Easter
25 April 2011 | at the dock
Cap Andy/80's humid

Here is a picture of the chart table after the paint job and installation of switches, radios, etc. The white paint revealed that the wood was checking. It had never been painted but probably had epoxy coating which deteriorated exposed to UV. The radios are a spare VHF identical to the one in the pilothouse and a small SSB receiver that can receive weather reports and weather fax signals that can be decoded by a laptop. Below the chart table is a tabloid printer that can print nautical charts or weather maps. The chart table has a large hinged top that opens and charts and paperwork can be stowed away. There is a lexan cover for the table that can overlays the paper chart enabling grease pen to mark up the chart with temporary notes without ruining the chart. The chartroom has one opening port so that there is less ambient light than over in the pilothouse. The laptop screen is easier to read during daylight.
The paint job took 2 days and we had problems with two items from Harbor Freight. I bought some cheap masking tape and my compressor is from there also. The tape was less sticky than the 3M product I had used in the pilothouse. The compressor pumps up to about 120 psi and the regulator adjusts the output pressure. The paint job in the pilothouse was done at full pressure and had too many irregularities in the finish. I read the spray gun manual (finally) and found it uses 60 psi. When I adjusted the pressure down, the regulator could not maintain 60 psi and it would go to zero and not recover for about 10 seconds. I had to run it all the way open at 120 psi. The gun worked OK at that pressure, but the blast of air would blow the masking away. I had to hold the masking in place with one hand while spraying with the other.
The clear 2 part urethane paint once again worked well. I sprayed two coats of it over everything, then masked off the wood that was to be finished "bright", then sprayed the two coats of arctic white. The weather was colder, so I painted at about a 50 degree temperature, then fired up the space heater to cure the paint. In about 2 hours it was dry to the touch. I had to do some touch up with both clear and white. The steps needed to be sanded and recoated and the spray painter couldn't fit into all the spaces and had to be hand painted with a brush.
When I envisioned the chart table, I expected the laptop to be on the table, but I found it worked out better to put it on the upper shelf. That way the chart wasn't obscured anywhere. The table top is hinged and lifts up along with the lexan overlay and below it is a large tray like space for navigation tools and charts. The ambient light in the chartroom is much less than the pilothouse and it was not hard to read the laptop even in bright sunlight outside. GPS information will come from a little Microsoft bug that has a suction cup to mount on the opening port above the shelf. The tabloid printer connects with a USB cable for any paper charts that are needed. The Chinese SSB radio has an audio cable that matches line level audio out of the radio to the microphone level input on the laptop. So, the laptop is very important for those features of modern cruising, weather maps, GPS navigation, and AIS warning. Right now there is only one AIS receiver, over in the pilothouse, but for navigation the chart room will allow planning and day to day updates underway, even in daylight. In the pilothouse the immediate information such as AIS is available to trigger alarms, GPS off course alarm, radio alerts, and good visibility all around.
The next project is the crawl space and it is another hurdle to cross. The batteries and UPS are there and the watermaker, which had never been installed. A problem has been emerging that I've put off for years and years. The interior of the boat had become a warehouse of parts and tools, toolboxes, and no order to it. From time to time I tried to get a handle on it, but my idea was to get on with the work and accept those delays that happen from time to time of not being able to find a tool or part. This didn't work out too badly, because the tools and parts were spread out and easily accessible while I worked on one little area. Now it is becoming an increasing problem because there is less space to randomly store these things, yet it is even more important to be able to access a tool or part as soon as possible. The big picture is a boat out sailing and functioning without a lot of congestion. My idea was to install as much of the loose equipment as possible, thereby opening up some storage space. What I found was the spaces I've rehabbed are nice and useable, but we have to figure out what to do with the excess. Of course there are leftovers that can be discarded, sold, or donated when the rehab is complete. There has to be a way to figure out if we don't have enough storage space for everything else.
How much space is there, and how much stuff needs to be put there. My new idea is to adapt my containers to fit the available spaces and maybe label them. Then start organizing the stuff into where it would logically go and see what happens. So far, there has been a big pile up of stuff. It will reach the breaking point soon, because after the crawl space is done, the next areas are the port hull bunks. A big queen sized bunk and the forward twin bunk. They are both full of stuff. The question becomes what are you actually going to go sailing with and what has to go. I can see the waterlines changing as the forward storage spaces, forward of the most forward bunks, way up in the bow, get to be the places for all those tools. The port forward bunk has yet to have its 40 gallon water tank installed. That's a lot of weight. We're going to keep going along with good pace, but knowing that there will be a reckoning somewhere up ahead. We're ahead of schedule by a week or so, and it would be good to keep on and deal with the storage issues later. It will all come together.