Tanks

We received the tanks last week from plastic-mart (http://www.plastic-mart.com). Great prices and service. While our fuel tanks are integral steel tanks built into the hull and keel, all the rest of our tankage (black water, grey water, and potable water) is heavy duty 3/8"seamless polyethelyne. We used off the shelf rectangular tanks but since they come as blanks, you can specify the location, size, and number of fittings. This required us to map out most of the plumbing on the boat so that we could determine what fittings we needed and where. The steel foundations for these tanks are now installed and it looks like everything will fit up as planned. 

Anchor Roller

Finished fabricating and installing the anchor roller... It took a little trial and error to get the geometry right. We made a mock-up of the roller frame and the anchor out of plywood and used this to try different angles and roller locations. Had to make sure that the anchor launched ok, cleared the stem and the bow of the boat,  and locked into the roller assembly without any free-play when it was pulled all the way in. Once we had the geometry figured out, we made the real thing out of 3/4" 316 Stainless side-plates, with a 1/2" x 4" Stainless flatbar center piece. This forms an I- beam and is very strong. The whole assembly was welded to the foredeck and bow plating. The bail (the part that keeps the chain from jumping out of the roller and side-plates) is bent from a 3/8 x 3" Stainless flatbar. Finally, we used some 3/4" Stainless round-bar to trim the opening in the bow. I don't have the patience or the inclination to polish any of the stainless on the boat to mirror finish, so I went with a bead-blast, brushed finish- similar to the bitts and fair-leads. Finished by hauling the real anchor (Rocna 55, 120lbs) up from the ground to the stowed position in the roller and all seemed to work fine. Next project...

Dorades and Bulkhead Penetrations

Finished the Dorade boxes for the forward deck. These are basically water traps that allow you to keep ventilation open in all but the most extreme conditions. I made ours out of 3/16" welded steel plate with a 1/4" bolt on cover. They are welded inside and out to the deck and the deck penetration is a 6" steel pipe. They are probably ridiculously overbuilt but we certainly don't have to worry about them being blown off the deck by a wall of green water. I also came up with a pretty cool mechanism for closing them off completely from inside the boat. I'll include some pics of that once I get it put together. Also completed all the bulkhead penetrations for wiring, plumbing and such. Once all the wiring and plumbing is run through these, they will be filled with a fire-stopping watertight sealant that will maintain the integrity of our watertight bulkheads. 

Names and Paint?

So, we'd like to get some input on a couple of names for the boat. We'll be documenting the vessel with the US Coast Guard and need to make a decision soon... the obvious one is "Koloa", which is the name we were thinking of when we started this blog. Its the name of a native Hawaiian duck. Since our boat design is based on the Diesel Duck line of Troller Yachts designed by George Buehler, it seems to fit. The other one we have been thinking of is "Kama Hele", which means traveller in Hawaiian. It has a nice ring and we like the translation.

Here are some pictures of some different paint ideas we've been playing with. Let us know what you think... The last one is compliments of Sam. If you have any input on names or paint schemes, send them to Sue at: floatingsue@gmail.com

Here's some recent pictures that show the current "state of the project"...

Finally finished all the fuel tank plumbing. We designed it to be all hard-piped with flexible connections at the fill, return, and supply manifolds. This was a lot of work and took a lot longer than we anticipated. The end result of all this crazy plumbing is in the pictures of the aft deck where you can see the fuel containment set-up, with all fuel vents and master fill pipe terminating at the aft deck behind the wheelhouse. I made up a lightweight anchor mock-up so we could experiment with different anchor roller geometry. The roller assembly will be welded up from some very heavy 3/4" by 6" 316 stainless flat-bar stock, so we have to get this right the first time. should be putting the real thing together in the next week or so. Had a visit from our friends John and Kari from Seattle. They drove us all over the Seattle area last year looking at boat designs. Nice to see them again. Also Casey from CS Marine lent us some boat stands so we can start cutting off the welded hull supports and get the plating cleaned up for paint.  Thanks again Casey...

Tank Tops

Been awhile since I've had time to sit down and organize pictures but we've been plenty busy finishing the seemingly endless "completing of hot-work" list. We are trying to get any and all welding and grinding done before we paint, and it seems that every time I step back, some new little welding or drilling detail pops up that I hadn't thought of. I have a lot of pictures so I'll do two installments... 

First is drilling the tank tops. Each compartment of our below deck fuel tanks has to have an inspection hatch for accessing the tank interior for maintenance and cleaning if that ever becomes necessary. We have 14 of these hatches that needed to be drilled for the studs that will bolt them down. This added up to about 470 5/8" holes in 5/16" steel- another monumental drilling project. Fortunately I was able to use a drill press for these, and drill a few hatches at a time by clamping them together with a master template on top. Still, each hatch weighed about 50 pounds, and it was a workout just moving them around and up into the boat.

Pipe fitting

Here's some pics from the past couple of weeks. Been busy working on fuel tank plumbing (vents, fills, supply, cleanouts, etc.) for our six tanks. Pretty involved job. We are done with the production welding on about half of the pipework and I should have all the fit-up work done on the rest this weekend. These are some pics from early in the process... its like a big complicated three dimensional jigsaw puzzle (with a lot of rules) but its slowly coming together. Also finished final drilling for ports, hatches, and steering gear.