2010 building logs

January 2011 Galley cabinets built odd jobs time

Welcome to what should be the last year of the build. Its a big call given how the boat still has holes in it and no windows cut where there should be holes. But I will get some help to finish and hopefully some more of my own time to throw at it toward the very end. I have been managing about 650 hours a year, a pace I think I will maintain for the first half of the year but as the boat starts looking more and more as it will finished I will hopefully double the output in the second half of the year and achieve about 900 hours and see the boat launched either late this year or very early next year.

The bridgedeck cabinets are now all in the boat, the real estate is built out. All that is left is to fit and finish. I still have to build for example the front curved door for the floor to ceiling pantry which will be made once the wire shelving unit arrives. I still have to make and fit the top for the main galley cabinet, which will have the sink and cook top in it, I have now made the top over the fridge but wont glass it in until I get the fridge home (it is still at Jo's in Qld but both she and the fridge will be home soon) and the last piece of real estate to be made and fitted will the height adjustable dining table, but that wont go in until near the very end. So some loose ends in each hull are being finished. All the bedrooms still have some furniture work but each is waiting for something, the main forward rooms are waiting on the mast posts and the rear the steering and outboard gear. And I have also moved down to the last rooms not fitted out with furniture, the main bathroom shower and laundry.

Jan 12 Fridge cabinet finished.

After building out the main galley cabinets last month, which include the area in the top that will house the sink and the gas cook-top and the convection microwave, the last cabinet to be built out is the fridge cabinet. I still have to make the top for the main cabinet and cut in the sink and cooktop (I have the sink but dont yet have the cooktop). The fridge space has changed a couple of times. I was originally going to build my own fridge but upon investigating the costs but the maths didnt stack too well, about $1500 for a standard condenser system, about $3500 for a Eutectic system, then another $2400 if using the higher R rating multi panel or about $1200 for standard polyurethane foam sheets, so anything from $2700 for a basic unit to $5900 for a more efficient system then I have to make it all, glass it all in and fair the inside cavity, make the lids air tight and procure wire baskets to fit....it was looking all to hard. Many do it, and all credit to them, but there has to be better ways. Then I seriously considered domestic (home) side by side under counter bar fridge and freezer pair which would be less than $1000 then I could invest in a serious inverter as they would run 240v and a deeper battery and solar array with the change. They may not last long, but very cheap and easy to replace. But in the end I found a deal on a reco model sent back to the factory by a production boat builder for a warranty repair before being sent to the end customer. $1630 for an Isotherm 200 litre (50 litre freezer, 150 litre fridge) under bench model. About the only feature not ideal is that the front opening doors as they can spill cold out, but they are much easier to use and provided you dont have the doors open too often or too long, they are manageable. The unit uses the danfoss 50 compressor which is the larger of the 2 most common and they are ubiquitous so service should be ok just about anywhere.

So once I had the fridge choice settled it was just a matter of making sure it fit into the space I had assigned for a fridge. It does quite easily in fact because the unit is physically smaller than the space I was going to need to build my 220 litre top loading unit I had planned on (80 freezer/140 fridge) I have changed the position of the rubbish bin to between the fridge and the electrical cabinet in the port hull. It will pull out of the stairwell wall into the stair well and is a wire frame that a rubbish bag sits in and pulls out on pot runners in a similar way to the mechanism of the pantry and is from the same manufacturer. The door will be made from the piece that is cut out to form the opening. So long as I cut neatly it will just be a matter of back filling each edge and attaching the door to the fitted mechanism.

In order to fit the fridge I needed to build a frame into the space that will house the front flange that is built into the fridge that creates the inbuilt flush finish and to build a floor into the cavity so that the weight of the fridge is not sitting on the 3 wiring conduits I glassed into the space when I thought I was making my own fridge over them. There is room under the standard bench top height for a floor, so I ran some 25mm ply rails onto which I can screw a plywood floor (or I could glue it). I may also put some foam under the floor to stop hot air from rising up into the cavity and making the fridge work harder (when building my own fridge it was always the plan to have the most insulation foam on the bottom as this is where it is most needed). There is also plenty of room around the 2 sides to also add a generous layer of foam to stop heat getting in from the sides. The only area that is tight and has no room for additional insulation is the back bulkhead. Hopefully heat does not enter the cavity from the bedroom or visa versa and the fridge does not send heat through the bulkhead to the bedroom.

Setting the position the fridge will sit also allowed me set the corner of the cabinet that curves around into the stairwell. I am a big fan of symmetry but was not able to have the fronts and curves of the 2 corners at the same depth as I needed a little more space for the fridge front. It is close though only 50mm difference but it messes with me knowing it is there. I also plan on a swing up bench top to fill the space over the stairwell to transform the galley into a full wrap around bench top for use when entertaining and a bigger galley is needed. It limits access into the port hull (the owners hull!) but there is another bathroom in the starboard hull anyway so if ever in use so it wont matter that they cannot use the main bathroom while the full galley is in use. When not in use the bench top will be clipped against the stairwell wall and out of the way. I initially thought the set back corner at the fridge side would mess with my hinged top but because of the curved corners it was always going to need to be set back from the front edge anyway so now it is set back about 20mm more on the aft side and will taper in 20mm over the 600mm width of the stairwell and will meet some of the curve on the fridge side by 10mm and none of these differences are enough to make it look out of place or be unfriendly to work with when it is finished and the full galley is needed.

I used the same corner method of the quarter pvc pipe, having been successful on the other side of the stairwell and having done it once, it was very easy to do again and took me a fraction of the time. I started with the kickboard quarter pipe, glassed it in and then the cabinet corner, but because the return for the fridge space is so close to the corner I decided to glass that to the pvc pipe before I glassed the pvc pipe corner into the cabinet. This gave me a face I could clamp to steady the curved panel while the glue and glass set. I made the return out of 25mm ply so that it was strong and thick enough to screw into to secure the fridge front flange to. Once this corner was set I completed the frame around 3 of the 4 sides by running the same 25mm ply around to create the full frame. I have not done the top of the frame yet as I want to dry fit the fridge first to be absolutely sure I dont make the opening too tight.

I have finally run out of 30mm duflex, I never actually had any, I have managed to make every bench top in the boat out of off cuts from the 30mm duflex that surrounded the bulkheads in the pre cut kit. I managed to make the fridge top out of the last off-cut that came out of the window cut-outs in the main saloon bulkhead, as I did with the nav cabinet made out of the other window out cut. As materials run out you find you lose time gluing smaller bits together to make larger bits. (I always try and use the smallest offcut I can find as you never know when you might need a larger bit and cutting small bits out of large bits means you may rue that decision later when you find a piece you cut out of last week is just a little bit small and would fit had you not cut it down). And as you get to the last dregs of material you end up cutting and gluing (you need to cut a clean edge so the join is neat) and the frustration of trying to find shapes that fit the space you need to fill to complete the larger panel you are trying to create. I dont much care that there are a lot of joins in the bench tops, as they will be laminated and you wont ever see the joins but you must keep the top face as close to flat as possible to avoid having to fair it. And once the panel was made to shape slightly oversize and then cut back to exact size, the edges needed to be de-cored and back filled and sanded smooth and square. I have just the main galley top to make and a small vanity top in the main bathroom. I will have to buy some 30mm panel to make those tops, or I could glue a rail edge of 15mm to a 15mm panel to make up the same thickness top to match the rest of the boat. This is probably what I will do as I dont want to buy another 30mm panel and have some 15mm coming and as the main galley top will have a larger portion of it cut away for the sink and hotplate then making it up from 15mm panel will work out fine. But these are the things you do when you have time but are on a tight budget. I get a lot of satisfaction from knowing I am wasting the very minimum in throwing the smallest amount of offcut out.

Jan 18 Start on the shower base.

The shower sump is not directly below the shower. I have made a sump in the bathroom under sole that will house the sump for the vanity basin as well as the shower, and I will have a direct overboard for the kitchen with a 3 way valve before it goes to directly overboard in case I am in a nil discharge and have to send it via the holding tank. I am only going to hold it where I absolutely must because of the need to catch solid waste such as food particles that would otherwise foul the sump pump. Anyway, the shower base and drain will be glassed into the hull to form the sole and web as the floors in the other rooms do and a drain pipe will be glassed through the bulkhead into the sump already built into the bathroom floor. From the outlet pipe in the sump I can use my hair filter idea of a stocking sock over the end of the pipe. The idea being that the sock will allow the water through but catch hair that would otherwise foul the float switched bilge pump in the sump and once a week or so you take the sock off take it to the sea and turn it inside out to clean it then replace it with the elastic band to do its work for another week. Simple.

 

The shower base is duflex that I will give an extra layer of glass and bog and fair it for painting. It will run on a slope down to the drain grate and that too will have some bog laid each side to create a slope across the hull to the drain. I have not decided yet whether the shower base will just be white. I had my eye on a fancy single tile exactly 800mm square which is the exact size of the shower base no including the drain but it is just too expensive. It is called a liquid tile that has coloured oil inside that moves when you stand on it, but they want $700 for 1 tile which I just cannot bring myself to pay. As stunning as it would look, its not worth that much. So fitting the drain presented a simple problem to solve. I decided to use the underside of it to create a mold by taping it to a flat bench with clear tape and then laying glass over it. The underside of the drain has a mounting groove around it so I ran the tape inside the groove. The intension was that once set the glass mold would pop off the drain underside and I could then sikaflex it in when ready. The problem was that once set I could not get the drain out. So I will still run the sikaflex to seal it but no water is ever going to get through anyway. The sika will just fill the curved edge void that the glass did not fill. I siliconed an elbow join to the drain outlet and glassed it on to be sure it cannot move, and I will also glue and glass an extension drain pipe into the bulkhead so that the water drains straight into the sump on the other side.

Next step is to build a series of webs out of duflex (again I should have ample offcuts big enough for this), and glass them into the hull to support the duflex shower base and the solid glass drain (and to provide he hull reinforcement that the rest of the boat has). Once all that is in the shower will be ready for the next step which is building the walls to fill in the under cockpit seat cavity (which will house the watermaker) and the back shower wall which will have a watertight door in it which will lead to the laundry that will have a small portable washing machine, the water heater and some storage for various spare parts.

Jan 24 Starboard stairwell cupboard glassed in.

In the meantime I am finishing loose ends still undone around the boat, starting with glassing in cabinets that are made but for one reason or another are not yet glassed in. For some the reason is that I moved on to something else. One such cabinet is the curved cabinet at the base of the starboard stairwell. I have been debating whether to completely seal this section in instead of putting doors in and making use of the space. It is now very shallow so in the end the space is not going to be missed. But because I had not fully ruled out not using the space I have been procrastinating about glassing it all in. Decision made, glassing it all in only took a couple of days interspersed with other work around the boat. I first glassed the kickboard in early on Saturday morning, and by the afternoon it had set enough to glue and glass the curved front on which set overnight and on Sunday I was able to glass the top on. The top is made up of the middle shelf and the 15mm top I had already cut being glued together to form the 30mm top thickness I need to match the rest of the boat. (The middle shelf is no longer needed as I wont have doors). I needed to glue a strip of 15mm duflex to the back of the top to make the middle shelf the same size as the top. I glued these parts together on the Saturday and on the Sunday I re shaped the top to match the curve of the front and sanded the face smooth join where the 2 15mm parts met. You can just make out the join in the pic below. It wont be visible once it is laminated or, as I have been thinking, we may laminate the tops and glue (and maybe screw) a shaped moulding to the front edges of all the bench tops so we have a curved front edge. Some people like a timber edge. I dont think we will but it can be painted. Not sure yet. Perhaps just the clean lines of a square laminated edge and top will look best.

The other project I got a start on was closing in the space behind the starboard dagger case. In the port hull this space is taken up with a grey water holding tank. In the starboard hull the space will be used as a wine cellar. I will make a front face out of plywood to close the space up, into which will be glued and glassed 90mm white pvc down pipe about 600mm long and set on a downward angle of about twenty degrees. Each will have a pvc end cap glued on to stop the bottles falling through and to seal the space behind in an airtight cavity that becomes additional buoyancy chambers, and then once that is make it gets glassed on to seal out the cavity. I will have the panel overhang the inside face of the back edge of the dagger case as I intend having lining on the dagger case so this overhang will form the corner of where the lining will butt into. I marked out the pvc pipe positions and can get 8 pipes in and each could probably hold 2 bottles. That should be ample. We only like one kind of wine! Merlot which I think wine connoisseurs look down upon.

Well that pretty much rounds out a disappointing January from a boat work point of view. Tomorrow I head off to the US on a 2 week business trip (that I am not paying for otherwise I would not be going) so I wont get any more work done until mid Feb. January always promises the hope of getting a heap of work done as I have more time off to do it, but the heat in our shed is so stifling that I find myself easily distracted from it, whether it is the Ashes cricket on TV or my growing list of friends with boats inviting me sailing (I find that a particularly easy justification for not working as I need to get my experience up) and the hours I do spend at the shed are much less productive because of the heat. Anyway, this should hopefully be the last summer spent building the boat and many many summers ahead enjoying the fruit of that work.

Next month I hope to start work on the outboard wells and the kick up rudders so that the rear steps can finally be glassed into the boat. Then in March we will turn it and the boys will finally start fairing the outsides whilst I finish the bathroom and start making all the final cuts into the hull for the various through hulls so I can glass in the last of the furniture. Then I will run all of the wiring around the various conduits I have been laying as I build furniture ready for fitting electrical fittings and hopefully we will get the other worker I had lined up (no pun intended) to start making the linings. This is going to be an exciting year!!