Retail Therapy

Every now and then you get a blinding flash of the obvious. Bruce’s suggestion on the last post is one of these. The fridge has been removed pending a hole being cut in the floor at the rear of the refrigerator recess. Once cut it will be covered by a stainless steel vent plate solely to try and stop that accumulation of detritus that you get under fridges dropping into the bilge. The plans to allow vent space in doors and worktop will continue but the extra vent from the bilge is bound to help. An added bonus of this idea is that I will be able to examine the bilge for damp as I suspect there may be water still down there from when the skylight was leaking. I had asked for access to the bilge to be made possible, but usual story – nothing happened, hopefully that will be taken care of when I relay the cabin floors and build in a cool space for wine etc. I’m seriously thinking of doing the main cabin and galley in the style of the wheelhouse deck boards, which got well and truly soaked a couple of times but seem to be holding their shape and still looking good.

In the mean time the battery compartment has been cleaned out and a ply lining applied to the cabin bulkhead and 6x20 mm laths of mahogany have been stuck down on the base plate with grab adhesive – thought better of drilling and screwing. All that remains is to paint it with Smoothrite unless somebody can suggest a better paint.

The void between the fuel tanks has been treated with Waxoyl after it remained dry after the trips we have made recently. At one stage when nobody was looking pushed the revs to well over 2000 and got a good move on but still no water coming in.

The batteries are holding up while on test so the seem to be holding a charge, and I’m wondering if there is any way I can test their capacity other than attach a known load and time the discharge. Think that may be one for CWDF.

As for the retail therapy we seem to be accumulating components for the new control desk. The new control panel arrived from Beta today which they have had to make specially for me as their design has changed over the last year but I want to keep my old tachometer to keep the engine hours right. Also got a longer wiring loom to solve the problems of wires pulling off because they are too tight. Once again Beta altered the termination to match up with my tacho as the connectors have changed also. All praise to Beta they have sorted or helped me to sort quite a few problems.

Along with that there is a nice new wheel which is more in keeping with the style and fuel and water gauges. All that is left to add is a rudder indicator – people say you don’t need one and in most cases they are right but there are occasions when you are station keeping in a lock or doing tight manoeuvres in the marina when it would make life easier.