December 07, 2012 - progress slows

Well, I lost Sal to another project for the next week or two.  La Conner Maritime is building two fishing boats from scratch.  Big projects.  One of them has a deadline (imposed by the boat owner) that it needs to be a usable boat by next Friday.  I guess crabbing open on the Oregon coast right after that and he wants this boat down there making money, even if it's not done.  So, there is a crew of at least 10 people working overtime trying to get this boat done.  Unfortunately for me, Sal is one the the main guys when it comes to fiberglass and paint.  So, that's where his time is being spent.

This means our boat isn't getting his great fiberglass and paint work for a week or two.  But that means that I suddenly have more time to prep the boat for painting.  I can tackle a few other exterior projects if I want to.  I did decide to tackle one of them.  Where the roof of the cockpit meets the sidewall of the salon there was a very poor looking joint/connection.  It was just a bunch of caulk that had been painted over.  And guess what, the paint had cracked.  So, it looked pretty bad.

The ceiling join that was just filled with caulk.  I've removed the caulk here.

I found a piece of solid fiberglass that just fit in the gap between the two pieces.  I cut it and bonded it into place with Duraglas.  Then I ground it down to provide a smooth transition for laying in new fiberglass.  I'm going to make this a smooth transition instead of the abrupt and very noticeable joint we had before.

Gap filled and ground into a smooth transition

The first round of fiber-glassing the joint.

More fiberglass

Faired into the basic shape with structural fiberglass filler (from Fiberlay).

 Once I'm done with this it should be a little bit stronger than before.  That's good because the roof has to support our big dinghy, which is almost 500 pounds.

I also decided to have two drain tubes installed into the boat deck.  Up in the front of boat deck water would collect on each side just above the stairs leading down to the pilothouse.  We would always have a puddle there.  A big wave and it would come cascading down the stairs.  I think we have all soaked our socks at least once with this puddle.  So, it's an easy fix right now, just before painting.  Sal drilled a hole through the boat, then fiberglassed in a fiberglass tube.  This will allow the water to drain out and over the side instead of pooling in this very inconvenient location.

location of new drain, the red spot at the bottom right.

Tube installed, glassed over, ready to be finished.

Rain hole basically done.  No more puddles!

While all of this is happening in the paint shop, I need to figure out the locations of a bunch of gear on the radar mast.  There is a satellite dome, a second radar, the anchor light, a weather station sensor, a lightning rod, a PA horn, a rear facing camera, forward facing flood light, a remote control spot light, some deck/spreader lights, and perhaps even a few side facing floor lights.  Whoa, that's a lot of stuff to install and run wires for!  I am mocking up things both at home, and at the paint shop.

Trying to figure out where to mount stuff on our radar mast.

A friend of mine is a stainless steel fabricator that does all the work for a well-know local boat builder.  Things are a bit slow in the boat building business, so he is going to take my mast and add all the custom mounts I need, once I figure this all out.