Hello everyone,
I would like to introduce myself as a new Hunter owner! My wife and I purchased a H31 last August (2017) and moved aboard after a week of ownership. The boat was in rough-ish condition, though mostly intact, just needing lots of things fixed. I have some sailing experience from smaller boats on inland lakes but my wife is new to this. We are living at a marina now, fixing her up but also working.
We didn't get the boat surveyed because, among other reasons, I could see well enough pretty much everything needed TLC. However, the previous owner did take us out on it sailing and the engine fired up too, so I knew it was in at least good enough condition to get out of the harbor. Our purchase price was $7,900, which may have been high, I don't know, it seemed reasonable at the time in comparison to other boats we had looked at for not much less but in significantly worse condition. Our entire boat search consisted of 1 week of looking because our landlord needed his house back on short notice and instead of moving to an apartment or another house we decided it would be fun to go live on a boat, but only made that decision 2 weeks before we had to be out of the house. That gave us 1 week to quick find a boat, and 1 week to quick get it up to snuff good enough to live on. Of course we were both working too, so didn't have much time indeed. We also didn't have tons of cash, but wanted to buy the boat outright instead of financing it. This Hunter fit the bill.
After the purchase I went around and made a list of about 100 projects it needed. We've worked our way through about a 3rd of the list so far.
The floors were rotted out in the salon area and the boat stank so bad I could hardly go below without gettning knocked over when we first bought it. Therefore, our first project was to pull the floor out. The hatches had leaked water which got underneath the floor and caused the rotting.
We pulled out the settee's on both sides, lifted out the rotted remnants of the cabin sole, and drilled a number of 3" holes in our liner to gain access underneath, as well as putting holes in the bottom of the bilge to access the trapped water underneath in the "false" bilge. There was lots of nasty mold under the liner which I cleaned out by hosing with soapy water. To wit, I blasted water through the door under the vee-berth, through access ports in the aft area of the boat, and through the various holes I had drilled in the liner in the salon area. Also I "flooded" the boat (filled the bilge and left about 6" standing water inside) and let soak with bleach solution, then pumped it all out, repeatedly. At first the water was black, yucky water, but after many iterations of flooding, scrubbing under the liner with a brush as far as my arms would reach through the various access holes, letting the bleach solution soak, and then pumping again, the water eventually ran clear. We then dried everything out for a couple days and put in new plywood with vinyl planking glued down (for the salon area) and screwing the wooden settee's back in (this wood was ok, except the vertical board on the port settee was also rotted and I replaced it too). We didn't have time to replace the sole fore and aft (by the bathroom and the kitchen) so our cabin sole doesn't match now, but is very functional!
All in all, that was the first week of work (late nights at the boat after work!) and then we moved aboard. All that cleaning got rid of the nasty smell, except our head was still pretty grody and smelled. When we purchased the boat, for some reason there was no sink or faucet in the bathroom. The water lines were there though, hanging loose. There was also no "cabinet wall" underneath the sink, just a curtain they had rigged.
First item of business for the bathroom was to throw away the old toilet and install a new Jabsco as well as install a new sink and faucet. That made things functional, except the hoses were old and leaking, no matter how hard I tightened the hose clamps. Over the next few months I overhauled the bathroom, including installing sink/faucet, replacing all the sanitation hoses, installing a Y-valve, cleaning out the holding tank, replacing the macerator, running new wiring, painting, caulking, replacing the pump-out stainless fill port on the deck, installing a level gauge for the holding tank, replacing the fresh water hoses with red/blue PEX, installing a new cabinet face under the sink and adding a cabinet hatch behind the toilet where the oval opening used to be, etc. One reason it took longer was we were concurrently fixing other things that were broke as well as preparing things for our first child which was born last month. I can talk about those mods another day.
Regarding the bathroom remodel, I periodically took some video clips of that as we went along. If anyone is interested, you can view it here:
I'm looking forward to meeting and sharing experiences with other Hunter owners.
I would like to introduce myself as a new Hunter owner! My wife and I purchased a H31 last August (2017) and moved aboard after a week of ownership. The boat was in rough-ish condition, though mostly intact, just needing lots of things fixed. I have some sailing experience from smaller boats on inland lakes but my wife is new to this. We are living at a marina now, fixing her up but also working.
We didn't get the boat surveyed because, among other reasons, I could see well enough pretty much everything needed TLC. However, the previous owner did take us out on it sailing and the engine fired up too, so I knew it was in at least good enough condition to get out of the harbor. Our purchase price was $7,900, which may have been high, I don't know, it seemed reasonable at the time in comparison to other boats we had looked at for not much less but in significantly worse condition. Our entire boat search consisted of 1 week of looking because our landlord needed his house back on short notice and instead of moving to an apartment or another house we decided it would be fun to go live on a boat, but only made that decision 2 weeks before we had to be out of the house. That gave us 1 week to quick find a boat, and 1 week to quick get it up to snuff good enough to live on. Of course we were both working too, so didn't have much time indeed. We also didn't have tons of cash, but wanted to buy the boat outright instead of financing it. This Hunter fit the bill.
After the purchase I went around and made a list of about 100 projects it needed. We've worked our way through about a 3rd of the list so far.
The floors were rotted out in the salon area and the boat stank so bad I could hardly go below without gettning knocked over when we first bought it. Therefore, our first project was to pull the floor out. The hatches had leaked water which got underneath the floor and caused the rotting.
We pulled out the settee's on both sides, lifted out the rotted remnants of the cabin sole, and drilled a number of 3" holes in our liner to gain access underneath, as well as putting holes in the bottom of the bilge to access the trapped water underneath in the "false" bilge. There was lots of nasty mold under the liner which I cleaned out by hosing with soapy water. To wit, I blasted water through the door under the vee-berth, through access ports in the aft area of the boat, and through the various holes I had drilled in the liner in the salon area. Also I "flooded" the boat (filled the bilge and left about 6" standing water inside) and let soak with bleach solution, then pumped it all out, repeatedly. At first the water was black, yucky water, but after many iterations of flooding, scrubbing under the liner with a brush as far as my arms would reach through the various access holes, letting the bleach solution soak, and then pumping again, the water eventually ran clear. We then dried everything out for a couple days and put in new plywood with vinyl planking glued down (for the salon area) and screwing the wooden settee's back in (this wood was ok, except the vertical board on the port settee was also rotted and I replaced it too). We didn't have time to replace the sole fore and aft (by the bathroom and the kitchen) so our cabin sole doesn't match now, but is very functional!
All in all, that was the first week of work (late nights at the boat after work!) and then we moved aboard. All that cleaning got rid of the nasty smell, except our head was still pretty grody and smelled. When we purchased the boat, for some reason there was no sink or faucet in the bathroom. The water lines were there though, hanging loose. There was also no "cabinet wall" underneath the sink, just a curtain they had rigged.
First item of business for the bathroom was to throw away the old toilet and install a new Jabsco as well as install a new sink and faucet. That made things functional, except the hoses were old and leaking, no matter how hard I tightened the hose clamps. Over the next few months I overhauled the bathroom, including installing sink/faucet, replacing all the sanitation hoses, installing a Y-valve, cleaning out the holding tank, replacing the macerator, running new wiring, painting, caulking, replacing the pump-out stainless fill port on the deck, installing a level gauge for the holding tank, replacing the fresh water hoses with red/blue PEX, installing a new cabinet face under the sink and adding a cabinet hatch behind the toilet where the oval opening used to be, etc. One reason it took longer was we were concurrently fixing other things that were broke as well as preparing things for our first child which was born last month. I can talk about those mods another day.
Regarding the bathroom remodel, I periodically took some video clips of that as we went along. If anyone is interested, you can view it here:
I'm looking forward to meeting and sharing experiences with other Hunter owners.
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