Cleaning...

When a boat with an engine tries to sink, or succeeds in doing so, if the water is pumped out quickly the damage can be minimal.  In the case of Fair Maid, the damage was limited to water in the engine (which was not, unfortunately, removed until eight months later, when we pulled the motor out of the boat), some lost electronics, and oil and diesel spread throughout the hull, soiling everything.  The previous owner seems to have cleaned a lot of this oily film off the cabin interior, because it's pretty good, but the spare sails (6 or 8 of them in bags) are all brown and oily, and the bilges and harder to reach parts of the hull were filthy.

Here are some photos.  This first image is the bilge, with the cabin sole (flooring) removed.

And again:

The oil and diesel in the water and coating the woodwork is evident.  One of our first jobs was to get rid of all of this mess.  We made a start last Saturday.

This is the same cabin bilge area after cleaning with lots of dishwashing liquid and a banister brush.  The limber holes (drain holes allowing water to flow along from section to section, so that it can reach the bilge pumps to be gotten rid of) were blocked, so we cleared those.

Likewise looking to the stern, under the cockpit, behind the engine room.

That grey cloth remains from the near-sinking, and lies where it settled as the water level fell when Fremantle Sea Rescue pumped her dry.

All wooden boats leak to some degree, and require either frequent hand pumping (at least weekly) or an automatic bilge pump to be fitted and working (with a float switch).  Fair Maid's automatic bilge pump had failed last week some time, so we replaced it.

We checked Sunday (and went for a sail) and the bilges were dry, so everything is now working and the result is gratifying.