The Perils of Pauline

When I was a little kid my parents had a favorite movie, or at least a favorite saying based on this movie, "The Perils Of Pauline".  In the movie if anything could happen to Pauline it did.  I can associate.  As I recall Pauline was quite a screamer.  Uh huh, me too.

This past Saturday we sailed out of Whitehall Bay and returned home to Herrington Harbour North.  We'd been gone for three long months exactly.  Not to mention exactly one month longer than we had planned.  Our sail home was very nice, a bit chilly at 55 degrees F with 15 to 20 knots of wind out of the NE.  We sailed on a broad reach down to Thomas Point light where the wind died down to about 10 knots and our speed dropped from 7 knots to about 4 or 5.  When we entered Herring Bay we cranked up the engine and ran for home.  It is sooooooo nice to be back home!

The work on the cabinetry is finished.  I'll post some pictures about that below.  We knew coming home that we'd have a busy weekend with cleaning the boat and moving back on board.  We'd been living in a small efficiency apartment for the last three months and almost everything we own had to be moved out by noon on Sunday.

So, we get back to the slip around 1500 on Saturday and I'm up on the dock hooking up the shore power and talking to our neighbors.  Cheri starts calling my name, each time getting a little more urgent, and finally says we have a major water leak down below.  Hmmm.  Maybe I'd better stop goofing off and go see what's up.  Turns out she opened the drawer under the starboard settee in the Salon and found water.  This is not good because under that drawer is the water heater and the pump and distribution manifold for fresh water on the boat.  On the other hand, if this is a fresh water leak it could be considered a good thing since at the very worst we could only take on 250 gallons.  That's still a lot of water to have sloshing around in your living quarters.

I opened up the settee, turned on the pump and looked at all the hoses and connections.  No sign of a leak, no running water.  In the compartment with the water heater I see plenty of water but no running water.  I stick my hand in and it's hot.  That's not good.  If all the hoses are in good condition, not leaking, then the only source of hot water is going to be the water heater itself.  I turned everything off and started soaking up the water.  Never made any progress.  The water heater holds 11 gallons.  At least, it's supposed to hold eleven gallons.  Ours was dumping it out all over the place.

I removed the five hoses; engine supply and return, over-pressure bleed off, cold in and hot out.  I disconnected the power and removed the screws from the front plate.  The rear plate is held down by simply sliding into a pocket/bracket.  The compartment this thing is in is only slightly larger than the water heater itself.  To get it out I used clothesline to form two loops around the housing and used these as handles to lift it out.  When I got it to the top of the compartment where the hatch sits the clearance was so tight the clothes line didn't want to pull through.  With Cheri's help I removed the clothesline while the heater was in the air and we lifted it out.

I went on-line and found that West Marine had a similar unit, same dimensions, same capacity, same layout.  I ran down to WM and bought the only one they had in stock.  It was now 1930 and we're barely halfway through.  With the two units sitting side by side I swapped out the brass water fittings and dragged the new unit over.  I gently sat her down into the compartment and she wedged right at the top hatchway.  What???  I checked the dimensions and found the new unit was 5/16" bigger in every direction.  Instead of taking it back I decided to make it work.  I got out the trusty old saber saw and notched the opening enough to slide this critter in.  I then found that the rear bracket was 3/8" wider and wouldn't fit inside the bracket.  Take it back out, cut down the rear bracket with a hack saw and try it again.  That worked so now it was time to drill the holes for the front bracket.  That was when I found I didn't have my drill, had put it in storage to get stuff outa the way while we moved back on board.  Grrrrrr.  Grrrrrrr.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  I tried punching holes with screwdrivers and other improper tools but eventually gave up for the night.

Next morning I got up in time to get the drill out of storage in Annapolis at 0600.  Back at the boat I drilled the holes in about two minutes and had the bracket mounted.  I got all the wiring connected and moved on to hooking up the hoses.  Piece of cake!  Not.   The heat exchanger hoses that run to and from the engine have a wire support embedded in the rubber, which is good.  But it makes it very difficult to get them onto the hose barbs, especially with only about 1.5" to work in.  Busted knuckles, blisters and a bucket of bad language didn't do the job.  Finally I struck on the idea of using Cheri's hair drier to warm up the hoses and they eventually went on, though not willingly.

In the end the damn thing worked.  We couldn't have any water, hot or cold, until I got this thing going so it wasn't something that could wait.  It probably would have been worthwhile to pay Butch to do the installation but I just couldn't stand the thought of paying someone else to do the work after all we just went through this winter.  Money wins out over common sense.  Here's a picture of the little monster.  Notice the notched hatchway.  Also notice the drawer slides that were in the way.  I used a gigantic screwdriver and pried them out of the way to make clearance.  All the connections are on the left side and none of them had enough length to connect with the heater out of the compartment.  That would have been way too easy.  Hopefully this little demon will last longer than all of us.  I know this episode has taken several years off of my life just in frustration.

 OK, here's some pictures of the galley.  I wasn't able to get the pictures to line up with the comments so just bear with me here.  The first one is from the Nav Station looking aft.  Shows the cool-man new faucet, the cutting board for the sink and the overall look of the galley. 

The second picture is a closer view of the aft end with the divided fridge and freezer set into the counter top.  On the right is the new cabinet under the companionway and the knife slot in the counter.

Next pic shows the corner cabinet behind the freezer.  This was built for our coffee maker and has a dedicated outlet behind that little cubby hole inside on the left.

 The next picture shows the new spice cabinet behind the stove.  The left side was kept taller to allow room for olive oil and taller bottles of cooking stuff.  That sounds technical, doesn't it?

The final two pictures are the before and after shots.  More storage, more counter space, overall better use of space.  Those faux louvered doors are the cat's meow.  The Corian is awesome, looks like yellow quartz.  We are extremely pleased with how nicely this turned out.  Would we do it again?  Hell no!

Tomorrow, tomorrow........

It's been a while since I've done an update, about three weeks or so, and there's a lot to update.  Seems like the last place I left off was working on the Nav Station equipment panel so maybe I should pick up there.

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.

Behind the instrument panel I glued a piece of 3/4" plywood against the inside of the hull and used that to mount two solar panel controllers.  These are daisy chained together and will be able to handle our new solar panel arrangement; two 85w panels and two 140w panels.  We needed separate controllers because you can't mix and match different sized panels and the combined current capacity was more than one could handle on it's own.  So now, when we get the panels all mounted we'll have a capacity of 450 watts and 38 amps.  That'll go a long way towards keeping those batteries charged.

With all that done I installed a new 50 amp breaker in the main DC panel and ran 8 gauge, 3 conductor wire to feed the sub panel.  I double checked everything twice over, doubly, and then powered up the sub panel.  Voltage checks checked out so I powered up the MFD (multi function display) and the backbone.  All the instruments powered up on the first try.  How cool is that?  In fact, everything worked except for the wind generator.  I pretty much expected that because when I was wiring that up I hit the back of the display board with the negative wire from the generator and got a spectacular arc.  I mean, I made some serious ozone.  I'm pretty sure I can get parts for that thing so I'm not real concerned.  Stuff happens.  I'm fairly excited about having the new i70 display at the Nav Station.  We'll be able to call up all kinds of information with that.  Pretty handy for when you're sitting at anchor and want to know what's going on up topside.

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.

A Virtuous Circle

 Definition of the snowball effect

Last month I mentioned we were running a NMEA 2000 backbone and installing new instruments (click here).  All by itself this was a big endeavor but, like everything else I do, it has gotten out of hand, growing beyond it's physical and financial boundaries as we learned more about the capabilities of the system.

The first thing that became obvious was the need for more DC breakers.  Our main DC panel only had two unused breaker positions available before I started in on this path and we quickly used those up with the radar and auto pilot course computer.  As I contemplated adding AIS, sonar and the backbone itself I realized the only correct way to do this was to add a sub panel for DC power.  Of course this requires a breaker of it's own on the main panel.  I ended up removing all the breakers for instruments and moving them over to a new sub-panel panel mounted at the nav station.

Our nav station is divided into two sections.  The right side is entirely taken up by the main breaker panels for AC and DC voltage.  The left side is used for mounting radios, controls and instruments.  When we bought the boat this was almost completely taken up, very little room for new additions and what was there was installed in a haphazard fashion, wasting space.  There were instruments here that didn't need to be, that could have been mounted in other places.  A good fer-instance is the control for the solar panels.  The main control takes up some pretty good real estate, it's a large panel.  But there's also a remote panel that's 1/4 the size and they mounted them both right next to each other.  The larger panel can be mounted inside a cabinet, out of the way.  Then there's the AM/FM radio.  We only use this as a place to plug in our iPod and plan to install a better system soon.  My birthday IS coming up!  There were also a couple of 12VDC outlets, like the cigarette lighter in your car, that have never been used.

After looking around for a location for the DC sub panel I decided the best place for it was on the left side of the nav station.  All the wiring runs into here and it would save a lot of trouble if it was mounted right there.  All I'd have to do is make a new panel and re-mount only the stuff we really needed.  Simple!

I started out with relocating the VHF radio.  I decided to make a small cabinet for the top of the nav station cabinet and mount the radios up there.  We're planning to get a Single Side-Band (SSB) radio so we can communicate to and from anywhere in the world.  This cabinet will mount the two radios and a speaker and open up quite a bit of space on that instrument panel.  I drew up a design and asked The Dude to build it for me.  He finessed the design and made it so it blends in with the cabinetry of the boat.  He also made it easy to open up for wiring the radios.  Since we don't have the SSB yet he put in the cut-outs for it and made some nice plugs for the holes.  You can't even tell they're there.

Next I went through and completely dismantled the old panel.  With everything removed I laid out the new panel with the DC sub panel on one side.  This gives us eight additional breakers and I was able to leave the panel open below that in case we ever wanted to install a bigger panel.  I relocated all the breakers for the instruments here except for the auto pilot because that baby draws too much power.  By removing the AM/FM radio we now have 3 additional breakers on the main panel and 3 more on the sub panel.  Big improvement!  To the left of sub panel I installed an i70 display to monitor all our instruments, the control panel for the new inverter, the control panel for the genset, the control for the tri-anchor light and the remote displays for the solar panel and the holding tank monitor.  The control panel for the wind generator is mondo huge so I dismantled that and cut down the panel, making it four inches shorter and an inch narrower.  Now that fits here too.  I still had plenty of room so I added one of the 12 VDC outlets too, just in case we need to charge our phones or something.

We're adding two more solar panels and that required an additional control unit.  These Blue Sky controls can be daisy chained together and run by a single remote so I made a mounting panel for the two units inside the cabinet for the nav station.  Here I added terminal blocks to tie into 12VDC power for the outlets and the lights.  That'll come in handy later on for an easy connection to power things like LED lights inside storage areas around the boat.

I had originally planned to mount the course computer for the auto pilot and the control unit for the sonar beneath the floor in the galley.  The Hinckley electrician advised me to rethink this, saying that if we had flooding in the bilge these units would be the first to go.  I pulled all my wiring and relocated these to the cockpit lockers.  I had hesitated doing this at first because the auto pilot has a huge amperage draw, 30 amps, and wire length is critical.  If the wire run is less than 15 feet then I can use 8 gauge wire.  This stuff is expensive but going up to the next larger size is a major step requiring a short term bank loan.  When the galley work was being done and all the cabinets were removed it exposed a wire run along the starboard side that I hadn't used before because it was inaccessible.  I had been running all my wire under the floor to get it back to the cockpit.  By using this run down the side the length is much shorter and this is how I was able to mount the course computer in the starboard side cockpit locker, still using my 8 gauge wire.  The sonar control is going in the port side locker but wire size isn't as critical for that.

Can you say "snowball"?

But that's not the end.  Cheri and I were talking about this new backbone and how all the information was right there, available to be called up in several places around the boat.  She wanted to know if we could display it on our Mac mini computer and our iPads, especially the navigation stuff.  That'd be cool.  I started looking around and found that we could get a WiFi gadget that connects directly to the NMEA 2000 backbone and broadcasts all the info wirelessly.  Is that a word, wirelessly?  I guess it is now.  Anyway, Digital Yacht makes the WLN2net and this'll give us a wireless feed to the backbone.  Running apps like iSailor or Garmin's BlueChart we'll be able to monitor our navigational and AIS info from anywhere on the boat.  Picture this....we're sailing across the Pacific, the auto pilot is running and we're sitting up on the forward deck playing Parcheesi, or whatever.  By having our iPad nearby we can keep track of the boat and where we're going, what's around us (if anything).  Maybe even getting weather updates through our SSB radio and displaying the info through the backbone.  As time goes on there will be new developments for information sharing with the NMEA 2000 design and we'll be right on top of it.

While exploring the instrument installation and rewiring the power panel I found some interesting stuff.  There was a terminal strip inside the nav station cabinet that had seven wires going into one side and nothing coming out the other.  It wasn't connected to anything.  I've been pretty busy with other projects and didn't really have time to chase this down but I was curious.  I chose one wire, a nice purple one and traced it out.  It ran under the floor from the nav station into the galley and from there went into the engine compartment.  I followed it around the other side and found it connected to the engine battery.  Huh?  What was this used for?  What are the other six wires for?  It's a mystery right now but I do plan to get to the bottom of it eventually.  Apparently there's stuff like this all over the boat.  The guys installing the genset found a bundle of wire that wasn't connected to anything.  It was in the prop shaft trough just behind the engine, tied into a large cable run.  About five feet forward they found the other end of the cables, hanging out in the air, connected to nothing.  Great.  No wonder we sit so low in the water.  If I could eliminate all this unused wire we'd probably increase our speed over ground by 25%.  Our last boat, a 1979 Islander 28, was like this only worse.  It had been owned by an electrical engineer who loved putting in new gadgets.  Only problem was he didn't remove the old stuff so there were wires all over the place that didn't do anything.  Not only that but nothing was documented.  Oh no, that reminds me.  I really really need to document all the new stuff we just added to this boat.  Yikes!  I'm turning into that old dude I keep complaining about!

How 'Bout Some Good news?

I just got a note from Hinckley about the latest progress.  Things took a quantum leap forward over the last few days with the counter top going in and the genset installation being almost complete.  This will all probably come to a screeching halt tomorrow since the weatherman is calling for something between four and nine inches of snow.  If that actually happens then it's probably a good thing we went ahead and added two weeks to this project.

The counter top went in today.  I think I'll just post some pictures and make a few comments.

 This shot shows, left to right, the freezer and fridge lids.  The hinges and pulls will be flush mounted, completely recessed so you can slide a mixing bowl across and it won't hit on anything.  In this shot the pulls haven't been installed yet.  The two blocks in the middle are just temporary.  The Corian that Cheri picked out has the look of yellow quartz.  When she first showed it to me I said "yuck!".  Boy was I ever wrong.  I think it really looks good with the teak.

 To the right of the fridge is a raised part of the counter top with the knife slot.

The counter wraps around the companionway.  We're having a cabinet put in here that will open to this side, facing you.  It extends about 2/3 back and forms a second compartment that is accessed from the other side of the ladder.  We limited the depth of this cabinet to prevent it from becoming another bottomless pit.

 Fiddles are raised edges of a boat's counter tops to prevent stuff from flying off when you're underway.  The factory fiddles wrapped around every edge but we found them to be more in the way than of any real help.  Cheri selected areas where they would really serve a purpose and left them off from others.  The stove was repositioned so that the piece of Corian on top would be even with the rest of the counter.

 Coupla things here.  New sink.  Woohooo!  The old one was really two puny bar sinks next to each other.  This one is nice and deep.  The faucet will be at the left back corner where the hole is.  This gave us a little more room along the back to work with for the bigger sink.  The drain in the new sink is located directly over the drain line instead of being offset like the factory had it.  It just worked out that way but might help to prevent the drain from backing up as it sometimes did.

 The opening is for a storage area.  We changed the way the lid opens, towards the back-splash, so it won't block the cabinet to the right.  The back-splash is a Formica that Cheri picked out.  Looks really good with the colors in the teak and the new counter top.  Beyond the back-splash is the nav station.  I'm putting in a DC sub-panel and reorganizing the instrument panel here.  On top will be the new cabinet for the radios.

 We extended the counter top at this side of the sink to add some more work space.  This'll be really handy for cleaning veggies and washing dishes.  I think there's supposed to be an insert for one side of the sink too.  Man-oh man this is gonna be nice.

 Here we are in the aft cabin looking at the new genset.  The white framework gets closed in with panels to reduce the noise when it's running.  The whole thing is mounted on an extending shelf that pulls out over the bunk area.  We'll hafta pull up the mattress to slide it out but it'll be worth the effort to have access to all sides of this thing.  This is a Northern Lights 6KW, 3 cylinder, AC generator that runs at 1800 rpm's for quieter operation and longer life.  Snug fit but it's gonna be worthwhile.

Here's the same space with the cover in place.  Sweet!  The mattress will be notched to fit around the enclosure but there's still plenty of room for two adults to sleep comfortably in here.

So, things are moving ahead.  We're both really pleased with the quality of the work being done here and we're excited about our "new" boat.  Can't wait to try her out on the Wye River for a nice long weekend.  Maybe we can stop there for a few days on the way back to Herring Bay.

The Dude

Here it is February 28th already.  I've made some progress on my projects, instruments and a DC sub panel, but at this point I only have one weekend to finish up before the boat is scheduled to splash, March 15th.  I lose one weekend because we're heading out of town for a few days to visit with family.  I still need to paint the bottom which includes raising the water line and repainting the boot stripe.  The weather has not been cooperating and now I'm starting to stress out.  We looked into staying at the Inn for an extra two weeks and they can accommodate us for most of it but we'll hafta move around.  It's not easy being homeless.

I talked to the guy doing the cabinetry and he's relieved to have some extra time.  The business with the rudder really held things up so apparently the stress is universal.  It's nice to have company.

So far we've got the rudder repair completed and the auto pilot linear drive is in place.  I'm doing the wiring on that so it probably won't get completed for a while.  The genset is in place and the work on that is expected to be completed by the end of this week.  The unit for doing the oil change is mounted in the starboard cockpit locker.  That space is filling up.  That's where the linear drive is mounted as well as the controllers for the auto pilot and the depth sounder (what I've been calling the sonar).  This space also houses the two compressors for the fridge and freezer, the exhaust for the engine and the exhaust for the genset and the drain for the cockpit.  This locker is really deep and the floor is actually the inside of the hull so it angles down towards the centerline of the boat at about a 45 degree angle.  It's not too bad getting in but for an old geezer like me it's a challenge getting back out.  I need to run the return air duct for the diesel heater and I'm thinking of putting it through here.  As if there's room for that too.  I could build a step over top of it and then it'd be easier to climb in and out.  Another project for me to do in all my copious free time.  Or I could just keep filling it up with stuff.

The weather on Wednesday, 2-27-13, was supposed to be really nice, clear with mid 50's temperatures.  I decided to play hooky and try to get something done on the boat.  I could let everything else go except for painting the hull so I concentrated on that.  I got the new waterline taped off and started sanding the hull.  It took me four hours to do just one side and most of that was spent bent over, twisted around and kneeling in the mud while holding the sander over my head.  I had my mini shop vac hooked up to the sander but I forgot to wear a dust mask.  At the end of four hours I had to quit because every time I blew my nose it came out 70% copper.  What a dummy.

The galley is coming along now that the genset is in place, now that the linear drive is installed, now that the rudder is repaired.  The upper cabinets are starting to take shape and we're getting a better feel for how things are going to look.  Even better, you can get a feel for the amount of storage space we're adding here.  I'm just talking about the cabinets above the counter top here.  The old cabinets used to go up about six inches and then had a shelf above them that was limited in height by the underside of the deck.  We pushed the front of the cabinets out about 1.5 inches and ran them all the way up so there's no wasted space.  The cabinet dude built these so all the walls of the cabinets are vertical so we can have an adjustable shelf inside.  He's concerned about these shelves rattling so he's making them semi-permanently installed.  If we want to change the height we can but they'll be screwed in place, not just resting there.  There'll be pre-drilled holes for other positions.  This guy has all kindsa good ideas like that.  The first two pictures show the galley right before work started and then where we are now.  Check out the old double sinks (muy pequeno!).  The second shot shows the cutout for the new sink (muy grande!).  The cool-man new faucet will be at the lower corner near the plastic container.  There will be a shallow cabinet behind the stove, maybe for spices, and back in the corner to the right will be a cabinet for the coffee maker with a dedicated AC outlet built in back there so we can just hit "go" and have our fix.  Woohooo!

Cheri wanted to have a slot in the counter where she could store her knives.  The cabinet dude suggested having the counter raised about a quarter inch in that area so water wouldn't go down the slot if something got spilled.  This knife slot has the knives hanging down into the aft cabin so he boxed it in and made the bottom removable for cleaning.  To open it you press on one of the pieces of trim and it pops open.  That's it above the 5 quart plastic bucket.

The drawer we added beneath the oven is built with the back panel following the contour of the inside of the hull so there's no wasted space.  The cabinet guy also added a lip across the back of it so nothing can spill out when we heel over to starboard.  He also built in a latch that prevents the drawer from sliding out all the way on it's own.  The top picture shows how the drawer will fit under the stove.  It's designed to match the factory drawers.  In fact, he did such a nice job you can't tell one from the other.  Even the color of the stain is identical.

I've also asked him (the cabinet dude) to build a small cabinet above the nav station to house the radios (VHF and single side-band).  I'm re-organizing the gear located here and adding a DC sub panel to give me eight additional, breakers.  Moving the radios to their own cabinet will give me the space I need and leave some spare for future additions.

This guy is very talented and above all, very nice.  He asked me not to use his name here so from now on he's "The Dude".  Like, Dude!  That's a compliment!