Expedition Evans Archive – Page 1

We made the jump and built our tiny home on wheels in the body of a short bus! It was INSANE and a ton of fun. If we can do it, you can do it.

Last summer we realized that the best way for us to pay off student debt would be to become minimalists and build a tiny house.

Battered, Beaten, Bashed and Broken....Bought. We bought our dream boat, broken and wrecked from an insurance salvage auction.

We are so excited to share a (somewhat haphazard) tour of our live aboard sailing yacht (is it still a sailing yacht if it doesn't have a mast!?).

We have a lot of repairs to do on our salvaged Beneteau 49 - but the yard the boat is at doesn't allow DIY repairs......or our dogs.

We leave the protection of the marina and sea-walled bay and head to a more hospitable yard! This is our first time handling this large of a boat (Beneteau 49).

We know our Beneteau 49 has a damaged grid. But we don't know how extensive that damage is, yet. This week we DIY our way to removing the interior furniture...

As we put together more of the story with this boat we learn that this boat was initially damaged several years ago. It seems it was repaired and damaged again.

As promised! Here is a short video explaining what happened and what needs to happen with our boat. At least as far as we can tell at this point.

And so the repairs begin. One day we'll sail our beautiful yacht to romantic tropical beaches, but today is not that day.

We are grinding maniacs in this episode. We grind gel coat, and then grind gel coat some more and in between we talk about how it's going grinding gel coat.

The grinding saga continues! Our leaking Beneteau 49 has serious structural damage and we're almost done removing all the gelcoat and interior pieces...

We take little break from the grind (literally) to talk through the damage thus far and our feelings about it.

We make the official call that the salon needs to come out, completely. Luckily we've had plenty of practice with Beneteau interior design and get it out quick

We FINALLY get the keel dropped on our Beneteau 49 that we bought at auction so we can finish the fiberglass repairs.

We cut all of the tabs off the grid with minimal drama (only inflicted a little more damage than necessary). Progress is slow, we do have some good news.

It's time for the fiberglass and gelcoat grinding to be over! We tear into the boat more only to discover that it's not built the way anybody thought...

You all said you wanted more boat work - here it is! Still lots of fiberglass grinding, cutting, hammering, chiseling, sweating...

NOW it's time to get cleaning. No way we could sum up the amount of cleaning needed into one video, but that's all you get.

It's time to start the rebuild of our Salvaged Beneteau Sailboat. With several hundred pounds of supplies we're armed with what we need to get the job done.

Welcome to Part 2 of the fiberglassing saga! We continue with the epoxy and fiberglass repairs of our Beneteau 49 sailboat.

Brett is off to work and Jade is left to fiberglass the boat by herself! Day one though there is a freak thunderstorm, and that pretty well sets the tone haha.

Brett's back but only for 24 hours and then we have to hit the road for the next round of training...this bit of fiberglassing is going to be nuts.

We leave the boat for the first time (stressful!) and get Brett to training with no time to spare. Join in on this weeks bonus look at our crazy life!

It's about time we get to work restoring our rusty keel back to better than new. Cast Iron keels just want to rust, and ours is no different.

We had a blast filming this and wanted to keep it more raw and real...so here you go, time to get to know us even better!

Before we can even think of putting the keel back on we need to re fiberglass the bilge sump box to the hull again.

Fiberglassing once again! We beef up the area directly around the keel and specifically the keel bolt area. We have the glass, time and means.

With Brett off to his other work, it's boat building with Jade again. Except this time, it's not so much building as it is removing some of our hard work.

Now one final detail, cleaning up the bolt holes and giving them a bit of a chamfered edge and we're there! Also, very exciting- Brett comes back next week!

An error in almost any one of the previous steps could mean that the keel doesn't line up just right and would require some serious work to fix it.

Installing our rudder once again...This is a huge step in restoring our salvaged sailboat back to her former glory. It really should have been pretty easy...

We rented the best professional pressure washer we could find to blast the antifouling bottom paint off our boat. It worked AMAZING for most of it...

Pressure washing helped, but it's time to get to work with some sanders, scrapers, paint stripper, oh and we even try an air compressor and soda blaster (lol).

Jade has to finish sanding off the old bottom paint before painting all 50 feet of boat by herself. There's a first time for everything!

WE DID IT!! With that last bit of fiberglass we have completely finished the repairs of our salvage yacht! Cleaning, fairing, painting, and reassembling to do.