2009 building logs

October 2009 Plumbing and wiring

More internal work, including laying down the wiring and plumbing across the boat. I may also get more of the soles glassed down as the plumbing and wiring is in place. I am enjoying this fit out stage but because it is freeform work (no kit) it takes me longer than usual to finish anything. Interspersed there are a number of unfinished little projects, like glassing the underside of the cockpit seat joins, finishing the outboard rails and the rest of that area and I have not even started on the rudders and rudder boxes, so I have plenty to keep me busy over the next couple of months before I start on the serious furniture making.

Oct 3 Tanks again

I know the tank joke is getting lame. But I am still working on tanks. I get asked a lot about what the boat will cost to finish. This is a good time to discuss an aspect of this. These tanks for example. Many people building cats would buy tanks. I have 7 of them in my boat, 2 black, 2 grey and 3 fresh water. The cost of these tanks is about $500 each (on average, some would be more than that because of the odd shapes) so 7 of them would cost me $3500. I have estimated that including potable food grade paint and skin fittings these tanks would cost me $500 tops. So I am saving $3000 on the cost of buying purpose bought tanks. There is nothing wrong with buying tanks, in fact I would like to have them but in the end I dont think there will be any difference and I have a saying about spending money on other peoples labour, time I have money I dont.  Having said that, if I can save enough money in the next 6 months I fully intend to pay some people for their labour to help me finish the fairing and to paint the boat in about a year.

It is also a good time to mention a couple of other savings I have made recently. I was on the Easy forum and another builder had changed their mind about building a cat and had some things up for sale. I bought 5 winches, all brand new, valued at $5000 on current prices for $1800 so I have saved another $3200. And to round out my savings, a friend had a not working Muir 1000 watt anchor winch that had been on his 40 ft cat which he gave me. I had it checked out and it needed a new gearbox. The electric motor is pulling very strongly. I also bought new foot switches and solenoid and all up it cost $600. The gypsy is looking a bit worn but will last a few years, so once launched I will buy a new one and keep the old one as a spare and that windlass will be as good as new. A replacement windlass is about $2600 so another $2000 saved. So that's about $8000 saved in these 3 areas alone (tanks, windlass, winches).

I mentioned last month that I did not buy the furniture kit and that it was $15000 at the time I bought the rest of the kit and that I think I can make the furniture for about $3000 in materials using polycore ($5000 if I do end up needing 30 sheets which I highly doubt). So add that $12000 saving to this $8000 and I have saved $20000. So the cost to finish identical boats can vary by a lot of money depending on the bargains you can find or the methods or materials employed. Even the amount of outside help you get to finish the boat can change the cost greatly, do everything yourself and your build could be half the cost of someone else's. And everyone fits their boats out with different levels of equipment so that might help explain why designers are always a bit coy about the cost of building a particular design.

Our budget (not including rent) is still $220,000 give or take 10% so anything from $200000 to $250000. For example I would like a deep battery bank (600 amp hours a 200aH battery is about $800), an large inverter, an electric watermaker, a radar and these alone could cost $25,000. I may not have the money for many of these items at launch but there will be the ability to add these as I go. I have spent just over $100000 when I include the $6000 I spent on carbon for the masts. You might be wondering why it will cost another $120,000 to finish. Go check out what they charge for a stove and oven for example. We will be lucky to get change from $2000. And a good fridge 100 litre on a boat would buy you a top of the range, double door ice making monster for a home. Our masts will come to $40,000! (we have already spent $6000 for the carbon) It soon all adds up. That is why these boats sell for half a million dollars and up and you wont get much change from a million dollars if buying an equivalent production boat.

Anyway, back to what I am doing now. For the starboard hull, I made a small ply grey water tank and it weighed more than the larger black tank so both the port side tanks are polycore and last week I glassed up more panels in order to make them. I had already measured up but I often make cardboard templates when I am making things that have to fit into tight places. I made a template of the space between the dagger case and the hull side. The template showed that the size tapered from front to back and from top to bottom by about 20mm and in order to have that tank fit. Using the templates I cut the parts for the dagger case grey water tank and then screwed it together to make a dry run of it and see if it fit. It did! I then started cutting the parts for the black water tank. This tank will sit on the chamfer panel (about a meter above water level) in a space created by the cockpit seating underside. I originally had it come to a sharp point from the bottom of the chamfer and then plumb up the front but decided to chop the bottom of the point off and have a flat base so as to better fit the exit point and not have any waste stay in the tank when it is open.

Once I had the parts cut for the black tank I screwed it together for its dry fit. Again it fit but I noticed something that might have been a problem. It wont fit through the bulkhead door. Fortunately I dont have the sides on yet so it does fit into the room through the space that will be the side deck. So once in, it wont be coming out once the boat is closed up. This is not unusual (that it will be glassed in and wont come out) but would have been a bit of a problem if I was fitting this tank after the boat was closed up.

Once satisfied that they fit it was time to glue and glass them together. A simple task, I took them apart and put them back together again only this time with glue between each join. Then once both were glued (with screws holding them together) I coved them both and wet out tapes and attached them wet on wet. And left them overnight to set.

The shape of the dagger case tank is very narrow and very tall. On the starboard tanks I have have made them with the tops left off for taping inside and the top will be glued on and will only be glassed from the outside for obvious reasons. To protect the tops of the tanks I will have the breather come out of the side of the tank just below the top and these will double as overflow points, that way the top of the tank will only get splashed but not immersed. The port black tank is also made with the top off but I wont have an overflow on this tank. On the dagger case tank I realised I would not be able to reach the bottom of the tank for internal taping if I made it in the usual way, bottom and sides, so I made it with the back off and I will make the back up in smaller sections and be able to tape them inside and out by reaching in coving the sides and running a tape over the joins as I go up the tank. About 300mm at a time will be the limit. The will mean only the top panel to close the tank up wont get taped on the inside.

Oct 4 Still tanking.

Today I glassed the outside of the 2 port tanks and later in the day I gave them a coat of white epoxy. I also measured up and started cutting the panels for the 3 fresh water tanks. Polycore is a fantastic product but it is not as easy to work with as duflex. It is no different to any other honeycomb cored product though. The issue with a hollow cored product is the edges need to be back filled. With balsa you just run a router along the edge and you have a curved edge to glass around. With honeycomb cores you must back fill the edge to glass around. On the starboard black tank I tried back filling one day then shaping once it had set. This worked to a degree but because of the nature of honeycomb when you round the edge you open up new chambers that need to be filled. So this time I decided to try to shape the edge, which I did with a grinder (I seized another grinder today, my second so I will soon have my third hand held angle grinder). I then over filled the edges and laid wet tapes over them and shaped the curved edge by hand. It worked but is not uniform and as neat as could be. Fortunately practicing with this material on the tanks is going to help me find the most effective ways to get a great result so that when I build the highly visible furniture I am able to get the best finish I can. There is only one other method I will try and that is to shape first, overfill then wait for it to set before shaping. I think that will be the most attractive method.

Once I had all the honeycomb edges filled I wet out the tapes I had pre cut and applied them to the edges and using my hands as molds I pulled the overfilled edges into as nice a curved edge as I could by hand. I then applied peel ply to the tapes. I intend to paint the tanks inside and out with white epoxy whilst the tapes are still tacky so I dont really need the peel ply but I apply it just in case I run out of time or have to go before I do the white epoxy but I didn't so I just removed the ply before painting on the white epoxy.

I had lunch and then started measuring and cutting the dividers for the water tanks. I have an area between the 2 forward bunks that is 600mm wide, 1200mm deep and 1300mm long. With dividers this will result in 3 400mm tanks so each will be 250 litres. As water weight is equivalent to its volume, 250 litres is 250 kilograms. So with all 3 tanks full that is 3/4 tonne or half the boats payload in one area. Of course the only time we would ever fill all three tanks is for a super long cruise or passage so it might be that we never ever carry this much water, especially if we get a decent water maker.

Oct 6 Perfect fit.

I love it when I make something that works well. The tank that goes between the dagger case and hull side in the port hull fits perfectly. I have the shape and size correct so that it is wedged in firmly and tightly. I could almost get away without glassing it in. It is the correct height, any taller and it would impede the side deck when it is fitted. In fact I will fit the side deck before I fit the tank in so that I can get to the hull to side deck join and glass it before fitting the tank. But having the side deck on wont impede the tank going in.

Having the side deck on will impede the rear black tank going in so I will be fitting that before the side deck goes on. It goes into the side of what will become a small utility room behind the shower, which will house a washing machine, the water heater and a water maker, and be a store room for my tools and spares I intend to carry. I may still move the washing machine onto the chamfer panel depending on a number of things. First will it fit. I am yet to go get the measurements or even decided on a particular model. I can buy a front loader for about $1000 or a cheaper mini top loader for much less and this would side on floor against the back bulkhead in that utility (laundry?) room. I figure the space under the cockpit seats is dead space so I should try to use it if I can, meaning I have more useable standing room in my mini workshop. I have to be careful and not load up this area with weight as it is getting close to the sterns and you dont want weight in any of the ends of the hulls front or back.

They are final fairing Nine Lives so the place has been covered in dust for the past 2 months. It is near pointless cleaning up because the day after you clean the place is covered in dust again. But about another 4 weeks and that will end so I can have a big clean up. It has some shiny white bits that give you tremendous motivation. I love looking at shiny white boats. Soon the hulls will be painted. I will post some pics then.

Oct 10 Tanks almost done

Not much work done this week but I had a good day at it today. I did some more tank work. And I got a job done that I have been putting off a while. The underside of the cockpit seating was not glassed at the edges (see the picture above) but before the rear tank can go in it needs to be done and while doing one side I may as well do both. There are a number of little jobs around the boat that are still to be done. Another is to glass some braces under the starboard rear berth top. I will do them tomorrow. Part of the reason I have not done this job is that it requires sanding and glassing in a tight confined space upside down. Not pleasant.

The tank work I did was to get all of the tank exit skin fitting fitted, sealed with sikaflex and I got the side, or most of the side on the dagger case tank. First I trimmed it so that with the side on it is exactly the same size so as to match the edge of the dagger case so that once in I can glue and glass a panel over the entire edge to finish it. Then I cut the end panel I have into smaller sections so that I could glue, cove and glass it from the inside by reaching in and doing it a small section at a time, this way only the top section wont have glue and glass inside. I filled the honeycomb core edges so that tomorrow I can shape the edges and glass the outside of the tank.

I also checked the fit of the black tank and trimmed a cm off the top so that the exit skin fitting with an elbow on fits neatly underneath. I will glass in some bracing either side of this fitting once I glue and glass the tank in. From the elbow a hose will go to the underwater through hull via an stop valve (above water).

All of the tanks now need to have their top skin fittings, the black will require 3, input, breather and suction outlet (for at dock vacuum pump out) and the grey tanks just 2, input and breather. Once I have the various fittings in and the tops glued and glassed on I will fill them all and leave them a while to ensure they dont leak.

I rounded off all of the under cockpit seating edges and coved the joins that needed coving and wet out the glass tapes. On the starboard side I had coved the edge a while ago (with excess coving from some other job) so that needed sanding to both key it and remove any spikes of glue or cove ready to take the glass. And then I rolled the wet out tapes and unrolled them as I applied them and finished by applying peel ply. Most will be behind liner panels or inside hatches but I am in a habit of peel plying all wet outs now so I will keep that up.

Tomorrow I will keep going on various tank work and finishing bits and pieces I have been letting slide. It does not matter when a job is done so long as it gets done.

Oct 11 Water tanks started

I glassed the outside of the dagger case grey tanks up to the last still open panel. I will fit the top of the tanks skin fittings during the week and close it up. I will also fit the top of tank skins to the other 3 tanks and close them up also, hopefully during the week and start fitting them into the boat next weekend (all except the dagger case tank which must wait until after I put the side deck on).

I started cutting and fitting the 2 fresh water tank dividers today. The area is 1200mm x 1100mm deep x 600mm wide which is about 790mm cubed which in turn is 790 litres. With 2 x 18mm spacers (the internal dividing walls) each tank becomes 388mm x 600mm x 1100mm which makes each tank 256 litres full. 

The first panel was easy to tape the first side because of the rest of the space in the opening, and I only did the tape on the open side of the space, but once it is in and set, I have to tape a 1100mm deep panel in a 400mmx600mm space. Not so easy. I think I am going to have to try a coving tool on an extension and then figure out a way to get the tapes on well by leaning into the tank upside down. I have tried to reach down in a space that tight and it is very difficult.

At 250 litres each there will be a lot of weight and force sloshing around inside the tanks so just to be safe and to limit the free surface area I will build baffles across the middle of each tank (fore and aft, you can see it sitting roughly in between holding the spacing right in the pic) to brace the middle walls from about 100mm from the bottom to about 100mm from the top It will add rigidity to the structure and give me something to glass the intake pipes to. They will draw water from the bottom of the tanks up to the pumps and will draw to about 20mm leaving the very bottom of the tank water there so that if there is any sediment in the water it wont get drawn up into the system. I will also have depth gauges that work with floats inside another pvc tube that turn a dial on a bezel above the tank to indicate the litres left in each tank (once I calibrate them to the depth of the tank). Once this is all done and I have epoxy coated the internal walls about 3 times than applied a couple of coats of non leaching, food grade potable water tank paint, I can build the lids with their various skin fittings (intake, outflow and breather) as well as the gauge on each and close the tanks up.

Oct 18 Water tanks dividers in

During the week, the only boat work I did was to re-assemble the Muir windlass I was given and test it. (I had been given an older Muir winch that had not been operable for about 5 years because of what turned out to be a stripped gearbox so for $350 replacement plus $250 for 2 waterproof deck switches and a reversing solenoid I have a fully working windlass). Dennis (Nine Lives) originally took it apart for me and now I helped him put it back together so that I would know how to strip it down in future. Apart from a tight fitting axle it went back together fairly easily although we damaged the thread on the wing bolt that releases the clutch in order to free fall the gypsy so I will just need to get the edge re-tapped so it does not bind. I probably should have sanded the casing before putting it back together but its an old winch and it will also be mounted inside the anchor locker and so not be visible from the deck so the cosmetics are not so important. I will give it a light sand along the flat surfaces and repaint it before it goes onto the boat. The winch is heavy so rather than lift it around I drew a template of its base and put it away to keep dust of it.

The next decision was how would I mount the anchor winch. I had already decided that the space between the bunks would make a better anchor well than the foredeck D section, as the well is deeper, has a flat bottom rather than curved, which would help avoid chain falling in such a way that it trapped chain below it that was actually ahead of it, or in other words a tangle, and being a little further back it would help move more of the weight further back from the bows. I had also decided that because of the height of the catwalk some of the added depth in the locker would be better used by moving the windless below deck level into the well, besides the obvious advantage of a clear deck it means that the height of the winch is the same as the height of the chain on the catwalk.

The anchor winch is heavy but more importantly it will be under huge loads so mounting it into the boat strongly is a must. So I will use cedar beams to secure the platform, which I was originally going to use duflex but decided on ply, to the boat. The winch will bolt through the cedar. I will also glass blocks below and above the shelf to further strengthen it in the well. Originally I thought a fore and aft table would be a better option, but once I dry fitted a mock up it was clear that fore and aft blocked off access to the well below too greatly so I settled on a table across the boat. Its a shorter span so theoretically it should be stronger, and also enables me to anchor it to the back wall of the well as well as the 2 side walls. If I went fore and aft, because of the position of the gypsy and the need for a fall below the gypsy I would have had the table away from the side walls. With the table across the back wall I will need a hole through the table for the chain fall but it wont be through either cedar beam so it wont weaken the structure.
 

All the while I was working over the weekend, I would return to the water tank dividing walls. 2 walls = 4 sides that needed coving and glassing (and peel ply). The first side was easy enough, I had a large working in area to allow me to easily apply everything. But from there on it became a nightmare. Australian labour laws forbid me employing a small child, but only a small child could easily fit down into the space I needed to cove, then glass then the really hard part, apply the peel ply. Coving was not too hard, I was able to reach most of the time by just dangling upside down but on the last section on the bottom of what became the front wall of the last section I found it easier to extend a coving tool handle.

Glassing was next most difficult. Usually on a section like this I would run one continuous length glass down one side, around the corner, along the bottom, around the other corner and up the other side. In this case that was simply impossible. Getting the glass properly spread through the corner requires time and reach, neither of which I had hanging upside down in the bottom of a space 600mm by 400mm and over a meter deep. Going around such a corner the one side of the corner, the outside is a shorter distance than the inside so therefore you need to bunch the glass on the inside then spread it so that all glass becomes in contact with the substrate and there are no folds. I simply could not achieve this in this area. So what I did to make up for that was to glass in 3 sections, each side and along the bottom, then I made a circle of cloth and spread that in the corner so all surfaces were covered in glass and thus rejoining the tapes with wet glass and ensuring there was nowhere along the join that was not taped.

And with each wall divider I could only do one side at a time so that once set I could lean over into the space and if needed brace myself against the walls anywhere I needed or lean over the wall I was taping. I could not do this until at least one side was coved and glassed and it had set or it would move before set. So I did one side Saturday Morning, another on Saturday afternoon (6 hours in between) and the final one on Sunday morning, having already got the easy one done last weekend. Each side took about 2 hours from start to finish. I still have to glass in fore/aft dividers to strengthen the structure and make the free surface area smaller but these will only go down as far as I can reach into each tank (about 2/3 of the way down leaving about 300mm at the bottom) and I wont do them until I have already painted most of each tank with the food grade paint so that I dont have to find a way to paint them after and not miss any sections, painting the bottoms and sides first will ensure this. I can even pre-paint the dividers up to 100mm from the ends and the tank fronts and backs that the dividers will be glassed to and leave a 200mm strip down the middle to glass the dividers, meaning I would only have to paint the tapes to finish and be sure all epoxy surfaces had a coat of leach free potable water paint.

As I said earlier, getting the peel ply onto the wet glass and smoothed down with no bubbles (any bubble in the peel ply is an area of glass not pre-keyed by the peelply). Again I did this in 3 strips of ply, the sides were fairly easy as I had gravity to help but the bottom strips were another case of dangling upside down, the difference here is that upside down I needed 1 hand to hold my weight and the other to work, but for anyone that has ever tried to apply peel ply 2 hands are not enough let alone 1! The reason I need peel ply is that I dont want to have to sand any of these tapes, I just want to apply about 3 more coats of epoxy and then paint, but if I dont have pre keyed surfaces that peelply provides (epoxy wont stick to un-keyed epoxy) I will need to sand them, in an area I cant reach even if I climb in, I cant turn my shoulders in the tanks, I would have to guide the sander with my feet but would not be able to see what I had done, so I would have to do them upside down (and of course once I glass the divider in there is no way to reach into the bottom of the tank, other than with a mop or anything on a stick.

In between all of that I finished fairing the vanity front after a third sweep of bog using a flexible batten to ensure I was close to the final shape. In all I have spent about 3 hours fairing the vanity front. It is about half a meter square and give a good idea of the time needed to fair a 12 meter x say 2 meter surface of each hull topside (from hull to deck join around to hull centre line). That's 24 meters each hull, so 48 meters and half a meter took me 3 hours, that's about 300 hours! Just on the curved hull sides! Yikes!

I also started on routering the doorways to remove the core ready for uni ropes and fill and scavenged the last pieces of 12mm duflex I have left (besides the door cut-outs but I am reserving them for, you guessed it, doors!) in order to glue them together to form a shelf in the port side walk in wardrobe. I don't need to have a 25mm thick shelf top but it is at the same height as the vanity top in the starboard hull so for symmetry I thought it worth the effort. Under this shelf at 900mm will be another shelf against the forward bulkhead but along the hull side (inside hull below the chamfer) will be a wedge shaped draw or bin hinged from the floor with a flat front, an idea I saw on a Farier41 cat Alcatraz for best use of the space shape created by the angle of the hull side and the plumb front you would normally have on a cupboard front. The top of the "bin" is wide, the bottom very narrow and hinged so it slide forward at the top. A shelf under a top in this area would be practically useless as it would only be about 150mm deep and below it receding down to nothing. In a walk in wardrobe such a bin could store socks, shorts or t-shirts etc.

Oct 26 Odd jobs

I have been in a bit of a funk this past few days. I have found if I don't have a set agenda or list of tasks set out I tend to drift a little. Its not that there aren't hundreds of hours of work staring me in the face, its just that when you have a list of things, an order that they must be done in, I find I settle into work faster and get more done. When there is a project such as the cabin roof or the tanks the last few weeks, something with a start and end and a set list of tasks in between I can set goals and more or less achieve them. I did not do that this weekend and I drifted from job to job, doing a little before moving on to something else without actually finishing any one thing.

I am also starting the grieving process. As Nine Lives draws very near to launch, only 2 weeks now, I am starting to feel frustrated that I am still so far from finished. Remember that feeling of getting detention in school on a sunny day, you stuck in a classroom knowing your friends were long gone, already having fun, or worse, working over the Christmas New Year break, quiet at work because near everyone else is on holidays. That's what I am feeling like right now. And it is resulting in me working slower, which ironically is exactly the opposite required to get my boat in the water sooner. Anyway enough moaning.

Before I explain what I did over the weekend, I passed another anniversary on Saturday. Whilst I started building the strongback in early October 2005, I first started gluing duflex panels together on 24th October 2005, so I am now into my fifth year of building. I have always budgeted on 5 years build time. At times over the build I have felt that I would finish in less than 5 years and others (like now) I feel it will take closer to 6. Actually I feel I will probably finish early 2011 about 4-6 months over budget if I dont hire help or about a year from now if I get help with fairing, painting and some construction from hired labor.

I pottered around until I decided I would de-core the rest of the doorway edges and prepare to uni rope back fill them. It took me pretty much all day to de-core the 7 openings, 4 in the starboard hull because of the toilet nook, and 3 in the Port hull. There will be 2 more doorways, 1 in each hull in the bathroom doorway in the Port hull and aft bedroom doorway in the Starboard but those walls are yet to go in and I think it might be easier to do all of that work off the boat (many builders have the foresight to de-core and backfill their doorways before they fit their bulkheads, I did not!). I also measured out and cut the uni ropes ready to wet out and apply, I cut a small piece off so I could roll it up and ensure it was the correct width in order to roll to the correct diameter. I found 400mm wide worked well which was fortuitous because the roll is 1300mm wide so I can get 3 lengths out of the width of roll. To finish I ripped off 3mm mdf strips just wider than the bulkheads, so about 30mm wide and applied clear packing tape to them. These are used to hold the wet rope in the slot and form a flat edge to the uni. My method is to put screws through the bulkhead so they protrude both sides, about 50mm from the edge and about 200mm apart all the way around. As I go along fitting the wet uni rope in the trench pre-filled with some glue, place the mdf strip over the top to hold it all in and using an elastic band as a fastener from one side of the screw over the mdf holding the uni in to the other screw, tightly holding it all down. It worked a treat on the bulkhead tops uni ropes but then I had gravity working with me. On the doorways I think it might be a 2 person job! I will soon find out.

Then on Sunday the weather had turned cool. The day before I had been cutting uni strips, and I still need to glass a uni strip around the foam of the cabin top in order to stiffen the roof a little more. That reminded me that I have been using left over coving compound to cove the foam to roof join and I still need to sand it smooth as well as keying the glass on the roof to accept the glass. So seeing as it is only going to get warmer as we roll into summer and on the roof it is unbearably hot in the warmer weather, I decided today was as good a time as any. This is a job I have been putting off for some time. When I glassed the roof I decided it was too hard to adequately smooth down peel ply, consigning myself to keying the entire roof area to apply bog. Today that decision meant I had to spend an entire day sanding my huge cabin roof. As annoying as that task was, it felt great to have it done, and, not that it was any consolation, but I will be sanding the roof (as well as the rest of the boat) at least another 3 times before I am done. Once I have glassed the foam edge I will be ready to bog the roof ready to fair it.

I also spent some time measuring and shaping the panel I created out of the last 25mm (bulkhead) duflex offcuts that will form the shelf in the walk in wardrobe in the port hull. I will make the cabinet that goes under it before I final fit the top, but the top is the starting point. It also gave me a physical idea of what space will feel like once it is fitted as it takes up more than half the space in there. I then started measuring and drawing plans for the cabinet that will house a normal drawer and the wedge shaped bin that will utilize the chamfer panel space. I did this on Wednesday evening and it took me over an hour, but will save me more time than that in that I wont be constantly climbing up and down to measure as I go. I intend to build the cabinet off the boat and fit it once it is completed. Of course I will probably dry test the size as I go.

The work I have been doing, like decoring the doorways, sanding the cabin roof, measuring for cabinets and the like are all LVI (low visual impact) and as such not much to see for the labor and also no pics on this site.

Not a bad month I guess. It did not seem like I got much of consequence done but I worked for 72 hours which is a little better than average but only a little. And I have crossed 4 years and also crossed 2700 hours so that works out to 56.25 hours per month. If I was able to average 72 hours over the 4 years I would nearly 3500 hours up by now. Anyway, I get ever closer to finished with each task big or small I cross off as done and with any luck, this time next year and launch will be in sight.