It’s been an insane push to get stuff done and ready to move aboard. We had to be out of the house by February 1, and we are. Just not on the boat yet. So, in the immortal words of Carl Spackler... “So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.”
On a serious note, the projects have been flying by. I’ve been playing my favorite game of “break three things trying to fix a fourth.” Which has culminated in this photo, which is about half of the original fresh water plumbing. The other half is already in the trash. So yeah, all new freshwater plumbing hoses, fittings, valves, and hose clamps. Because I really wanted to throw more money into the bilge...
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We have a list problem since I removed the port side black iron fuel tank. I moved the third pair of house batteries over, and I’m 90% done installing a 30 gallon poly diesel tank for the get-home engine, and we still list. So when I rebuilt the freshwater system I re-designed it with a three way valve in the settee (accessed by a deck plate so you don’t have to dig through the pantry to get at it) to select which tank to draw from. I put an equalization valve in between just for emergencies (or filling from one deck fill) but hopefully this will allow a little bit of weight distribution control as we burn fuel.
Speaking of, I put in the filter system from Seaboard Marine, and then built source and return manifolds. I originally had intended this wazoo system of multiple tanks and pushing fuel around, so I had the pump and big Racor already. I installed it so that I can polish fuel from the main tank, and push fuel into the get-home tank. In a pinch, either engine can run from either tank. I have a fuel bladder also, for range going down Baja.
The SSB is in. It works mediocre. I ended up sourcing 2” copper from my local copper raingutter place. They zipped me off a long strip of flashing that I then used as a ground plane. The vertical SSB antenna I have tones out on the analyzer ok, and the Icom autotuner can tune it, but reception isn’t what I’d wish. I’ll have to continue to work on that as we go. Maybe add some radials.
The sat-phone dock is in and the coax is run up. It’s too far back in the flybridge coaming for me to reach, so I bought another vent plate and as soon as it stops raining I’m going to drill an access hole and finish fishing the coax to the external antenna.
There’s way more that I’ve forgotten, but those are the big ones. I don’t have any good pictures right now because the interior looks like a bomb went off. Now that most of the bilge work is done, I’m going to put the lions share of the tools away, and we should be good to start moving in tomorrow afternoon.
Right now I’m headed off to a friend’s place to watch the Super Bowl and enjoy an adult beverage or three...
Josh
. So that corner on the right side of the photo is now gone. I removed that wooden tank spacer, and now I can get my arm back along that side to clear my blade path and use the saws-all instead of all grinder. The saws-all is definitely faster and easier. And less likely to blind me...
. It looks nice in the classroom here at work.
. You can’t tell from the picture, but it’s sitting on the old falling apart one that I cut up for a pattern. Here’s the solid panel
test fit over the mesh.
Wish I had your skills! Nice work.
