Yup, doin' alright. We've had to do a lot of work on the house and property due to the neglect suffered over the last umpteen years. We decided to give all our attention and budget to that first so we would have options as we moved into the next phase of our plan. Plan B is underway now. That is to get the boat to a safe, usable state so we can find out what we really need and if cruising around is even what we want to do. It's a big bet, but after burying a couple more friends and a co-worker, we've embraced the bigger gamble is not trying.
It has been a long time coming but I finally have a place to take a nap on board!
All of the locker lids have been cut. None of these will be water tight lockers even though it would be an easy enough conversion if we find that necessary in the future. Only the new chain locker lid and the lid over the water tank will have barrel bolts to secure them. The other lockers will probably just have finger holes for lifting them.
There will be a filler piece that will go over the head that will set in the v-berth just forward of the main bulkhead. Also, you can notice the strips glassed in for the ash ceiling strips we intend to apply. We are going to skip the insulation to see if we really notice a need for it. If so, it's an easy change to make next year.
Not a lot of action on this end lately. We are waiting for me to remove the old-new backstay backing block that I put in, oh, about a decade ago. Once that is done we will add a new-new backing block. Being the outboard slot takes up a majority of the center of the transom, we'll move the backstay chain plate off to port a little bit.
Here is a shot of the gas tank shelf with the necessary cleats. The starboard shelf hasn't been dedicated to anything specific as of yet. The bilge pump outputs will pass through the area, but so far, that's it.
We finally got around to adding the drains for the cubbies in the cockpit coamings. There is one for the winch cubby and one for the turning block cubby. Each braided hose has a supporting structure that was wrapped, along with the hose, in a layer of fiber glass and a layer of matting to protect from being snagged by any of the cockpit locker contents. It was a relatively straight shot from the drains to the locker lid scuppers. I had to really work to get the hose to pass through the hole in the gutter, but we'll add some poly "goop" to add some leak proofing...YEAH RIGHT! I'm sure they'll leak anyway
In an effort to secure a little more storage in the main cabin, we added a couple of small bulkheads to the starboard cockpit locker. We got a space that is 14" x 18" by nearly 30 inches tall. There is still plenty of storage left in that cockpit locker, but now we have a small locker that will give us more "interior" locker space to move stuff around as necessary, if necessary. The upper corner of the interior locker will also house the manual bilge pump.
Who ever would have thought that water tank paint had an expiration? Who would have thought it had been 5 years since I ordered a small kit to coat out the forward tank? Needless to say, I had to swallow hard and order another, new and improved, paint for the water tank. The stuff is amazingly thick! And dries amazingly fast and cures amazingly hard. Which is what one should expect for the price... It was a lot cheaper the first time we ordered it (circa 2010).
So with the painting out of the way we finally got the lid epoxied in place and were able to move on with other jobs in the v-berth. The last tasks to perform on the water tank will be to run the vent and the pick up tube into tank once we get a few other things wrapped up. At least the inspection port and the filler are in place.
If you have priced teak lately, you know that it is dang near worth its weight in gold. Around here, it's about as hard to find as a gold nugget. So to that extent, I have been re-purposing (?) some of the original furnishings when ever possible. For me it's not the money saved as much as it is bringing as much of her back to the water as possible. So the former hanging locker is now part of a drawer face and a drop-front locker, and there is still plenty left to use. One snag was a finger hole that had to be filled.
I thought I had a pretty good match with the grain initially. However, once I chiseled off the 3/16" that was standing proud of the face, the grain "moved" on me and the match was no where near what I was so proud of at first. But, in the end, the extra finger hole was filled and that was the real job at hand.
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