It's been a busy week in boat-refit-land. Derek replaced the lovely little copper vanity sink with something in which one might actually wash dishes :-)
Before (visualize cruising three years with this as your kitchen sink. But yes, it's adorable):

and After:

Now, the only thing that would fit in that spot (the starboard hull comes within a cm of the bottom of the counter on the inboard side, so it's as big as it can be, in that location) was a "bar sink," so I priced them and got this one. Derek used a Sika compound equivalent to 3M 101 for the install.

Over in the head, Derek has been making similar progress. The holding tank has been fitted into its slot in the compartment Derek built to take it:

The extra wire sitting along the top used to be the wire for the LectraSan (illegal in the FL Keys), but Derek will be installing a holding tank monitor, so (here's where having studied up on boat wiring beforehand saves some aggravation) he's leaving this wire to use it to draw through a wire for the holding tank monitor when the time comes.

The cabinet to hold pipes and pumps and so forth is also almost complete. This will be painted gloss white to go with the rest of the head area:


Meanwhile, back in Grant's berth, the replacement of the headliner is underway. Start with a layer of automotive foam; this provides insulation and softness (nice around a bunk) and takes some of the "bumpy" out of the inner hull. I used SailRite's instructional videos on YouTube, for "replacing a blanket headliner" and "Installing Headliner using Naugasoft Vinyl" to get the general idea, and talked to some local headliner people about this as well, which is how the hybrid Landau-foam-and-Naugasoft idea came up. We'll see about the Naugasoft, anyway, I may wind up using fabric, because of the bumpiness in the inner layout of the fiberglass. So, here's the "before":


And here are the steps...

First, according to the video, I needed 3M General Trim Adhesive (they make several kinds of adhesives, you need to avoid the ones that say "not suitable for headliners"), and 3M General Purpose Adhesive Cleaner. OK, those were available in the automotive sections at KMart and WalMart. Weirdly, our local Home Depot and Lowe's did not have exactly that type of adhesive, although they had other 3M adhesives. I decided to stick with what obviously (from the video) worked.

But there was one little thing I hadn't noticed. In the "carpet-style" install video, they show the guy spraying the adhesive on the overhead in two directions, side-to-side and again fore and aft. They don't show him holding his breath until his eyes start to bug out, then dashing into the cockpit for a breath of clean air... what was wrong with me? I was only able to do a tiny section before I had to escape and breathe. The working time on this stuff is about 10 minutes and it was going to be a near thing whether I'd get it all sprayed in that amount of time, even though I had already cut the foam and would spray it the same way as soon as the cabin inner hull was sprayed. Gasp, gasp... OK, I got the sidewall up, it was a bit of a struggle with the 80" length of foam that was very sticky on one side, since I'd had to spray it out on the dock but then somehow get it into Grant's cabin without rolling it, trying to keep all of the sticky side from contacting anything... here's what that first day's mounting effort looked like:

OK, so there were a couple of bumps for bolts, and one suspicious small bulge near a bolt line... wait, that's the chainplate... OK, not too bad. Not sure what that will look like with Naugasoft over it. Hey, I feel a little dizzy from the fumes... and I'm covered in tiny needles of fiberglass from the bare-hull fiberglass overhead. Seriously, my black sports jacket was glittering when I walked up to the parking lot from the dock. And I was still sort of dizzy...

So dizzy, in fact, that I sort of didn't remember driving home. When I got home, I realized I had left the giant roll of Landau foam liner on the foredeck (AKA Foam Cutting Table). So I drove back. And forgot my purse, phone, and anything other than car keys, driving there. Put the foam inside, locked up, realized my purse was missing, searched for my purse, searched for my phone to call Derek and ask if my purse was home, realized my phone was in my purse, and drove back home hoping I'd simply spaced taking my purse (I don't usually go anywhere without my purse). Whew, I had. What the heck was in that 3M General Trim Adhesive???

The answer? Ether. First ingredient. Oh, wow...

Didn't we used to use this stuff to assassinate fruit flies in biology class? Didn't they used to use this to operate on people?? How many brain cells was I losing, here?

The next day I expressed my perturbation to Ted, the marina manager, because he was out sanding some varnish off a disassembled marina bench, with a mask and goggles and a vacuum hose hooked up to his sander. Now that's what I'm talking about, that man was set for safety. He told me that the little particulate mask I'd been using to avoid breathing in the sleet of fiberglass needles from the overhead was useless against fumes. What I needed was a "VOC mask." Bless you, Ted! He also told me where to get one (Reilly's Auto Parts on Navy Avenue). They had one. I was in business!

So, here's what you will need if you do not want to wind up on the deck gasping like a grouper:

I got my mask back to the boat and installed the two little front-end filters as instructed, measured, cut my next foam piece to size (another 80" monster) and started spraying. Whoa, I could not smell any of the ether. I could do this all in one shot! This was AMAZING! That 3M VOC mask worked a treat. It's so gratifying when something really works. I still went out to the dock to apply the adhesive to the fabric side (as recommended by the foam guy at Grant's), so I still had to wrestle that giant piece of flypaper in through two tight doorways (they're really "hatches" in sailor-speak, but I don't want you all thinking of a big square opening port rather than a doorway. For future reference, though: hatches are doorways on a boat).

Aside from getting a faceful of fiberglass shards when I had to trim carefully around the little opening port in the overhead, that went pretty well. There was still some looseness around the not-yet-brightwork of Grant's hanging locker, but I can take care of that on the next pass. This was looking like it might work. And that mask was a wonder!

So, armed with the WonderMask, I had the bright idea of doing the measuring and cutting, then bringing the foam into the berth itself to do the adhesive application. After all, I hadn't smelled any fumes when doing the inner hull spray...

Suffice it to say that even if you do not smell fumes, above a certain concentration in the room air, the mask does not get everything. I did not smell fumes, but I started to see some interesting purple blotches, kind of like little polka-dots of ultraviolet light in my visual field. OK, so maybe it's a bad idea to push the mask that hard; I won't do that again. But the overhead will not be spilling any more fiberglass needles on folks, and that's a good thing.

Looking better:

But it is hard to get every little wrinkle out before the adhesive passes its working threshold. I'm hoping I can also get the small ripples out on the next pass (I'll let you know how in-situ reinforcing attempts go).


Hoping you all have enjoyed your New Year's Day in whatever fashion makes you happiest!