Beating the Bulkhead Blues
"The bulkheads are rotten" is what the surveyor said - softly - dropping a bomb at the end of the day, just minutes from when Becca and I were to get on the road back home. We had made a day trip to Manitowoc for the survey and sea trial of the soon-to-be-our boat, and everything had seemed to go ok. Sure, the boat had LOTS of issues we already knew about upfront, but we were ready to deal with those. And yes, the engines didn't reach their recommended RPMs during the sea trial just a couple hours earlier, but we had already been doing the mental gymnastics to get over the issue, adjust our offer, and move forward with the purchase. This bombshell news flushed all our optimism down the head, and made for a gloomy 5-hour drive home. Firstly, for our readers who are less hip to boat lingo,... Bulkheads are the "walls" that run across the hull, perpendicular to the stringers (the "beams" that run the length of a boat). Bulkheads provide dimensional st