things off the boat I bumped the port side one and the plywood just fell apart.  There are still 2 or 3 plys attached to the boat  The white dot you see is what is left of a screw used to hold the plywood in place.  You can also see where someone had the bright idea to mold the wires into the deck.  Completely useless.

The result of all this surveying:  The entire interior of this boat is going to have to be torn out and replaced.  Also, the cockpit benches are so badly delaminated that they are going to have to be declared no-step zones until they can be repaired.  It is so bad that the interior skin is actually starting to have major cracks open up.  I tried to take a couple pictures but they didn't turn out.

This is all much worse than I feared and it also means that I probably won't be going sailing much next summer.