The instrument panel is finished. It actually turned out pretty good and almost everything is operational. Almost. The new panel was something that had been laying around for a while. I knew it was a project that had to be done but I didn't have a good enough excuse to tackle it. The need for a DC sub-panel made it happen. The old panel (first picture) had some stuff that wasn't being used and a few items that didn't need to be mounted there. It also had this humongous panel for the wind generator control that just didn't look right and hogged a lot of space. I disassembled the panel and cut down the face plate, 1" narrower and 4" shorter. Much better! I then covered the instrument panel with masking tape to prevent chipping the nice black surface when I cut out the holes for the instruments. I made templates for each instrument and laid it all out in a way that made the most sense to me. Our instrument panel is usually covered on the right side by the monitor for our mini Mac computer. With that in mind I put the instruments that would be used most often on the left side. I tried to lay everything out in columns and it worked out to have some space left over beneath the sub-panel in case we wanted to go with a larger breaker panel some day. With everything drawn out on the tape I drilled half inch holes in the corners of each instrument cutout and then used a jig saw on the straight cuts. Reassembly was pretty straightforward and the actual wiring was easier than I expected.
We got our cool man sonar transducer put in. This has a twelve degree offset to account for the angle of the hull where it's mounted. That'll make it look straight down and give us a true indication of depth. It'll also give us a digital picture of the bottom in something like a 20 to 40 degree window depending on the depth and the frequency. It even has a temperature sensor so we can tell if the water's suitable for skinny dipping.
We also got the bottom painted. This was the first time in three years and I'm pretty pleased with how well this paint holds up. We're using Pettit Trinidad SR, a "hard", non-ablative paint. I prepped the hull with a quick washdown in 30 degree weather. It was snowing! With that done I sanded the bottom from the waterline down. We actually raised our waterline by about 2.5". With all the weight we've added to the boat she sits down further in the water and gets a scumline on the boot stripe. With the higher waterline we'll have about 1" of exposed bottom paint which'll keep her looking much better. I gave her one single fresh coat over the entire bottom and a second coat on the "wear" areas like along the waterline and the leading edge and bottom of the keel and rudder. Cheri repainted the boot stripe the original color, Jade Green, which is actually almost black with green highlights. We also cleaned up the prop and the bow thruster and gave them some anti-fouling paint too.With all that done I polished and waxed the hull above the waterline. La Vida Dulce is looking very smart these days, lemme tell ya.One other thing we did was to paint a code onto the anchor chain so we could tell how much chain we have out when we anchor. We used fluorescent yellow and green. The yellow is one band for every 25' and the green is one band for every 100'. As an example at 150' we have 2 yellow bands and 1 green band. Simple but effective. The chain is 300' long so this works out very nicely. The previous owner had marked it with different colored wire ties but they turn brittle and fall off and then you don't know what you have. The whole reason for knowing how much chain you have out is because for the anchor to dig in well you want to have between 5 and 7 times the depth of the water, plus the length of the chain from the surface to the deck, about 6' or 7' for us. So in 10' of water we want to have about 60' to 80' of chain out.
Work in the galley is almost finished.The upper cabinets are mostly in and we've selected heights for the shelves. The cabinet behind the stove has three shelves and will be used for spices mostly because it's not very deep. Between this cabinet and the stove is a storage slot that holds the piece of Corian that sits on top of the stove. The cabinets were all supposed to have louvered doors but we didn't think about the sliding doors. These have to be about 1/4" thick so they can slide past each other. The cabinet Dude came up with a very cool faux louver look that we decided to use on all the cabinets. He also milled finger pulls into the door frames and inserted pieces of "ivory" from some old piano keys. The cabinets are beautiful and they add so much more storage space. This was a really worthwhile upgrade for the boat.
This week (1st week of April) she'll be launched and checked out before we take her home on Saturday. There's still quite a bit of work to do but I think once we have her cleaned up and we're all moved back aboard we'll hafta take a break, light up a cigar and drink a toast to a successful winter project. Uhm, projects.
Man-oh-man, it's gonna be sooooooo nice to be back home.
1 comment:
She looks great, Tom. Wonderful changes to the galley. Very common-sense changes to your instrument panel too. I know you're glad to be back in your home.
Rick
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