vas
Well-known member
after a slight delay, sorry about that P. This is the last installment before launching.
Er, don't worry, there's also life (and a lot of work to do) after launching, so the thread is not closing yet ;p
Right, one of the small things that had to be done was sorting out and finishing with the aft deck lining. That includes the side panels along the steps to the bow and the lining over the aft seating. I'd noticed that when I put them together a year or so ago, there was water dripping down the lazarette from the capping-iroko frame to the ali sandwich panel. So this time, after properly painting all the inside, I used some relatively crappy clear silicone I found lying around to seal the panels. Idea being I don't want too good adhesion as I wont be able to remove the panels without damaging them at a later date. And I'm not so keen on redoing these panels anytime soon!
Obviously, before fitting the panels back I had to sand (up to 180iirc) the iroko capping and get it 5-6 coats of Owatrol (part 1)
And now a series of unrelated jobs that are worth mentioning for one reason or another.
At some point I had to remove a truedesign grp skin fitting (cause I was stupid and tried to tighten it before the sika 291 (iirc) had properly set. So it turned, and I wasn't happy.
Removing a skin fitting is easier said than done, as I couldn't have a decent grip underneath there's a couple of tiny recesses where you're meant to use a custom key (nicely coloured flat grp piece tbh) which wasn't enough, so decided to cut it off with a chisel. Didn't want to use an angle grinder mainly because my cutting disk was so small that I'd not have any luck without messing the hull around. Anyway, ten minutes later and after a lot of sweating (and a fair amount of swearing) I cut it off. Here's the piece. My verdict is that there's no fcking way in hell that this would break if I'd step on it even hit it with a sledgehammer. If someone is thinking going grp (to avoid dezincification, bonding or whatever else) I think it's absolutely safe.
MiToS had originally a 6-7mm copper pipe going from the locker/seat on the f/b around through the ceiling slats to the galley. Not a great distance, but wasn't happy to have an almost 40yo pipe especially as I was told that it's not legal to use hard copper pipe on petrogaz/camping gaz whatever you want to call them. So Got 7-8m of proper rubber pipe with ss wire sheathing suitable accessories for the oven and hob and a tee to join them all together. Not hard, just time consuming. So now, gas bottle is at the f/b on the 600X600X250 box on the stbrd side of the seating bench and all that comes nice and round to the two appliances. Hob works, we cooked a couple of times and made a few espressos, oven I haven't tried it yet, have too hairy hands to get a small lighter in there trying to see how to lit the thing. Got to get one of these flexhose lighter thingies for that.
Another odd issue was replacing the door locks, doors being rather thin, typical sized locks wouldn't work, ended up finding proper ones and replaced a couple. I had to replace them as I didn't have keys for most of them and I wanted to be able to lock a room if I wanted or if the occupant wanted (talking teenagers here...)
First attempt went very badly with the barrel sliding in place and doing fck all! key wouldn't turn!
After a lot of headscratching and getting the whole lock mechanism out again, realised that the 70ies locks had shorter tongues. Another angle grinder job and locks worked fine.
A good friend, work colleague and avid follower of the rebuilt (must be the one that paid more visits than anyone else - bar the ones that had boats in the yard that is...) came with a small beer bottle tied up with a nice red cloth tape thing. Explained that due to recession he couldn't afford to offer a champagne, but he could do a bottle of nice ale from a local microbrewery. Definitely recommended to anyone visiting the area. Beer called Argo (from the Jason and the Argonauts story) and is produced two blocks away from my house.
Looked rather funny, so left it there. This caused two different discussions:
One with the boatyard owner, who's actually using the launching slip as a private beach for him and the family and who asked me not to break the bottle just in front of the slip in order not to have accidents (with him or the kids stepping on broken glass)
Second, Alekos came very anxious and really worried one day to warn me that if I hit this bottle on the side of the hull i'm definitely going to mark it and asked me politely not to do it
I explained to both that I'm not planning to do anything silly indeed the bottle is still hanging (only inside in the aftdeck to port) and I need an occasion to drink it
Enough with all that, now, wife following the realisation that MiToS IS actually going to get in the water (she never believed any of my predictions-I don't blame her!), decided that she had to come and actually help and contribute to the project. Needless to say that she rarely appeared when it was all dusty, dirty and messy, but now she was keen to come and help. After some much needed help in cleaning and tidying up the place, I explained that noway in hell was I going to fit carpets right now (for various reasons one being I'm not fond of carpets...) So she decided to come and paint at will (floor and bare hull inner areas) obviously without even noticing what I was explaining regarding missing panels, or panels and furniture that would cover up what she was planning to paint. So I let her loose (literally) and the following pics show the end result. Looks interesting, vibrant and matches nicely with the whole theme, some will stay, others will be covered once various missing panels are put in place.
Original plan was to lay cedar on the cabin floors a la teak with TDS seams at al. Maybe I can skip that for a year or two and relax a bit whilst thinking various detailing jobs I want to attend (and catching up on real job)
So enough for tonight, rain eased so I can go to the boat and try and wire up the temp and oil pressure gauges to the NoLand so that I can have them displayed through the NMEA2K network
cheers
V.
