It took 3 months work .. but I finally had my 20' XF ("Tauri") in the water - though just for testing and just for a very short trip. Here's what I did so far: Had the motor checked out and the broken ignition system replaced, made the frozen steering working again, replaced the old tank, hoses, sensors and wires. The new aluminium tank only holds 40 Gallons, but well - that was the budget. Rewired most of the electrics, added a second battery and select switch, added new bilge pump with float switch. uninstalled all teak and deep-cleaned it (not re-installed yet) added a new antenna and VHF radio, new bimini top, fish-/depth finder and a mount for my tablet to run a chart plotter on it. Deep cleaned cabin, re-glued the mouse fur and added gymnastic mats as cushion replacements. Spent about $1500 for everything so far - given the fact the the State Of Texas charged me almost $400 for the new titles, taxes and stuff, I am close to my complete budget of $2000 for the restoration.
The boat took very little water, but motor had some trouble .. with some intermittent loss of power - I assume still some problems with the ignition. But the good old Johnson 120 easily handled "Tauri" and it was a lot of fun. For now the boat is back in the shop to look after the motor problems. Once this has been taken care of, I am cleaning the hull, running 8 AWG cables from the batteries to the inverter in the cabin (via 40A circuit breaker) and then it's (hopefully) fun until the end of the season - which is about mid-December down here.
I am planning on working on the hull over the winter - get the old decals of and trying to get the hull back to sparkling.
Well .. that's all for the moment.
