I will treat everyone to the refloating of the Westsail video. It was at Carter Creek off the Rappahannock River. I hired a professional company to raise her. They thought they might need an air bag or two, but the tide lowered to the point where that wasn't necessary. Their diver plugged the thru hull fitting from the outside with wooden plugs and also sealed hatches and compartments with towels and used weights here and there. They had three gas powered pumps. The video is not continuous but as you can see it did come up pretty fast. While only on the bottom for 3 weeks - it was a mess inside and out. Here's the video of the refloat...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK1sjmxd0oU
I'll back track later to tell you of getting the diesel running and the trip to my repair yard but for now I'll jump back to today.
Ok - I will keep this short. I have been spraying everything down inside with a garden hose and letting it run down into the bilge. As the water level got high I would pump in out using a small 120VAC pump
that connects to a garden hose. Well that worked - and was fine until now when I got to the bottom of the deep bilge sump - maybe 2 ft deep maybe more. The sump was a settling place for all the heavy sandy, muddy, oily mess. At first I thought I could just water it down and pump it and some of it did get carried away using that method. But in the end it was the trusty shop vacuum to the rescue. I watered it down slightly and sucked the crap up and it was not a fun job at all. In the end the bilge is now clean - and I did hose down the area below the cabin floor where the water tanks are located. In the future everything is coming out - the water tanks and all hoses and at that time I will clean the area again much better.
Well that's it for today. And if you have any questions feel free to ask.
Sailor Jim
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