Progress on The Cabin Sides Continues

Yesterday afternoon we just about reached the point of starting to do the final fit the boards into the sides of the trunk cabin. The planks below are a nice tight fit, maybe a bit too tight. It's warm and dry here in Los Angeles, so this wood is about as small as it'll ever be. We'll leave a tiny bit more room than we would if we were fitting this up in SF and a lot more than if we were in the PNW. While this will be set in with epoxy, the flexibility of the epoxy will let the wood expand as its moisture content increases. The varnish over the joints will be plenty flexible enough to allow the joints to move a tiny bit.

Here are the planks of Honduras Mahogany which Wayne's team has cut. The wood for this has been hidden in Wayne's tug boat for well over 15 years, "Waiting for a boat that deserves this wood." Real Honduras Mahogany is terribly hard to find today especially in this size. There's more of this wood that he's "saving" for MAYAN's interior rebuild.



Here's the Starboard side cut. The round hole is for a bronze port hole. As you know, we're installing a Hurricane Combi boiler/heater for domestic hot water and heat. The stainless steel exhaust fitting, which is supposed to exit through the transom or hull side, is polished stainless and quite shiny. Wayne had a great idea. We'll put a port hole through the cabin side and mount the exhaust within the hole. When the weather is really awful, we close the glass of the port hole. The port hole is mounted backwards, with the glass on the outside. This is how Alden mounted the port hole into the engine room on three schooner's I've sailed on. Supposedly, it is mounted this way so that one can ventilate the engine room from on-deck, but it is also reputedly so one can open the port hole and squirt a fire extinguisher down the hole in the event of a fire. We'll follow this custom so that one can close the glass when the seas are rough or when washing down the deck so water doesn't get into the exhaust pipe. There will be a small gooseneck in the pipe also, to help keep water out.



This next picture is of the Port side cut. The round hole in this is where the AC power cord receptacle used to be mounted. I've relocated it down into the engine room and notched a hatch board to let the cord go below. I'm thrilled not to be looking at the thing and also thrilled to know that the plug won't be exposed to salt spray any longer.



On each side there are three 6" long bronze lag bolts that hold the aft edge of the cabin side to the corner post. We'll be documenting exactly where these are for future access, and then burying them with the wood piece. After this, we have two or three small dutchmen to put into the after side of the truck cabin, where it faces the cockpit, and then we're ready for the final sanding and finishing work.