Why Things Take So Long

Very little research has been done to determine why boat restoration is such a time-consuming endeavor. To help fill this void in scientific knowledge, I conducted a detailed econometric, operational and biomechanical analysis of the time I have expended in various boat repair projects. The following table lists the percentage of time devoted to each task.

18.7% Researching how to do the project; locating and
ordering mail-order supplies; buying other stuff at the boat store.

25.6% Actually doing the work.

12.1% Trying to find tools and materials I've temporarily misplaced around here somewhere.

9.3% Running back to the store for more supplies.

19.4% Cleaning up drips and smudges; re-doing jobs that didn't turn out quite right.

24.9% Sitting back admiring my work; drinking beer; shooting the breeze with other boat owners.


Actually, the work took even longer than these figures might suggest. Considerable time was spent on "fun" projects and "might as well" jobs.

"Fun" projects are those jobs that seem easier and more interesting than the one you're involved in. These jobs promise more visible results than the unglamorous job at hand.

"Might as well" jobs usually become apparent halfway through the job you're working on. "I'm fixing this, might as well fix that too." Sometimes it makes sense to tackle the additional project at this time. Often, there is no compelling reason to do the work now.

These types of projects are usually a net gain, but tend to play havoc with the "to do" list. They extended the total hours worked by a full 104%.

After reviewing the results of this study, I was shocked at the gross inefficiency of my boatyard labors. Obviously, drastic measures were needed to increase productivity.

I resolved to buy tools and supplies in greater quantities. Its easier to find things when you have at least two of everything.

You have hit the "nail-on-the-head". In the process of converting the old-water tank to the holding tank, we did almost exactly what you have described! We have several spare parts, if anyone else is thinking of tackling the job. Thanks for the laugh! ROFLOL:p

You meet all kinds of people at the boatyard. Most powerboat owners just come down for a day, wash and wax the boat and pop it in the water. I can't relate to these people, they don't know my suffering.

Some guys with big powerboats hire a detailing service. A truck arrives with some illegal aliens and they shine the boat up. I despise these owners. I'm just jealous I guess.

The majority of boaters do most of the work themselves. Some work dilligently, others just like to hang out.

Frank

Frank owned a C&C 27. He had just sold the boat, but promised the new owner he would finish up a few projects. For weeks he hung around the boatyard, mourning the loss of his beloved boat. Each project strtched out for days. He spent alot of time moping around, looking for company, watching me work, drinking my beer. Out of pity, I helped him complete a few tasks. He was very grateful, promising to help me out over and over. One day I took him up on the offer and handed him a screwdriver. I didn't see him much after that.

Charlie and Dale

Charlie owned a powerboat that needed alot of work. Dale was down on his luck. He didn't have a car or a home.Somehow they got together. Charlie hired Dale to work on the boat. Dale moved aboard. The boatyard doesn't allow people to live on their boat, so every night Dale would hide out in the cabin listening to country music on the radio. Dale didn't work that much, but Charlie never payed him either. Mostly they hung out. Sometimes Charlie would return from the City and they would both get a burst of energy for some reason.

Kenny

Kenny worked for weeks on his girlfriend's boat. Kenny was a very handy guy, and the boat rapidly improved. He even laboriously stripped off all the old bottom paint. Only problem was that he drove me nuts playing the same Doobie Brothers tape over and over again. The boat was splashed and his girlfriend promptly dumped him. Poor bastard. Must have been his taste in music.

Eddie

Eddie had just bought an old wooden cabin cruiser at least 50 feet long. The boat had been neglected for years. When they hauled it up on the travel-lift there was about four inches of growth on the bottom. It stunk terribly.

Eddie arrived at the boatyard 7:30 a.m every morning. He started sanding and never stopped. For 10 or 12 hours a day I would hear his sander whining, pausing only to change paper. Turns out that Eddie owned a string of X-rated video stores. Yep, Eddie was the best. Go figure.

I believe there's a reason so many boats are named "therapy." :cool: Progress on all my projects seems to be excruciatingly slow, but that's somehow the joy of it all :confused:

The new owners of old, wooden power boats are totally different cases :p

Pete

This guy took a perfectly good boat and started tearing it apart doing all sorts of "improvements."

Even climbing up on the boat was an adventure. The ladder he used was short, rickety and half broken. It swayed back and forth. It was so old it had no warning stickers on it. He said he didn't care if it got stolen.

The boat was a toxic waste dump with layers of dust and fibers on every surface. On top of that were a half dozen milk crates filled with all manner of volatile chemicals. One spark and there would be nothing left of the boat but a lump of molten lead.

His working technique left much to be desired too. He once burned out an electric sander trying to wet-sand with it.

He seemed like a nice enough guy, but you wouldn't believe the pounding and cursing coming from below. I once passed by and heard him crying out "10 minute job, huh? Yeah, sure, 10 minute job @#$%&*^!"

Every couple of hours he would jump in his car and tear out of the parking lot headed to the store, his house or the beer distributor for more "essential supplies."

How he ever got any work done I'll never know.

is that a self-portrait by chance?

That would be too painful to admit.

I really miss my old palm sander. It even wet-sanded well.......for about 1 1/2 seconds.

When you do your next study, I have some additions you overlooked that might knock down some of your purported ultimate efficiency ratings.

1. The time it takes to get the car ready (screws, paint, etc.) and to drive to the boat yard, stop for a cup of coffee, and then head back, stopping for a quick burger on the way.

2. Big omission! You forgot the time it takes to redo the job you thought you did right the first time.

3. Big omission! Friends dropping over to chew the fat. Or to introduced their girl friend, or to introduce their new fiancee, or to introduce their new wife (the combination happens over a six month period, generally starting in the fall), or to discuss ......

4. You forgot the afternoon nap.

In short, you work much more efficiently than I do, but perhaps that is why it takes 14 - 15 months of labor to get my boat ready every year.

Here's what you really need for a successful boat project:

1) Organizational Skills

2) Persistence

How do you acquire these important qualities?

I'm not telling you. That's another secret.


















Haven't figured it out yet

You know, you mention organizational skills and persistence. If you reference in this regard the person doing the restoration, in my experience, you are sorely mistaken.

The credit for organizational sills and persistence in getting the boat completed and out of the back yard goes to the spouse. She is the one that has the check list and the persistence - always asking, whenever a free moment arises (a.k.a popping a beer or taking an afternoon nap), "Honey, have your fixed the washing machine yet", or "Honey, When are you going to replace the light bulb over my cooking area".

In my experience, it is the hard driving, perseverant spouse that causes a boat restoration to be completed in just ten years of never ending labor away from both the home and the spouse. It is instead a life style consisting of a mixture of idleness and pleasure combined with a few minutes of fantasizing about how a boat will look when done. The spouse is the "without which", the boat restoration would never have been completed.

So here's a toast to all those wonderful women that with the simple expression "Honey, could you ....") cause their husbands do do more than the husbands alone would ever have thought possible or had the bravery to initiate.

I grew up in boatyards and as a lad I wondered why anyone would restore an old wooden boat or any old boat motor or sail. Pot bellied old men drinking drinking drinking, sanding , sanding sanding, old landlocked or forever docked wooden live-a-board boats, others that reminded me of the African Queen with Humphry Bogart or Wallace Beery types and the wives and girlfriends... oh no what have I become....it must be the dreams or my old Seascout Skipper or the Navy or the fact that sailing is fun, yeh fun, has to be the fun. :p

In years past, I had been using the wrong approach to boat projects, which was part of the reason they took so long.

If I needed to strip some paint, I would start with a random orbital and 120 grit. Then I would switch to heavier grits. Then a more powerful right angle sander. Then a belt sander. Ultimately I'd resort to the angle grinder.

If I needed to remove a frozen screw from the mast, I would start with PB Blaster and a big screwdriver. Then try some heat. Then an impact driver. Then maybe a screw extractor. Ultimately I'd have to drill the sucker out.

I thought I first needed to use a careful, delicate approach. I was wrong.

This is WAR

The only goal is Victory, with the least amount of suffering.

In military parlance, I had been trying to achieve victory through a strategy of "Graduated Aggression." You gradually increase the pressure until the enemy yields. Unfortunately, this can lead to a long, drawn out affair. A Vietnam-like struggle with no end in sight. It tends to demoralize the troops.

Unless the job really requires tact and delicacy, the better strategy is "Shock and Awe" If diplomacy is not immediately effective, unleash your most fearsome weapons. Piddling half-measures only prolong the suffering.

Of course, there is a greater danger of "friendly fire" and "collateral damage."

You could cut the boat in half with an angle grinder. If you break a drill bit inside a screw you've got a problem.

Still, I believe it is better to be ruthless. No mercy.

I'm with you Pete. Be agressive. And what I particularly recommend is to have two or three complete boats on hand, so that if the aggressiveness causes to much shock and awe to the work crew and the boat attempted to being repaired or restored, there are always spares on the other two hulls.

The only problem with this technique, is the "honey do ..." from the spouse. If you thought it was bad having to explain when you were going to be done with the one boat so it would no longer be in the back yard, try it with two or three boats where as one gets better the other three or four get worse.

A temporary resolution is to plant bamboo around the spare hulls. The stuff grow fast and hides everything. If you live up north, of course you need one of those inflatable environmental chambers and a large heating and humidifying unit so that the bamboo can really take off. The bamboo is also useful for cover if the spouse comes out to get you to help her do........

I just figure I'm never really going to get everything done (for all the reasons listed above, plus a few more) so whatever does get accomplished is merely progress towards an unattainable goal. Makes it much less stressful. Sometimes it's even fun. And I agree entirely with brute force being a viable approach.
And then there is are the costs. I've come up with a fairly reliable means of estimating those.
Make a detailed list of everything you might need, figure out what that comes to, then double that amount. Add another 50% on top of that and you should have a figure that will be slightly less than what you are actually going to end up spending. Works almost every time.
Tom

People ask me two painful questions. I can't bear to give them a truthful answer

1) "When are you going to be done with that boat?"

(Never)

2) "Do you know what you're doing?"

(Sort of)

Some random thoughts on fixing boats:

1) Keep an open mind. There are often different ways to solve a problem. On the other hand, there are some basic principles that you violate at your peril. It's not always easy to tell what is mandatory and what is optional.

2) Go with tried and true methods. A few times I thought I had figured out a better way, ignoring 10,000 years of boatbuilding wisdom. Naturally, I had mixed results. I don't want to stifle innovation, but failure is very disheartening.

3) Most projects have unintended consequences. Installing one thing may interfere with something else. Think long and hard before jumping in. Some thing are better left alone.

4) Of course a project will be more difficult and time-consuming than you originally figured. You've never done it before. What makes you think its going to turn out perfectly the first time?

5) Prioritize. It's easy to get bogged down. Don Casey talks about starting with safety items first. The problem is, there aren't alot of frills on a small boat. Just about everything is necessary for its safe operation. You can convince yourself that anything is a safety item.

My advice--fix what worries you the most.

On the other hand, you need motivation to work on a boat. If it makes you happy to pretty up the boat, then do that too.

6) I've probably never had a truly original idea. I just try and copy what others have done based upon their description on the internet. But, some people make it seem so easy. I guess they forget the pain once a project is done. The best project descriptions address the problems they ran into, and how they would do it differently if they had to do it all over again.

7) There are few creatures more stubborn than a sailor with a "Plan." If they thought up the plan on their own, they can't be dissuaded by reason and common sense. Don't waste your breath.

8) The people who know the least are often the most insistent. You can often spot them by the use of capitals---"I NEVER do that, I ALWAYS do this"

9) There is alot of brand loyalty and brand hate. If somebody is happy with a particular product, they act like it has some magical properties. If they had a bad experience, for whatever reason, the stuff is evil. I'm the same way. I once bought a used Mercury outboard. I hated that thing, and it hated me. I would never buy another Mercury. I don't care that they're made by Tohatsu now. I might buy a Tohatsu, but never a Mercury. Just looking at the thing would aggravate me.

10) You often see a question on the internet "What is the best ________" A sensible question. Nobody wants to waste money on an inferior product. But, you rarely get a satisfactory answer. Instead, you get a small sampling of "I used Brand X, no problems" "Brand X here too" "Had a bad experience with Brand X" "Brand Y is great" "Another vote for Brand Y" "Brand Z is better and cheaper"

I'm not sure how helpful that is. Few people have used multiple brands and are in a position to compare. Even if they had in the past, they've probably stuck with one brand while all the others have been reformulated or redesigned over the years.

While you still have to decide on a product, spend at least as much time focusing on proper technique.

11) Don't take this business too seriously. Some people act like Varnish vs. Cetol is a life or death decision. If someone posts a contrary opinion, they act as if their intelligence and judgement is being called into question.

12) Have fun and sail the damn boat.

"Of course a project will be more difficult and time-consuming than you originally figured. "

I've learned #4 the hard way... now I double and add half to any estimate. money or time it still seems true.

Another bit of time to account for;

The times when you look around the boat, and have to sit with your head in your hands lamenting the work to be done... this also should include the time spent away from the boat thinking about, and dreading certain tasks.

Quote:

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5) Prioritize. It's easy to get bogged down. Don Casey talks about starting with safety items first. The problem is, there aren't alot of frills on a small boat. Just about everything is necessary for its safe operation. You can convince yourself that anything is a safety item.

My advice--fix what worries you the most.

On the other hand, you need motivation to work on a boat. If it makes you happy to pretty up the boat, then do that too.

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YES! I find that there are items on the projects list (last count 33 items long) that are more important then others, but the others seem to get done first.... for instance I want to renue the rig... but somehow the nav table (and trim) rose higher on the list.. :confused:

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WRT #10......

Agree with the idea.. but Silicone is still one of the most evil substances known to man...