Jackhammer In the Bilge
Jackhammering concrete out of the bilge. ~ January 1988
After power washing the inside of the stripped-out hull, we discovered the bilge was filled with cement for additional ballast. The cement had created rot in the adjoining floors and frames. To repair these areas, the cement would need to be removed. How do you get concrete out of the bilge in a boat?
You guessed it; a jackhammer! It was the size of an upright vacuum cleaner and was loaded aboard with block and tackle. Crazy loud and super cramped; imagine using a jackhammer in your closet. Hearing and eye protection were necessary. But the jackhammer didn’t work at first as the tip kept getting stuck and the concrete wasn’t loosening or coming out.
We found old engine and transmission parts, two-inch ball bearings (steel shot), and brick-sized lead pigs (ingots) all embedded in the concrete. Removing this serious ballast would significantly affect the boat’s waterline and handling. To redo the ballast to match the original, we recorded the weight we were removing. The broken-up debris was loaded into five-gallon pails, weighed, charted on a map of the hull, before dumping it over the side.
We didn’t want to replace the concrete in the bilge as it had created a considerable amount of rot in the supporting structures. But how were we going to recreate the same ballast without the cement, engine parts, and steel shot? This was a major nautical engineering dilemma.
Old engine and transmission parts, steel shot, and lead pigs had been embedded in concrete in the bilge
