Introduction

Hi and welcome to my Sea Ray Restoration blog!

I started this blog to help fellow boaters who might be thinking about taking on a restoration project and what it entails or what to look for to avoid a restoration project.  Drop me a line if you find this blog informational or have additional questions or comments.

Note that I've back dated these blog entries according to the rough timeline that some of these events took place but I'm actually writing this blog in November of 2010.

How this whole mess started...


I've been a boater all my life having grown up with friends and family who had boats.  In the summer of 2006 I became a first time boat owner with the purchase of a brand new 19' ski boat.  As often happens to many die hard boaters I got the itch to get a bigger boat.  At the time, my wife and I had a baby on the way and decided that a cabin cruiser would fit our boating lifestyle better.

Inspired by some of our friends who had good luck with older model boats and not wanting to spend $125,000 on a new cabin cruiser we decided to start looking at older boats.  We didn't really have a price range in mind but it seemed like around $10,000 - $15,000 you could have your pick of old sub 30' boats in working condition.

I won't bore you with the all the details but we spent a lot of time looking online and driving around to the local lakes to look at boats.  We live in Dallas, TX and our search at one point took us to Lake Texoma.  There, we found a 268 Sea Ray Sundancer.  We loved the layout but this particular boat had engine problems that we didn't know about until we arrived and the sales person told us.  It also needed a trailer (we wanted a trailer-able cabin cruiser) and the fore window leaked (it was raining that day) and we were concerned about what type of damage that was doing to the boat.


All along, I had seen a "1979 Sea Ray Sundancer 27'" listed on Craig's List for about $5,500 which looked pretty nice from the pictures.  Long story short my wife and I looked at the boat and decided we liked it.  Upon initial inspection everything looked to be in working order (trim tabs worked, lights worked, etc) and the owner readily admitted the stereo and a few other things were problematic.  The day I went to pickup the boat the owner's son was there and hooked the outdrive up to the hose and started the engine.  The boat ran for several minutes and seemed to be in good working order.  I paid the owner his asking price and I took the boat home thinking I'd gotten a very good deal (about 50% less than comparable boats were going for).

But as they say, the devil is in the details.  We started doing some cosmetic repairs like applying a liquid seal to the front window hatch to keep it from leaking, re-oiled the teak, etc.  My wife even went as far as making new covers for all the cushions inside the boat.  The old ones were fine but not very fashionable.  I ordered a portable a/c unit and generator to help keep the cabin cool, and it seemed like we were on our way.

A few weeks into owning the boat I decided to fire up the motor since it had been sitting.  It ran for about 10 minutes and then I noticed water dripping from the rear drain.  I opened the hatch to find that water was leaking out of the side of one of the cylinder heads.  Later that week I went to the local remanufactured engine place and bought 2 new cylinder heads as I noticed the leak was from the side of one of the the heads, not the gasket.  I tore down the top of the motor to find the intake was cracked, the block was cracked, and the cylinder heads were cracked.  I found out nearly a year later that some mechanics find it acceptable for an engine to have a cracks so long as water is not leaking into the cylinders or mixing into the oil.  But at this time I felt, and still feel that the right course of action was to replace the motor.