In the year 2000 we purchased the "Thunderbird", our old 46 foot steel hulled diesel trawler. When we bought her we were looking for a retirement project and knew she was in serious need of a total refit. Leaking roofs, out dated interior, a questionable motor, that we knew could be fixed and an iffy transmission that we were really concerned about. But, I have always loved this boat, so I convinced Dan that we should go ahead.
Over the last 10 years we have worked hard on this refit. Each year, we worked on her until the ratio of work, to fun, tips to the point, that it is time to stop working on her and put her in the water and enjoy some boating. Here we are in 2013 and our major work on "Thunderbird" is over. We have no more "have to dos" and we are finally down to a few "want to dos" plus yearly maintenance stuff.
Over the next while I will go back over my ships log and relate some of the trials and tribulations of our many refit projects. As I did with the recent description of my upholstery projects.
Each one of these Blogs will be prefixed with a DIY. As all of this certainly was the ultimate DIY project.
