There has not been a lot happening with Akupara as of late for a couple of reasons. As my last post mentioned, the Admiral and I were in Cuba and we had left on a Thursday so we lost a weekend. We returned the following Friday and I spent the weekend completing homework from the Java course that I am taking for work so we never made it down to Akupara either. And this weekend, I have the mid term assignment due Sunday at midnight, so I doubt if I will have time to work on her either.
It is frustrating on the one hand to have Akupara sitting there waiting to be worked on and to not have the time to do anything but I guess it can be a fact of life. Work has been super busy and with school, family, dogs and everything else, there simply are not enough hours in the week. Between work and school alone I have been averaging 14 hour days and it is bloody tiring. 5 more weeks to go and I will be complete this class, and I will have a break until September once it is complete.
I did manage to contact one of BC’s most well respected riggers, Steve White from Steve White Rigging and obtain a ballpark quote to replace all of the standing rigging on Akupara. It came in at a little over $5000. Not too bad. Expensive of course but not that bad, and this includes all new turnbuckles! All of Akupara’s rigging is rust stained and questionable so when we purchased her, we knew we would be replacing all of it! Steve will be dropping by Akupara to have a close look at her masts and at some point I will connect with him to give him all of the old rigging for measurements.
If there is one thing I do not need to experience, it is having a rigging failure and losing a mast due to not fixing it when we have the chance.
Well, I guess I better get back to the homework…I almost miss the sound of the sander. Wait, did I actually say that?
The realization has started to set in that we may need another year on the hard to complete Akupara’s refit. There is a battle raging in my head as to whether we launch without being 100% finished, or if we wait until we are 100% finished. The issue is several fold. On the one side, if we gave the old Lehman a tune up and completed enough jobs to at least look complete, we could spend the summer on Akupara while she is afloat, working on the jobs that still need completion. On the other hand, it would basically amount to 3 lost months of work as when we are at the dock, there at times can be a bit more socializing than working going on. On the other hand, if we wait to launch, we can complete more of the jobs we have scheduled, like replacing the Lehman etc.
Of course life has a way of getting in the way as usual. Braces, college tuition, school trips. All these things add up to subtract from the refit budget. Another year would help ease that financial pain.
I am about half way complete sanding the decks. I still have the aft cabin area, and the cockpit to do. Not to mention all of the stanchions still need to come up. But, the majority of the decks have had a good rough sand with 80 grit. The shrinkwrap cover is a blessing and a curse at the same time. It allows us to be dry and get a lot completed but it makes it very difficult to work on deck as you can only stand up in the centre line and have to crouch somewhat on the sidedecks.
We will continue slogging it out for a while yet, but there may be a change of course coming up. It would be nice to feel Akupara move a little bit in the water.
We arrived at Akupara late yesterday and it was cold and raining of course. Andrea set about working on the last of the sanding and I was at a bit of a loss as to what I should do. We had stopped and picked up sandpaper including some 80 grit for the belt sander, and I thought what the hell, need to find out sooner or later if this is going to work. So, I started a test spot on the main cabin top and that quickly developed into rough sanding the entire top. It took me approximately 3 hours to complete the horizontal surface. Not bad. I will have to go back and get into some of the tighter places with a palm sander but for the most part it is sanded enough to apply an epoxy primer. I still have lots of work around all of the stanchions etc so the side decks will be a while yet. I calculate that one good day with the belt sander and I will be able to complete all of the large surfaces. It will probably be another complete day at least with a palm sander to knock down the harder to reach areas.
I spoke to a rep from Interlux paint at the boat show and he advised me to use a two part epoxy product and paint that is perfectly legal in Canada but for whatever reason is not sold here. Looks like I will have to head south to get some.
The plan is to use 80 grit in order to provide good adhesion for an epoxy primer. Then knock that down with a finer grit, and quite possibly a third time as well. Then it would be ready for paint.
Because this is such a giant pain in the ass job it is easy to want to take shortcut but any pro painter will tell you, the trick is in the preparation. Guess the sound of sanders is still in our future for a while yet.
White paper masks may make you feel like you are in the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy and that you are performing some kind of life saving operation but let me tell you that they are useless when it comes to stopping sawdust from getting into your nose!
I am sick of sawdust. It covers our clothes, it gets in our nose, it is in our cars, in our beds, in our hair, in places I am not going to mention and it is persistent. We will work all day Saturday and still have sawdust appearing out of nowhere on Wednesday.
But the absolute worst part of sawdust are the dry boogers. For days afterwards it feels like someone has lined your nasal cavities with a thin layer of concrete. We have tried white paper masks and respirators, and almost anything else you can think of to no avail. About the only thing left is peeing in a handkerchief and covering your face with it. (Apparently that is a way to make it through tear gas)
Thankfully, oh so thankfully we are almost done with sawdust for the most part. Our gigantic pile of wood to sand has been reduced to 2 piles, one in our basement and one in the cockpit. Considering these piles required 5 truckloads to move each way, I think we have done an amazing amount of work. Okay it only took a year of sanding on Saturdays, but it is still a lot accomplished.
We have this almost down to a science now. We have all of the “To be sanded” items on one side of the cockpit. Andrea and crew, if they are there, sand in the middle of the cockpit. The pieces then get moved to the other side of the cockpit as they are completed, or handed to me inside to install.
There is also the cut and ready to install pile, where each piece is stacked next to its former self. For the most part these only need the edges sanded wherever I have made fresh cuts.
And lastly is the plywood scrap pile. Not that any of it is scrap and I am sure all of it will eventually be used but a pile none the less.
I find that old plywood has a rather bad smell to it in some cases and any piece that we can replace without major difficulty is being replaced. I also have a strong belief that we have reduced the overall weight of Akupara substantially as 40 year old plywood just seems heavier.
We managed to make a lot of progress yesterday and it feels good to be back in the swing of things.
The admiral and I were both feeling the same way at the end of the day. Thrilled to be approaching the end of the wood sanding, but scared of the next stage which involves sanding the cabin liner and the decks.
Never mind Grey’s Anatomy for those jobs, we are going full Breaking Bad! IF there is anything worse than sawdust boogers it is fiberglass boogers!!!
With a little help from my 2×4 friends we have managed to keep the sky up for now! It really did not need a lot of help but these 3 supports will at least keep the center up if nothing else. As you can see in the picture, Akupara’s poor old decks are covered in sawdust. Not long now and it won’t be sawdust it will be gel coat and Fiberglas dust as we transition to sanding the decks.
Deck re-coring
I have started to cut some of the known pieces to do the re core. We have had marine plywood start to accumulate from all of the other projects and the scraps I have been saving for all of the areas we will need to recore. I anticipate having to purchase a couple more sheets for the interior yet so we should have lots left.
Vberth door
I also managed to get the vberth door sanded and hung, only 2 doors left now and we will have no more big pieces left to sand.
Of course we still have a lot of small pieces and trim etc but we are actually coming down to the end of sanding wood. It will be nice when it is finished. Paige has volunteered to come and help us this Saturday so we should make a little extra progress.
Next weekend is the Vancouver Boat Show so not a lot of work will get done. I will write a post about our findings when it is over.
As an aside you may have noticed that we have not been staining any of the pieces we have sanded lately. This is simply due to the temperature inside of Akupara, it is too low. Hopefully it will be a little warmer this weekend and we can get the wood stained.
Okay maybe not the sky, but something definitely did not look right as we drove up to Akupara yesterday.
Cover collapse
I knew this was coming but I just did not know when exactly it was going to happen.
The puddle of Ice and WaterThere was a heck of a lot of waterProbably a good thing these drawers were piled here to help take the weight
We had a bit of snow last week one morning and obviously it was enough to gather in the low spots on the shrink wrap and as the temperature climbed a bit, it created a depression which continued to collect water when it rained this week. Thankfully the cover collapsed over the main companionway where it rested a little on deck, a little on the drawers that are queued for sanding and on the helm. I had to poke a small hole in the tarp and let it drain into the cockpit. I enlarged the hole to about 1/4 inch in size and after an hour or so, enough water was gone that I could stand up underneath the cover, and push the remainder outwards with my back. There was a layer of about an inch of ice on top of the water that was sent crashing overboard. Today I will have to go back and re-enforce the frame with some vertical 2×4’s and I will attempt to shrink the shrink-wrap a bit with a heat gun to tighten up the loose areas.
I think this is an omen. It is foreshadowing at least. We need to get back to hustling and we need to get the decks completely prepped for paint as I doubt if we would ever see another year out of the shrink wrap and I do not want to pay to have it done again.
Once the crisis was over and we fixed the falling sky issue, we began to work on the layout of the galley and pantry. Remember a while back I had started into the pantry and then I stopped. My reason for stopping was that I did not want to go and make a bunch of dividers and shelves only to find out that none of our containers would fit, so we brought all of the new containers down to Akupara and played organization for a while trying to find the best layout for all of the storage.
The pantry layout.
We have been thinking about the galley as well. The shelf behind the stove needs to come out yet, but for the same reason as not finishing the pantry, I wanted to be able to build everything to fit. We have always felt that the height of the shelf was a bit odd and after trying to fit containers etc in, it only reinforced our belief.
Trying to determine the eventual height of the shelf and layout
I think we need to slow down a bit on the galley and come to a final decision as to whether or not we will build in a microwave, dishwasher, coffee maker and where the wine fridge will go. Joke 😉 But in all honesty I think we need to spend a bit more time designing this. One of the major beefs about the layout currently is that anything you put on the shelf behind the stove is almost useless if the stove is on as you need to reach across directly on top of the stove.
Over the holidays I glued (contact cement) arborite to the panel for the area behind where the electrical panel was, which I have planned as the new spot for the watermaker, and to the new drop down electrical panel and electronics area at the nav station. We brought these pieces with us and I installed them temporarily to ensure they fit. One did and of course one did not so I will need to do some trimming, but overall we are pleased with the black look.
Nav station – hinged electrical and electronics area.Previous electrical panel area and new watermaker location
As you can see in the picture I still need to glue arborite to the tops of the chart locker, tool storage area.
I am still not sure what the official name for this spot is, but I am inclined to just start calling it the hallway.
So all in all we had a productive day, on top of all this, the Admiral managed to get a few more pieces sanded and ready to be stained.
Our basement is slowly emptying out to the point that I was able to create a temporary workbench out of some old plywood I had on top of sawhorses and really start organizing some of the remaining straggling pieces.
I also took a closer look at the booms yesterday and discovered that both the main and the mizzen are rigged with 2 reef points set up for 1 line reefing for each point. This is a nice feature that I do not recall seeing before. On our previous ketch’s, neither had a reefable mizzen.
We are approaching another milestone here soon. We are nearing the completion of the interior wood sanding. I say we, but in reality it has been the admiral performing all the sanding and I do the installation and staining. There are 2 more doors in our basement, 3 drawers, and a bunch of trim pieces. On Akupara there are about 5 drawers, 1 door, and a bunch of trim pieces as well, but the majority of all of the wood sanding is almost done. That was a gigantic job! When it is complete, we will need to move on to sanding of the liner in preparation for new paint and of course the multiple sandings of the deck.
Well it has been a few days more than 1 year now that we have had, and been working on Akupara!
It is a little hard to imagine that it has been this long and that we still have so many unfinished projects. I guess the big question is, are we happy with where we are in regards to the progress we have made on her? The answer to that question is loaded. Of course not. I would much rather be sitting aboard typing this right now somewhere in Mexico or the Caribbean but we are nowhere near that of course. It would be nice if the decks were finished, or the electrical or plumbing but I am glad that we are almost complete the interior. Considering this is basically a weekend project I think we are doing quite well. Our progress for the most part has been steady, with life getting in the way a few times but overall I think we have done quite well.
So just what did we accomplish? We accomplished spending a lot of time as a family working together towards the same goal. The kids (and the admiral in regards to tools anyway) learnt quite a lot in regards to boat work and power tools and a sense of accomplishment, and hard work. We had lots of laughs, and a few arguments. We were cold and wet at times and hot and sweaty at other times. We planned, and talked and drew pictures, and had to ask each other for help. We had paint brush fights and occasionally we told each other a better way of doing things. That was mostly the admiral of course ;-).
We got to know a few boyfriends and had an opportunity to watch the kids get a little older in both their interactions, abilities and skills as well as get a little closer to being adults. I was able to teach them how to use a jigsaw, and an orbital sander, screwdrivers, and wire cutters, and a host of other things. They learnt that if you try to mix thickened epoxy to fill holes and you forget to add the hardener, the end result is a forever sticky mess that you need to go back and clean out and do your work over. They learnt that Rome was not built in a day and they discovered that real work is required to make any progress. They learnt that sometimes in life you need to roll up your sleeves and get a little dirty and that not all paths are paved in gold. In fact, occasionally you might just run into the odd cockroach along the way. They learnt that money does not grow on trees and sometimes you can’t afford to just write a magic cheque or swipe a magic card to get stuff. They learnt that if you say you are going to do something, you need to follow through and get it done and stand by your word. I also hope that they learnt that even though things take way longer than you expect, or that you do not get as much accomplished as you had planned, or that yes you might run into the odd cockroach, you still need to continue. You need to sweep up the cockroach, throw it out, take a few minutes to re-align, and then get back to work. Nobody is going to come swooping in and save you.
So are we happy with what we have accomplished in this last year? You damn right we are. Even though Akupara is a long, long, way away from being in the warm waters of the Caribbean she has already done a fantastic job of her primary responsibility, and that is keeping us all together, united and safe. Thank you Akupara!
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Seasons Greetings and all the best! Thanks for following along over this last year and looking forward to sharing our progress over the next year with you as well!
I have begun designing the layout of the navigation station. Of course I really can only design the layout of the instruments and the electrical panel as the actual layout of the furniture is already predetermined.
It got me to thinking of course, what do I need, want, wish to have in the nav station area? Do I want to keep it modern and only have electronics or do I want to go a little retro and include my sextant. All of these questions has led to a list of things and a first drawing of possible layout. The list thus far is:
Pencils, pens, Ship’s Log, Handheld VHF, mounted vhf, charting tools, charts, GPS and plotter, clock, barometer, electrical panel, stereo, quick reference cards, binoculars, sextant, hand bearing compass, notepad, laptop, SSB, depth finder, 2m VHF, EPIRB, SPOT, shortwave radio, weatherfax or printer for laptop, Pactor modem, radar, and engine instruments.
I am sure I am forgetting things but at least I have a starting point. The trouble comes in the layout. On some of our previous boats the placement of some of the electronics made it difficult to operate the dials and or buttons, but having everything directly in front of your face within an easy arms reach is not possible either. And when designing the layout I need to be aware of screen brightness so that one device does not outshine another etc.
I like to think of the Nav Station as the Man Cave. It is command central and everything, within reason, on the ship should be controllable and or capable of being monitored from command central. I should be able to glance at it and know the ships status in a few moments. I hate having to call around for reports from different areas in order to complete the log entries. Yelling to the helm, what is the engine temp and oil pressure. Yelling to the main salon bulkhead, what is the barometric pressure, yelling to the foredeck, are the nav lights on, yelling to the helm, what’s our course, and on and on. All of this information should be within arms reach for whoever is completing the log entry. At least that is my opinion.
So, back to drawing pictures and adding to my list.
Ahhh the life of a boater, if you are not working on it, designing something for it, thinking about how to improve something, repairing something, cleaning something, scrubbing, sanding, staining, drilling, filling, painting, scraping, dreaming, wishing, hoping or planning. You might actually get a chance to sail! But look at the time, can’t go sailing today, gotta go back to work to pay for all of this fun. 😉
If your boat is in the water, remember to schedule some time to enjoy it as well as all of the fixing!
I am going to stand on my soapbox for a minute. As opposed to all of the other times I have as well. We live in a disposable society. We buy things and when we get tired of them we throw them away and our landfills are overflowing. I have heard it said that there is not a beach left in the world that does not have traces of human garbage washed ashore. We are all responsible for this. We say that our generation is leading the way in recycling but we are fooling ourselves. Our grandparents were the ones who recycled. My grandmother as an example used to wash out the plastic bags that milk came in and hang them over the sink on a little line to dry. She would then use them to freeze leftovers in. This was before the days of ziplock baggies. Food was preserved in glass jars and stowed away in a cold cellar that did not require any electricity. The farther back in history you go, the more recycling you discover. Things were simply to expensive to throw them out. We have this all wrong. If we want to make a positive impact, stop buying new things. Find creative ways to use the stuff you already have, and when it isn’t as shiny and new as it was when you bought it, find another use for it. If it is a little worn, turn it into something else, and when that wears away, use the leftovers again.
Okay, enough preaching. We have about 16 miles of used rope that came with Akupara. Of course all of it needs to be replaced as it is sun beaten, dirty, frayed and in some cases down right dangerous. And yet we dragged all 16 miles of it home and piled it up in the basement. Why? Because I have another use for it that’s why!
I spent 3 hours today on the kitchen floor, repurposing that old rope, and now we have 2 nice mats for Akupara. Not only do we have mats, but I also contributed to saving the planet a little bit by not going out and buying a fancy dancy Welcome mat from the nearest nautical jewellery store made most likely out of plastic. Ya they may not be perfectly white, and they may take a little while to soften out but, they make great mats! I mean come on, you wipe your shoes on them anyway!
So, my advice. Take 3 hours of your day and use those old sheets that were destined for the back of the rope locker only to be eventually thrown away and make something nice with them. You will be practicing skills that sailors have used for hundreds of years, you will gain a sense of accomplishment, you will end up with something useable, and you will save a little bit of room in the landfill.
Mats from Old sheetsRopeworkTightening the mat4′ mat for the hallwayAnd from the leftover rope from the big mat, I made a 16′ flat turk’s head mat
Or if you really don’t want to be bothered, but you like the idea, send me your old sheets and I will make them for you, for a small fee of course. That way you will feel better because you spent some money. 😉
After taking these pictures I put both mats in the bathtub and they are soaking in dishsoap and javex to give them a good cleaning.
For some time now I have been trying to find a solution to the nav station forward bulkhead. Over the last 40 years people have drilled holes and cut holes and screwed into it and generally made a huge mess of one of the first things you see as you enter Akupara. I have had this particular solution in my mind and finally decided to bite the bullet and give it a try.
Holy
Of course something that should be fairly simple turned into another 5 hour job but hey, it’s a boat, that’s what happens!
Off to the local Lowe’s store to buy the needed supplies. Now this is not the first time I have looked at the availability of cork in the lower mainland, and I knew what I was getting before I got there and knew what had to be done in order to make my idea work.
Let’s step back for a minute. I do not actually have a pushpin handy and I have not purchased any to actually measure, but all of my mind is telling me that the actual pin part of a pushpin is longer than 4mm and the only available thickness of cork material is, yup you guessed it 4mm. Considering the area has arborite on it, the odds of pushing a pin in far enough to hold something well in my mind, are very low.
This meant that I needed to cut two pieces the same size and glue them together before gluing it to the bulkhead.
Amazing how little space there is to work inside, but I got it done, barely. And I only have a few spots of contact cement that need to be removed from all of the surrounding areas.
It is a fairly basic plan. Cut two pieces of rolled cork to fit the space exactly. Glue them together with Contact Cement. Sand the area that is going to be applied to. Glue the piece in place and voila, you have a newly refinished bulkhead, and a corkboard.
Nav Station Corkboard
And it was a simple plan, I just did not include the number of times I would need to move it back to the floor in order to cut it. Okay to make a long story short, I was very careful to get as exact of a fit as possible and possibly could have taken it a little bit too far, but the end result is pretty cool.
Fitting the corkboardFitting the corkboard 2clamping the edges
Now while I was going through all of this I also decided that I was going to add one layer to the dressing table in the aft cabin as cork is also a non skid and as you know, it also is covered in that arborite/formica stuff.
Cork top for dressing table
This cover in the aft cabin has yet to be glued down but I think it looks great!
And the final product in the nav station….
Corkboard in Nav Station
I have lots of little pieces left over that I am sure I will find uses for, but I also want to try different stains on them as I may want to give the cork a bit of a different colour, but I think it is an inexpensive, relatively small job, that anyone can do in an afternoon to give new life to a tired old surface. Damn, starting to sound like one of those home fixer upper dudes….
A few things you may not have known about cork:
It is a wood product and will accept stains and paints.
It can be cut with scissors or a sharp blade.
It is sandable. I sanded all of the edges by hand to give them a nice 1/4 round edge.
Have you ever started searching a particular thing, I don’t know, like Arborite as an example, and after a significant amount of time has passed you come out of your daze and realize that you have been watching videos of cats and cucumbers or something stupid. There is no science that can explain the rabbit hole phenomena, it is beyond the comprehension of mere mortals and nevertheless, even though we are fully aware of the possibility of getting sucked into the vortex every time we open our computer, we still end up getting trapped.
Well occasionally the rabbit hole leads you to mysterious places that are actually useful as opposed to just silly. Case in point, I actually did start googling arborite and ended up watching homemade youtube videos on magic ways to clean brass. I spoke the following words out right. “Bullshit.” The Admiral knew full well where I had been for the last 2 hours, wow had it really bee n 2 hours? Anyway, I decided to try one of these homemade BS solutions to cleaning brass. I diligently went down into the dark recesses of the basement and found the worst piece of brass I have. The ships bell from Akupara. It is old, pitted, tarnished and generally in really poor condition. I of course hung on to it when we were gutting Akupara as it actually has a beautiful tone and I thought someday I might be able to clean it.
I proceeded into the kitchen, where all dirty jobs truly belong, I gathered all of the ingredients as per the instructions and laid it all out on the counter.
The ships bell
I mixed the ingredients as per the video into a white paste like consistency and painted it all over the bell.
The goop applied to the bell
I let it sit for about 10 minutes and then proceeded to wash it all off with a dishrag, give it a quick dry and put it back into the same position for the Results picture.
Ships bell after one round of cleaning
Wow, I was very surprised to say the least. This might actually be working. As you can see in the picture, there are still some bad spots so I thinks to meself, put another coat on it and see what happens. So that is exactly what I did. I was also so surprised by the initial test that I grabbed another ships bell and tried it on that as well.
2 ships bells. The left has not been treated, the right has had one treatment
And another batch of mush was mixed up and this time both were painted. I did not take a picture of both as they were undergoing the magic, but the results are below.
Ships Bells
So why 2 bells you ask? Well, it is a long story but I will tell it to you. Many moons ag, the Admiral and the crew pitched together and purchased me the ships bell on the left in the picture. This ships bell has been on several of our boats now, it is not engraved so I don’t think I am breaking any major voodoo rules. When we sold Kismet, I mounted the bell outside of our front door. My uncle always had a big brass ships bell on the door to his house as well. I bet it is still hanging there. Anyway, the part of the story that I skipped is that there really is not a lot of room on small boats to have these types of luxuries so on Mara our Alberg 30, the ships bell was actually mounted in the head and so the tradition started that, the ships bell is rung every time there is a deposit made, if you get my drift. I know it’s gross, but hey, you have to laugh. So, coming back to Akupara, since we have 2 heads, it is only fitting that we have 2 ships bells. That way, all aboard will be notified regardless of which head is used.
The final pictures I am posting are totally misleading. I am not sure what I did to my camera, or if I changed the lighting conditions or what, but believe me when I tell you, the ships bell is not silver as it appears in the picture, it is still brass in colour.
After the final magic session of goop, and the picture above, I gave the bell about a 20 minute polish with a little bit of Brasso just to see if I could get the shine to come up. It came up a lot but of course would be a lot better if I had a mechanical polisher to do the job for me.
The polished ships bell
So, the magic formula is flour, salt and vinegar. I took 3 handfuls of flour, free poured the salt, and mixed in vinegar until I thought it was the right consistency to paint on.
The 2nd batch I mixed up, I think I could have used a bit more vinegar but it worked either way.
So, in the end, sometimes the rabbit hole can lead to good places, now, where was that cat video again?
For those of you out there who are going to tell me that I am ruining the finish, or changing the electro static variables of the molecular structure or….I don’t care, it’s shiny! 😉
Little by little we are reassembling Akupara’s interior and at the same time emptying out our basement. We are down to one more load of wood to bring back and it is all fiddly bits. There is still a plethora of drawers and things to sand on Akupara but the Admiral is getting a lot closer to having it all completed.
We have one more wooden area inside Akupara to sand and refinish and that is underneath the main salon companionway ladder, the back of the nav station and the little bit of wood in the hallway.
We are almost at the point of masking and taping it all off with dropsheets and giving the interior liner a rough sand before priming and painting it. Once that is complete we can complete all of the interior trim.
We have cut the insulation for behind the watermaker, made a new top and hatches out of 3/4 marine ply and dry fit everything.
The new home for the watermaker
We have also sanded and hung the dishrack/bookshelf in the main salon. Currently it is held on with little wee angle brackets which was how we originally found it. I will definitely be beefing this up for sure. I do not want a cabinet full of fine china to come crashing down 😉
The dishrack
We have also temporarily reinstalled the last big panel. I had to do a little bit of epoxy repair work where the fold down bar hinge attaches so the admiral will have a little more sanding before we can permanently install it. As well, I need to buy yet another sheet of teak plywood for the back of the cabinet and then build in the shelves again.
The bar will soon be open
I am still working on the exact layout of the watermaker and the grumblings around the house are indicating to me that I should probably hurry up a bit. Apparently having a watermaker on the coffee table is not a good thing. I don’t really understand this because it gives me great pleasure to have it there. I can rearrange, and tweak the placement, and visually plan out the routes for the hoses and all the while I am getting more and more familiar with each piece and how the entire magic little system works and I marvel at how ingenious it is and I think about how the sailors of old would drink stagnant water from old barrels for months on end and what they would have given to have one of these little miracles, okay I get it, I will hurry up.
Spectra Watermaker layout
I think very soon we will be starting work on the galley and the heads or another way to look at it, we are down to 4 rooms left to complete. Galley, 2 heads, and last but not least, the engine room. Of course I am skipping all of the little details like electrical and plumbing, and rigging, and ok are we ever going to be done? 😉
Well after hitting the lumber store and buying 2 more sheets of marine ply, 1 – 1/2′ and 1 – 3/4″ we made our way down to Akupara. The Admiral spent the day sanding and I did a bit of reorganizing, cut the insulation for the starboard wall, began to reinstall the starboard cupboards and as the Admiral finished the last major panel, we went ahead and installed it temporarily. It needs to come back out in order to finish the shelving and the back panel but it was a feeling of accomplishment to at least get it in for now.
We have lined up our work for this weekend. The Admiral will continue to sand, for some strange reason she likes it, so I will not complain, and I will resume cutting the new shelving and installing everything. Hopefully we will be able to get a couple of coats of cetol on as well.
Starting to think about what I will tackle next as the Admiral continues to sand, I have lots to choose from of course but as I mentioned, I think it will be the installation of the watermaker. 🙂
Starboard main salon insulationStarboard main salon cabinet
The electrical panel and all associated hidden wiring is now in a dumpster on its way to the 12v electrical graveyard. For some reason this area has taken me a while to get to. Could be the 2700 other priorities but who knows. Yesterday I decided I had put it off long enough after a bad start at sanding. I had gone down to Akupara with the intent of working on sanding and staining but it just wasn’t working out for me so I changed jobs. Since sanding was not an option, I chose to tackle the workshop/chartdesk/electrical panel area/hallway. I ripped out all of the old wood and discovered another mouldy wall. Hopefully we are getting to the point of not finding any more of these. Anyway, today I scrubbed all the mould off, painted the inside of the hull and the surrounding area and set about cutting a new backboard. I have been toying with the idea of what I am going to put back here as I want the electrical panel at the nav station. I have had 2 ideas. The first was to use the new found space as a storage area for all of my cases of spare parts but after measuring and planning and placing and trying it just would not go. So, on to plan 2 which was actually plan 1 but I had to go through at least the process of trying the spare parts cases. Plan 2, which was actually plan 1, is to use this area for the watermaker. The admiral will attest that I spent about a month with all of the little bits and pieces of the watermaker on the livingroom coffee table. It was the perfect place to lay it all out and move pieces around trying to make it fit into the allotted space. It was time well spent as the final layout is about the exact same size as the space I now have.
As I have mentioned previously, when we purchased Akupara, the watermaker was tucked into a non accessible spot in the back of the engine room. Any thought of changing filters or performing any kind of maintenance was quickly put to death.
With the new location, every piece will be accessible from a comfortable standing position which as we grow into old age, will be much appreciated. I don’t think a lot of people realize just how often the filters need to be changed until after it is too late.
For some reason I am really excited to get this are complete! We will not be using the watermaker any time soon, but to have it tucked away all neat and organized and CLEAN makes me very happy!
Other than that I accomplished a lot of little small jobs this weekend. Things that are just small and fiddly that take an exorbitant amount of time. I hung a few cupboards and closet doors and changed out a whole bunch of screws and added finishing washers. I cut a 3/4 piece of plywood to start filling in the hole from where the PO had the SSB. I organized all of the pieces of marine ply I had left. I organized all of the wood that still needs to be sanded and installed. I made about 4 trips to the garbage bin with little things I have been collecting as I come across them. There was a lot of tools left aboard and in our initial cleaning I did not want to throw them out. Now I am getting tired of moving them every time I need to do something so I am ridding myself of anything that is in less than pristine condition. Slowly of course, but a little is better than none.
So as an aside, yesterday the Admiral came with me as I left for Akupara. I had to stop at the store to buy sand paper and once we were on our way, the Admiral feigned illness. Out of nowhere she claimed to be nauseous and could not continue on our way. So being the gentle kind loving husband that I am, I turned the truck around and brought her home where she proceeded to spend the rest of the day on the couch watching Netflix.
Did I mention that we were basically having a monsoon with water running down the streets and sidewalks?
So yesterday, she did mention that she was going to come with me today, but somehow at 8am when I announced I was going to head out, there was no arguing or wait for me’s or hang on I’m coming or I will meet you there. Nope nothing.
Something tells me that she somehow had a miraculous recovery and perhaps a bit of guilt reared it’s ugly head as tonight when I returned home, I was greeted with a complete turkey dinner with all of the fixings.
Hmmmm, suspicious?
Here are some random pictures taken over this weekend.
Fresh PaintNew panel to mount water makerTest fit to check clearancePlugging cut outs in Nav stationOne more cupboard door2 more doors to stainAnd you thought I was joking.
Well it has been a rather strange month again. We made it down to Akupara last weekend but did not get a lot accomplished other than to check on her and try to get our heads back in the game. We are so close to finishing all of the major interior wood that the last few pieces are getting to the point of being painful. Once they are completed we will need to make a decision as to what to attack next. We have many options of course but I think for the time being we will continue to complete the interior. We still have to sand the cabin ceiling to get rid of all of the old house paint, and there is still all of the electrical and plumbing. Of course we have not attacked the galley yet, but I think that will be the final interior job. Something about having construction dust in a new galley is just not appealing.
The Vancouver boat show is coming up in January and I would like to have the interior renovation complete so that we can move on to other things like what I mentioned above. Sometimes there can be some good deals at the boat show and other times it just seems to be the same old thing.
A few items from our shopping list are: new seacocks, 12v and 120v wire, electrical panel, 2 heads and associated plumbing, and perhaps a diesel heater. On Kismet, we installed a Planar Air Heater. They work on exactly the same principle as the other big name air heaters but cost 1/3 the cost. We absolutely loved it! We could go down to Kismet in the winter time after she had been left all week and in under an hour, the interior temperature would be close to 80. We have never had forced air heat aboard a boat before and let me tell you, once you have had it, you use it more than you can possibly imagine even in the summer. Typically I am the first one to wake in the mornings and I would get up, make my coffee and sit out in the cockpit to enjoy the sunrise. The admiral is the next up but if I timed it right. I would turn on the furnace about 15 minutes before she got out of bed and she loved it. Just enough to knock the damp early morning chill out of the boat. It extended our season and our comfort aboard in the off months was greatly increased. For 1/3 the cost of the big names I thought I would take a chance and I am very glad I did. I have heard of less issues with these units than the big names. Friends of ours also installed one, after fighting for years with an older big name brand and they love theirs as well. Even if you only got a year out of it and had to buy one 3 years in a row, you would still be farther ahead than the big names which from what I have heard, start acting up in under 3 years.
And the final icing on the cake. Here in Vancouver, the distributor actually delivers the entire unit and any extra parts that you may have purchased right to your front door!
If you have ever thought about having one, for about $1000 plus your installation time (I installed mine in 1 day), you can have the luxury of turning on the furnace as well. 🙂
check them out if you are in the Vancouver area. http://www.planarheaters.com/
Today was a weird day. I have been sick for a couple of days with the flu so I was not up to a full blown work day but we still have lots to get completed so off we went. We decided that today would be a cleaning day. Andrea and Paige swept and vacuumed and washed as much of the dust away as possible and I applied a coat of Cetol Gloss to as much as possible. All in all it was a good day as we left with the feeling of having accomplished something and when we return, we will have a fairly clean boat to get all dirty again. 🙂
Not a lot to say from last weekend except, sanding, staining, sanding, and more staining so I will keep this post short and just give you the pictures from last weekend.
pre CetolAfter CetolFirst coat of Cetol on Mast box
There are some things in life that are satisfying and some that are not. Sanding is one of those things that I think falls into the satisfying category. You take an old weathered piece of wood and with minimum effort (most times) you end up with an almost new piece of wood. It is fantastic!
Of course that only holds true when you are only sanding one or two pieces. After the 457th piece is sanded and you still have another 457 pieces to sand, it starts to fall into the unsatisfying category. Actually just the pain in the ass category.
Believe it or not, we are actually coming close to being finished with the sanding of wood. I think there are 3 doors, about 10 drawers, and 1 major panel and 1 small panel left to sand not to mention all of the little pieces of trim. Our basement is almost free of Akupara’s interior!
We are trying to drive this to completion and I have to say that the admiral and the crew have been exceptional when it comes to being persistent with this. Hopefully, fingers crossed, that we will have all of the wood sanded and stained by the end of next weekend. So 4 more days of work.
Then the real sanding will begin. This sanding is not going to be fun. It will involve a lot of paint dust, and fiberglass dust and generally be very nasty as we sand all of the interior liner where it is visible in preparation for painting and of course I keep skirting the issue of sanding the decks, but I really do not think that will be as bad as the interior. At least we will not have to hold the sander above ourselves with everything falling in our faces.
So, we did manage to complete the sanding of the majority of the main salon, there is one small bulkhead left at the nav station, and eventually the table will need to be completed, and the admiral finished a few more cupboard doors and a drawer or two. I ran out of Cetol Natural Teak so we did not get a chance to stain any of it.
I mentioned before that at some point someone had painted the main bulkhead. I hate this look and a while back decided that I would strip it. This left me with an interesting issue. I was unable to get the paint out of the grain. We spent many hours trying to discover a secret as to how to do this without ruining the teak. From brass wool to toothbrushes nothing worked. We resigned ourselves to having to add a new layer of veneer.
Yesterday I decided that since we were going to re veneer it there was no worry of damaging it so I have it one last attempt with the sander. 6 hours later I managed to remove 95% of the paint from the grain and we have now saved the original veneer. Although it is not perfect I am pleased that we could save it.
Once there was a nav station, now there is a big hole.
I have considered 3 avenues for the nav station and I will try to explain my reasoning for each. Option #1 was to remove, paint, fix and replace everything exactly as it was. Option #2 was to remove, paint, fix and rebuild the nav station to be starboard facing, so that when you were sitting there, you were facing to starboard as opposed to forward. Option #3 is pretty much like option #1 however with a major difference. Move all of the electrical panels, controls, monitors, and whatever else to the outboard side and fill in that 8″ of cupboard.
So option 1 seems like a very good idea. Simple easy and quick. However it does not make any improvements to the overall design. Option 2 also seems like a good idea. I would end up with a larger nav table, I could increase the storage area under the new desk for chart storage and I think it would flow a little better, but then I would lose my den. Ultimately I have decided to go with option 3. I will reuse as much of the existing layout and cabinetry however I will relocate all electrical to this area. It will be the nerve hub of the ship, the command central so to say. From here I can sit in the Captains private reserved area, play with my radios, turn switches and flip dials, all the while barking commands to the rest of the crew that are all salty like, “you there, you scallywag, run and fetch me another mug of grog.” And then the admiral will give me that look, and the crew will mutiny and I will turn back to my flipping of dials and turning of switches. But in my head, I will be commanding a great crew on a great old sailing ship as we battle our way round the cape. Or the end of the damn dock at the marina, but you get the point.
Okay, seriously, I do not like facing outwards as I do not feel that you would have the same sense of security of being able to jam yourself into a little cubby and I do not like the idea of an aft facing nav station as I think dealing with the motion of a boat offshore is difficult enough without having to anticipate and compensate for the motion in reverse. And I have always thought that the nav station should be the command central. This is where we will make log entries, this is where we will plot positions etc so it needs to be functional. Again on Kismet III we had a beautiful matching stainless clock and barometer mounted on the forward bulkhead. It looked great, very nautical and all that. From my nav station, I would have to get up, make my way to the forward side of the cabin, read the barometric pressure, make my way back to the nav station and record it. Of course typically I got distracted half way through this and had to make multiple trips. I am partially joking here, but how would this have worked offshore if there was a crewmate sleeping in the main salon, and you were dripping wet, the boat is at 40 degrees heel as you come down the face of some monstrous wave, and now you have to walk back and forth with a headlamp on…I think you get my point. The clock and the barometer should have been at the nav station. Not only to make it easier, but I think typically if something is easier, it is probably safer as well. My end goal is to have every piece of information that I need readily available in one spot.
So after cleaning, scraping, and painting, I have started replacing the cabinetry as it was prior. I hope by now that everyone realizes that all of the interior is removable and I am only dry fitting everything. Most of it will come out at least once more to run electrical wires etc.
I have always loved the idea of these black panels that you see on some of the more modern yachts that have an outline of the boat and little led’s that light up to indicate different things. If anyone knows where I can have one made, please send me a note. An example below:
I am not so much interested in this particular electrical panel, just the idea of the outline of the boat.
