Back to the blog..

Lost touch with the blog during the holidays. But I am back...for now. Can't say I have ever been much of a writer.

I finished glassing all water tank tops on and started  working in the engine room. I was moving towards building the hull sides up and sun deck. However in the process I had to remove an existing access into the engine room from the aft cabin. Cutting it out created a nice opening into the engine room. So I decided that I should get the work I needed to do in there out of the way before closing up the hole.
Funny how one thing leads to another. I ended up removing everything except the engine and the generator from the engine room. I must say there was an interesting collection of various kinds and sizes of hosing and bits of wiring. It's all gone now so I can get a clean start when I go to reinstall the equipment. I also tore out the old walls they had built around the fuel tanks as well as the ceiling along with the 35 year old loose fiberglass insulation they had installed between the joists. But I have finally gotten the "old" boat smell out. Turns out that the acoustical ceiling tiles that had lined the bulkheads and ceiling with had absorbed all the oily water smell.
When I removed the wall from around the starboard tank I discovered that it was leaking...More on that next post.

For now here are some pics of the tank tops.

Here is the aft end of the Port tank and

the aft end of the Starboard tank. The white you see is epoxy paint on the top in the area where I was not going to do any more glass work. When I have finished glassing in the bulkheads and flor structure I will paint the whole area with white epoxy.

Here is the finished upper tank that rises though the cabin sole under the bunk. You can see the two clean-out ports bolted in place. Every compartment in each tank had a clean-out port.

Here is a close-up of one side of the top. All tops were glassed on with 3 layers of biax tape.

Here is picture of the aft end of the port tank. This was before I learned that the starboard tank leaked. I beefed up the glass work holding the tank in place.

I also beefed up the bulkhead  connection. It looks like they had used 2 layer of mat to tab the bulkheads in place. Not really enough, so I added 3 layers of biax tape over what they had done. The hole you see in the bulkhead is where the exhaust hose entered the aft cabin. It is about 8 inches lower that where it exits the hull, meaning that the whole hose would fill with water when the engine was running. Proper installation says that the exhaust hose shall have a continuous drop from the riser pipe coming out of the water lift muffler to the where it exists the hull.

Here is a view of the start of the mold for raiing the hull sides to firm the aft cabin. They are 3/4" Ply covered one side with Formica. They are clamped onto the out side of the hull with a 10 degree tumble home. There is a 4" wide piece at the top to form an angle to attach the deck to. More on that later.