Hoisting the engine out of the boat

 Engine removal day (March 12, 2011) dawned with lots of rain.  We rigged up a tarp over the boom to try to keep everyone (and the engine and boat interior) relatively dry.  By the time we got ready to actually remove the engine from the boat, the rain had stopped, but everything was pretty wet.

 James Lockaby doing the final removal of the engine from its mounts.  We did end up completely removing the port side engine mount because we could not reach it well enough to detach it from the engine and there was not enough room to lift the engine over it.

We attached a come-a-long with nylon strapping to the boom, then lowered it to attach to the lifting rings on the engine.  There is very little clearance for the engine to come out into the cabin, so we had to be very careful in determining the height to lift the engine.  The front engine mount had to be removed at this point because we could not lift the engine quite high enough to slide it over the mount.  We then put a piece of plywood under the engine to slide it into the cabin.  The engine was detached from the come-a-long long enough to transfer it to the cabin side of the companionway and reattach it to the engine so it could be lifted out of the boat.

Once the engine was in the cabin and reattached to the come-a-long, we were able to slowly crank it out of the boat.  Lots of help made this a relatively easy job. We were able to remove the engine without any damage to the boat or any humans.