Boat

As you can see above, it was a total mess when I found it. A little about me—one thing’s for sure: I love to fish. My friends and I are always on the hunt for new spots, and having a boat would make that a whole lot better. Of course, that's easier said than done. We're just two college kids with a few fishing rods and a dream, so we decided to get a boat. You might’ve noticed I didn’t mention money—or free boats just lying around. We were looking to buy one, but between the high prices and our engineering experience, we figured we’d take on the challenge of fixing one up ourselves.

Thankfully, the photos above aren't of just some random abandoned boat in the woods—they're of my random-abandoned boat in the woods. My grandparents got that boat before my parents were even born, so it's safe to say it’s been a long time since it last ran or saw anything other than rainwater. But that didn't stop us from trying to fix it up!

Now, you might be wondering, if you're fixing a boat, why are you tearing apart what seems like a perfectly good car? Well, we needed a way to transport the boat once it was fixed and a place to actually work on it. So, we decided to install a trailer hitch on my friend's BMW. If you're familiar with BMWs, you know they make their cars very difficult to work on. To make this happen, we had to buy a third-party hitch from Stealth Hitches, a company that specializes in trailer hitches for cars that don’t have factory-installed locations. Installing it was much more complicated than we anticipated. We had to remove trim from the back seats, the rear bumper, taillights, reflectors, and even part of the wheel trim. But after hours of frustration and a bit of hair-pulling, we finally had the trailer hitch installed.

Once all of that was done, we got to work stripping out the very old seats, engine, steering wheel, and front trim. We put some new wheels on, and it was ready to roll! With the permission of another friend, we were allowed to put the boat at his house for us to work on it more. The next step was to fix the engine. The one that was originally on it in the first few photos would have needed a lot of work. Thankfully, my grandpa had a small 10hp Johnson motor that would also work perfectly. With some cleaning and tender love and care, we got it up and running!

The next step was to clean up the bed, install a new tram, and apply a bed liner. Looking back, if I had seen how much progress had been made, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’d never worked on boats before, but with some help, YouTube tutorials, and a lot of Google searches, I realized that anything is possible.

For the bed liner, we taped off the desired height, then used Flex Seal to cover the bottom. If it can help put a boat back together, surely it can keep water out, right? Afterward, we cut the tram to the correct shape and size, mounted it, and allowed the liner to fully cure.

With that, that is as far as we have gotten for now. The next step will be to put seats in, but until me and my friend graduate, money is definitely our largest issue. I look forward to seeing how this project goes in the future, and trust when I say I have not given up on it yet.

If you read this far, thank you for your interest! More updates coming as soon as I have them.

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