Extreme Makeover: Boat Edition - Demolition

The boat's name is Gemini. That's quite propitious.

John is a Gemini by birth, and John and Wayne (while not twins) would be doing the work to bring the classically designed boat back to its "youthful and lively" self.

Besides, you can't change a boat's name willy-nilly. There's a whole process to go through if you don't want to tempt the fates, and we sure didn't want to do that.

The first step after Valley Marine removed the leg and sealed her transom with fiberglass was to take her somewhere we could work throughout the winter. As I mentioned, we are home rich but land poor. Consequently, our Piper Arrow moved outdoors and our hanger became a boatyard. Good for Gemini, bad for 997 (that's another story).

Valley Marine did lots of work in the engine area, but left us with all the old parts. We also had to attack the interior to make room for office space. This was something Wayne and I could do. We attacked it with a vengeance and removed as much as we could with hand tools. Bags of trash and larger items were stored under the boat until we were ready for a trip to the dump. Unfortunately, the things we were removing didn't have any reuse or recycle value.

Once the initial cleanup was done, John came in with his power tools and completed the removal of interior items right down to the fiberglass hull. What we wanted was empty space, and that's what we got. No walls around the head, for that matter no head. No built in galley, no dinette, no captain's chair, no sleeping platform in the bow, nothing from the floor up.

Because of John's and our schedule, this process took about a month. Our hanger was an organized mess, but fortunately our neighbors (mostly RVs stored for the winter) didn't complain. Now we were ready for the real work of the transformation. Stay tuned - there's more to come. -- Margy