12-26-2010

After getting the boat cleaned up and the bilges cleaned, we paid the boat yard to install new battery cables.  At first, I was going to do this myself, but when I looked at the existing cables, I realized I wanted someone else to do it, because I did not have the appropriate tools for the job. 
The job costed about $3800.00, but it was worth paying someone else to do it.  The battery cables were size 4/O and there was about 50 ft of cable used.   The boat yard did an excellent job.  We were now able to put the boat in the water and run the engines.  This would be the extent of the sea trial. 

At this point, we were obligated to pay the balance for the boat.  At this time, we decided to change the name of the boat from "El Dorado" to "Renegade".  We figured we had about 10 weekends of work to get the boat ready to drive to Louisiana.  We then planned the order that the repairs would be completed in.

Step 1

The first thing we had to do was get the boat cleaned up all the junk off the boat.   It was a real mess.  There was oily water in all the bilges.  Stuff scattered everywhere.  This took me about 3 and a half days.

Once I had the boat cleaned up, I could evaluate the condition of the boat and what repairs were needed.  The one big surprise, and I do mean BIG Surprise, was the fact that we were going to have to have the transmission pulled out of the boat and sent to the repair shop to have both transmission housings replaced.  This was an unexpected expense.   Luckily, I found this during the period we had for our sea trial, per the buyers contract, and persuaded the seller to split the cost.  The transmission repair ended up costing about $13,000.00.

At first

This is about the 1968 45 ft Hatteras Convertible that my brother and I purchased.  We are restoring the boat for our use for off shore fishing.   This boat was hull number 1, which meant it was the first 45 ft convertible that Hatteras built.  Hatteras continued to built the same basic boat until 1984.  When I first saw the boat it was in a Panama City boat yard and had been there for almost 2 years.