Merry Christmas

So with no big plans for the holidays this year, work continues on the flooring install... Weather has been amazingly mild, which has been great for boat work. Lots of dry sunny days for working outside (and keeping the sawdust off the boat) and the adhesives I'm working with are curing nicely. I've been working on the stairs now for a few days. This part of the job includes stair nosing, trim and lots of angles to fit out. Had to make some aesthetic decisions on the fly as far as the layout of the planks, but I'm happy with the results. We aren't using the heavy sound dampening underlay for the stairs or the rest of the lower decks (except for the aft cabin- more on that later) so we are using a different floor adhesive. This stuff is a little thicker, and has rubber granules in suspension to provide some degree of sound deadening. It's  also supposed to act as a moisture barrier. So far, it seems like good stuff. Now the race is on to get the galley and passageway floor glued down before the 3 gallons of adhesive left in the bucket hardens up. When re-sealed with plastic between the lid and the bucket, it seems to last about a week. So, today was spent milling trim for the deck hatches in prep for more flooring. I managed to install all the trim on the hatches this afternoon as well. If we can get the trim installed around the hatch openings in the next couple of days, we should be ready to fit-up and glue down the galley/passageway floor this weekend. Since this flooring is pre-finished, there is an immediate "wow factor " when it goes down. A big change from the plywood sub floor decks we've been living with since we started fitting out the interior. One other little project that I finally got around to was a drop tube for the fuel return to the day tank. Previously, the fuel returning to this tank just dropped down from a fitting in the top of the tank. This created the sound of a burbling brook in the aft cabin (which shares a bulkhead with this tank) whenever the furnace or main engine was running. Not as charming as it sounds... It was in my original fuel plumbing plan to fabricate this fitting when I put the fuel system together, but it kind of fell through the cracks. Now fuel returns down at the bottom of the day tank - where it should.

Wheelhouse sole

Some good progress on our Winter flooring project... Wheelhouse sole is mostly finished. This was our first foray into glue down engineered flooring and I think we are off to a good start. Their is always some degree of learning curve when tackling another big project on the boat, and this was certainly no different. The challenge for me personally is to realize that it takes additional time to develop a technique and a system for each type of new "trade" that we get into in our fit out of Kama Hele. There were certainly a few extra minor complications that we didn't anticipate in working with the new materials and techniques laying down this type of flooring. So the  wheelhouse took longer than anticipated,  but I feel satisfied with the end result and now that we have the system down, the rest of the flooring install should go quicker and easier. The wheelhouse finished sole was complicated by a double glue down process using a heavy 1/2" (2 lbs per sq foot) rubber based isolation mat over the sub floor, then the finished floor over that. This was to provide better soundproofing from the engine room directly below. There was also the soft patch to work around. This is a large hatch in the deck allows for future engine removal. The ledge around the setee and the helm had to be trimmed with floor planks and matching stair nose, and a cut out in the flooring here was incorporated for the lift up section under the setee that allows large items to be lowered down into the lower deck passageway. We are very limited in the stairwell dimensions for getting big stuff down below. The flooring is 1/2" engineered t&g product with seven ply backing and a pre-finished sapelle hardwood face. It has a slightly "pre-weathered" look and a darkened medium bevel at the edge of each board that gives it some character. The plywood base layers should give the floor pretty good stability as for as moisture and temperature variation. The glue is polyurethane based, super thick and tacky, and relatively easy to work with once you get rolling with it. Even when resealed tightly, it does harden up in the tub over the course of a few days. We'll have to plan the job accordingly as it comes in 4 gallon buckets and it ain't cheap. I am generally pleased with the finished results. It really works nicely with the other finishes on the boat and feels very solid when glued down. Next phase will be working our way down the stairs into the galley.

Finishing wheelhouse wiring and overhead panels

Worked this last weekend on wiring up the wiper motors and defroster fan in the wheelhouse. I also cleaned up the overhead wiring enough that I felt like I could close up the space with finished panels and not worry about it for a while. I went with flat black laminate over 1/2" plywood for the access panels to keep them light and to minimize the glare. There are three of these access panels, and each has a defroster vent centered over the window below. The fan coil unit in the overhead that feeds the vents is plumbed into the diesel furnace hydronic circuit. This will provide heat for de-fogging the windows either from the furnace, or from the engine cooling circuit (via a heat exchanger) when the engine is running. There are three settings on the blower, the highest of which draws 10 amps and puts out a lot of air. I'm feeling pretty good about where we are at with the wheelhouse console/helm/electronics package. That part of the boat is ready to go cruising...

We have begun collecting supplies and materials for the big winter job, which will be laying down the floors. I am going to start in the wheelhouse and work my way down the stairs to the galley, etc. The challenge with the floors will be the complicated shapes in the winding stairwell, and the 22 hatches (and a soft-patch in the wheelhouse deck) that all need to be framed out individually before the flooring goes down. I have this all pretty well thought out at this point. We'll see if it goes together as easily in the real world as it does in my head.

Wipers

Looking for a quick weekend project, I pulled out the windshield wiper motors and hardware that's been taking up space on-board for about three years. The weather was nice and it seemed like a good time to put some holes in the boat. My biggest concern was getting a day with very light winds so I could contain all the steel shaving from the drill. Any metal bits that don't get swept or vacuumed up immediately will end up as a little rust stains on the deck, sometimes within 24 hours. To this end, I rigged up a little paper box that I hung under the drill. Hopefully I got it all... We are using pantograph type wiper arms. These use a dual linkage to keep the wiper blade vertical as it sweeps across the glass, providing much better coverage than a standard fan pattern wiper. Each wiper required a 3/4" hole for the motor and a smaller hole to secure the wiper arm baseplate. Their are four angles of sweep that you can set internally on the motor as well as a park function that can be set to put the blade to the left or right when off. Did my best to layout the height above the frame, motor sweep angle, and arm adjustment before drilling the holes. Fortunately (after some complications setting up the first motor) we found everything to be lined up pretty well, with good coverage and no wiper blade contact with the window frames. Kama Hele has a relatively high bow but doesn't really have much flare up forward, so I anticipate we might see a fair mount of salt spray on the wheelhouse windows. I'm eventually going to rig up some plumbing for rinsing the three front windows, with an on off valve at the helm. I had already fabricated a custom panel a while back that has wiper switches, and a defroster fan control. I'll be working on getting this wired up in the next week or so. That will just about do it for the wiring above the helm. I'll then be closing up the overhead with some removable panels trimmed out in matching black laminate to keep the reflections and glare down.