Winter work

Been a while since I’ve posted, but we have still been working away on details, big and small, on the interior of KamaHele. We have slowed our pace of work to a more reasonable speed which was an absolute necessity once we got moved on board. Three plus years of pushing ourselves so hard on this project was certainly wearing us out, and not something we could reasonably sustain forever. It’s nice to get back to a slightly more normal lifestyle (whatever that means). With the boat back in her slip for the winter, all our necessary personal stuff moved onboard, and the basic comforts taken care of (heat, lighting, electrical, domestic water – both hot & cold, etc.), and the cold and rain of winter upon us, we have mostly been working on interior fit-out and finish work, as well as tying up loose ends left over from our rush to get the boat launched last September. After we brought the boat home, we took another trip up to Vallejo and back to receive a load of diesel fuel via truck. This was a good follow up shake-down cruise of about 70 miles or so, and I was able to get our auto pilot dialed in and play around with fuel consumption at different speeds. The biggest project we then tackled was plumbing, wiring and commissioning of the diesel furnace which supplies both heat and domestic hot water. Welcome luxuries… This a hydronic system in which coolant is heated by a small diesel fired burner, then circulated throughout the boat via pex tubing. Each heating zone has a small fan-coil heater unit fed with heated coolant, and thermostat to turn it on and off. I took the extra step of fabricating a copper shutoff manifold with an air bleed at each heater inlet and outlet. With this set-up you can bleed air out of the coolant plumbing anywhere in the system, and the shutoffs allow us to isolate individual heater units for service without having to deal with draining coolant from the plumbing. This definitely added some complication to the install but will pay off down the line when things needs service. In all, we have five zones with six heaters and a big 10,000 btu defroster fan in the wheelhouse overhead for the forward windows. So far the system works very well and seems fairly efficient. Last week, we installed the forward head so we now have two functional toilets onboard. This is a great improvement as the head in the aft cabin has no door yet. Our solution to this was to shout “door” whenever we needed to use the toilet, at which point whoever was in bed would pull the covers over their head to afford some privacy to the one using the facilities. With the second toilet installed up forward, there are far fewer calls of “door” these days. We also completed the propane stove install. The galley is completely functional and now I’m mostly just doing the final trim work in this area. Storage is our biggest concern now… I’ll be concentrating on cabinets, shelves, and cubby holes next so we don’t have to live out of cardboard boxes and bins. Don’t have a lot of current detailed photos, but here’s a few, along with a couple of pics from Hawaii that have nothing to do with boats. Hiked out on the volcano to see lava, poked it with a stick. Last is a picture of a nice winter sunrise through the aft head portlight. Nice to be home.