Lots of good progress lately... Did a test fit on all the wheelhouse doors and windows. Visibility will be excellent and the layout should be very nice. I'll be drilling the holes for all the window and door bolts this weekend, then we will get a crane on-site to lift the wheelhouse into place on the hull. We decided to install the engine after all the welding, grinding and painting is done to avoid complications with masking the engine and getting a good paint coating in the engine room bilge. The plan is to lift the engine and gear through the side wheelhouse door and lower through the soft-patch (machinery opening in a deck) that we built into the wheelhouse deck framing. Also got the day-tank installed. You can see it on the aft bulkhead of the engine room. The day tank is filled from the storage tanks which hold about 1500 gallons of fuel. The transferred fuel is filtered to a high standard on its way from the big tanks to the day tank. This assures that we are always feeding super clean fuel to the engine. Dirty fuel is one of the the primary causes of propulsion failures at sea. Also being only 50 gallons, with a finely calibrated site glass, it is very easy to monitor fuel usage. All the production welding is completed now and the boat is technically "ready to float". A big thanks to Casey at CS Marine (just down-river from us) for setting us up with a large trailer mounted compressor. We'll be using this to air test all the production welds the first part of next week. -PB
I own a DD 462-5. I wish I had had SHM fiberglass the bilge under the engine. I know of one steel boat built there that after sandblasting and epoxy priming the bilge the owner had the workers lay fiberglass matting and resin and then painted white over it. I saw the boat when it was about five years old and the bilge looked brand new.
ReplyDeleteAlso make sure all your weep holes in your framing that allows water to flow to the bilge are big enough. There will be times when you will wash the ER down with a water hose and the weep holes need to be a half inch in diameter at least or as big as you can make them without weakening the frame itself.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about welding a new oil tank into the ER bilge. I had a 27 gallon SS tank built in Subic Bay. You can see the story here: http://ducktalk.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/4921093711/m/1141059642
ReplyDeleteIt would have been much cheaper to build it in. If you go cruising it will seem you're changing oil and filter every week or two.