Portholes

I finished the other five opening portholes yesterday. It was still really messy, but I decided not to worry about it; I can clean them up later after the caulk cures. I did one in the morning, but it was too humid and the caulk skinned over too quickly, so spent the next couple hours cutting off and sanding down the bungs in the handrails. They look pretty good, but I'll still have to hit them again with some thickened epoxy before they can be refinished.

I wanted to get a few more things done on the deck, but it gets dark early, and as it does, it gets really cold too. So right after I finished the last porthole, about 1630, I stopped, cleaned up, buttoned up the the cover, moved inside. There are several things I still need to do in the cabin, but the biggest two are putting the head back together and installing the new stove.

Since the stove is a safety issue -- you don't want a big piece of gear like that sitting around unsecured -- I decided to tackle it first. The new one is about 3" narrower than the old one, so I had to cut some plywood blocks to use as a spacer. Gill let me have an old piece of 3/4" marine plywood, and I cut it up Friday night.

I got to use my worm drive for the first time in years, and was happy to see I could still cut a straight line. I wouldn't call it cheating, but I did it like a carpenter would, i.e., held the plywood on edge and cut straight down at my feet, letting the weight of the saw push it through the wood. Doing it like that makes cutting straight lines easy. It also helps that worm drives are much heavier than skill saws and since the motor turns on an axis parallel to cut, you get a nice gyroscope effect.

I bought some 4 1/2" bolts on Sunday, so with the blocks, I had everything I needed. First, I cleared out and cleaned the space. Then I blocked up the stove and got it into position and rechecked the dimensions. It turned out the the 4 layers of 3/4 plywood was about an 1/8" thicker than I needed. However, hangers are thin stainless steel ears that are meant to flex, so when I dry fitted the whole thing, it seemed to work okay. I can make an adjustment later if there's a problem, but I think it will be okay.

I ended up gluing the 4 plywood blocks together, clamped them with my 4 c-clamps, and putting it out in the cockpit to dry. I left the stove in place and put back all the gear I'd removed to make it lighter. That's when I noticed that the lower door didn't have enough clearance to open fully.

The stove uses what look like large refillable sterno cans filled with alcohol for fuel, and the door at the bottom allows you to access the one used for the oven. It must be removed to refill, so I may need to raise the stove another 1/4" so I can still access it once she's mounted. I think I've got plenty of space on top, but test everything again before I mark it and start drilling. But depending on how she's heeled, I wouldn't be able to access it anyway without tilting it, so it might be a non-issue.

For today, I plan to start remounting the large port lights. I'm not sure I can get them all in, but hopefully, I can at least get them dry fitted. I need to tap the 2 holes I filled with epoxy first, but that shouldn't take too long. There's also a few more small things to mount on the deck, along with the winches, so I'll try to get as much done as possible before I'm forced to retreat to the cabin to finish the oven.

Zoe watch:

Zoe is getting used to staying on the boat full time. We still take our long walks every morning and evening, but she spends most of her time either in the saloon or on the foredeck. The foredeck is a great place, but I don't think it's safe to have her up there whenever we're sailing, so I'll need to make sure she's got a good spot in the cockpit where she feels safe. She likes it on the cockpit sole, but since that can fill with water, I'm going to try to fix up a spot on the cockpit benches or on widest part of the deck at the aft end of the coach roof -- obviously the high side when heeled, and always tethered.