It’s been a long week full of scrubbing, chiseling, grinding, cleaning, and cold weather. Sea Tow towed the engine-less Illusion to Rockville, SC, on Tuesday, and by Wednesday she was out of the water and up on stilts. Rockville Marine is a boatyard in Rockville, a small community at the end of Wadmalaw Island, about 45 minutes south of Charleston. It is a beautiful place, which would be all the more enjoyable if it weren’t quite so cold, but the sunsets are awesome nonetheless.

Brian decided to haul out the boat while we wait for engine parts so the he could replace the sea cocks and through-holes and inspect the keel bolts, two big safety precautions to give us a little more peace of mind before we set sail. The keel bolts and sea cocks are located down in the bottom of the boat, in the bilge to be exact, which is where any excess water on the boat drains into. I don’t think the bilge had been cleaned out in decades, as we found about 30 years worth of sludge and rust down there. You can see the before and after pictures below. Talk about a mess.

First we ran a bunch of water and a green cleaning solution through it, followed by scrubbing, more water, vacuuming, and more scrubbing, and more water, more scrubbing, and more water. Once the bilge was relatively clean (as clean as one could expect), we got a good look at the keel bolts and metal backing plates. Let’s just say they were not as reassuring as we hoped, in fact they kind of resembled relics from the Hunley, or earlier still, maybe even the Revolutionary War. So. . . . task number two, we set to work scraping chunks of rust off the backing plates and bolts.

Once we finish scraping them, we will coat them with a rust-preventing solution and paint the entire bilge, in the hopes of stopping further deterioration and keeping things a bit cleaner. Hopefully there is still enough metal to keep things secure. Brian managed to get three sea cocks removed (the ones behind where the engine goes), so we should be able to get those replaced this week as well. In addition, engine parts should be ready this week, so things are moving along, albeit slowly. And in the meantime, we get to admire this lovely location. If only I had an art studio out here, I’d be in heaven.

Also, I got a new (used) camera and am super excited to be putting it to good use.