aft cabin finish work

Some more work in the aft cabin... With the carpet tiles arrived and ready for install, we decided to do the necessary veneer work and painting while the floor was still unfinished and much more forgiving of paint and varnish drips.Many of the bulkheads in the aft cabin were still bare plywood in need of finish.  After a lot of consideration, we decided to finish the lower half of the bulkhead with the last scraps of Lyptus wood veneer, and paint the top half with a nice complimentary color. This is a standard finish in old classic yacht interiors and we wanted to echo that in our boat. This is also in line with my original concept of having a rugged steel workboat exterior with a warm comfortable old wooden boat interior.

The veneer went pretty smoothly, though matching grain and color using the big pile of leftover scraps took some time. After a couple of good coats of varnish, the new veneer blends nicely with the rest of the cabin. Here's Sue to explain the slightly more complicated experience with the paint:

We divided up the task - I painted the passageway, Pete painted the bedroom. After a few moments he called me in for an opinion - he had painted a little corner - it looked great. I kept on with the passageway which was looking ok, but not great. A little while later Pete called me back for a second opinion. He had done a whole wall & it looked pretty terrible. We both looked at each other & just shook our heads.  The resulting color could best be described as a cross between a rusty piece of steel, and cardboard box. I immediately thought all was lost but Pete kept his cool and started to mix the passageway color w/the bedroom color. He tried a few mixes on the wall & when we got to one that we both agreed was better than the original, he mixed up a large batch & painted the whole bedroom. In the end, the hallway ended up really nice & the bedroom color has been growing on us steadily. Not sure what to call it or how we will ever duplicate it but for now it works. Whew! -SP

With the bulkheads done, I decided to spend Monday messing around with the carpet tiles (a commercial product made by Tandus). We used their 24x24"squares which have a very stout thin rubber backing that is completely waterproof. The tile version of this carpet was necessary because of the many cutouts to fit around hatches and built in furniture in the space. Doing this with roll carpet would have been next to impossible. After cutting and fitting a couple of the easier tiles, I kind of got on a roll and ended up knocking out the whole cabin in about 5 hours. I found this stuff really forgiving and easy to work with. All the seams match nicely and the finished product looks like one big piece of carpet. It lays down well on its own, but I will be pulling it back up in sections to glue it down with a special adhesive that will allow individual tiles to be replaced in the future if they get damaged.

Next up will be painting bulkheads in the forward part of the boat, while we still have all the paint supplies handy.

fwd head

Some more work in the forward head... sink, faucet, and a nice little tile backsplash:

Quieting down the engine noise and some trim work

Here's some projects from the last few weeks... After our last weekend trip, it was apparent that we still have some improvements to make on our sound isolation from the engine room. The basic insulation set-up that we installed works pretty well, but noise underway is still not where we want it. We still have a lot of "noise leaks" in the form of unsealed bulkhead penetrations and little gaps where engine room noise is still getting through. We are chasing these down and this is making a difference, slowly but surely with each sound leak that we patch. The most obvious transit of engine noise into the wheelhouse was via the Morse cables for the throttle and shifting controls. These were acting just like the old "string connecting two tin cans" and transmitting medium and high frequency sound from the engine directly to the helm where it was amplified by the engine control housing. Fortunately, Morse just updated their engine control cable "isolation kit" and it did the trick. It isolates the cables in a big rubber grommet where they attach to the engine and are very effective.

I did a little work in the engine room screwing down all the tool chests and storage cabinets, and fabricating mechanisms so they can be secured at sea. Tools and spare parts flying around the engine room is definitely a bad thing.

Also completed a little more trim work in the wheelhouse. A nice bonus was the unexpected good fit of our off-the-shelf home depot patio cushions for the wheelhouse settee/watch berth. These will certainly hold us over until we can spring for real custom cushions.

Our First Overnight on the Hook

With our lovely early spring weather and no big projects in the works, we decided to do our first overnight at anchor. We headed up to one of our favorite spots on the Bay, China Camp. Its about 2 hours north of our harbor (at our slow and steady pace), and has a nice wide open anchorage- perfect for testing our anchoring gear for the first time. Everything worked great. The Rocna bit hard as soon as it hit the bottom, and the hydraulic winch had no problem pulling everything up the next morning. The Rocna anchor is about 120lbs and we have 300 ft of 3/8 high strength chain to play with, so we should be able to sleep well on the hook under most circumstances. Here's some pics, and a video which illustrates why we like this anchorage so much (when the weather is right).

Finishing Wheelhouse Steps to Aft Deck

Here's some pics of the final assembly of the wheelhouse steps, using the same planking as the interior decks. These steps lead up to the aft deck. Each tread is hinged and lifts up to access storage underneath. I think this will be the last of the deck planking on the boat so I can pack up the left over wood flooring and put it in storage. Another little project checked off the list. The first pic is of some an early morning Herring run around our harbor and the birds that follow the fish for breakfast.