A Boat ReBorn: Looking Inside...

"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." ~Carl Jung

May 21, 2012

So far, the work continues to be done primarily on parts of the boat that no one will see once the renovations are complete--it will all be behind walls. But, it is very important work!

New water heater,
Restoration and repair of the 120 VAC electrical system,
Determining if fuel tanks need to be replaced,
Cleaning the inside of the hull of the boat...

Here is the old water heater we removed (notice the rust on the bottom):

And a few days ago, my friend, Gregg Tepe, surprised me with this delivery:

And here it is in place:

Equally exciting is the electrical work being done. Anyone who has ever had an aluminum boat knows how important it is to have the electricity run correctly, by someone who knows about electrolysis (a topic I am learning more and more about). All the old 120 volt wire was taken out of the boat and replaced with marine grade cable, connectors and fittings. I have been impressed with the work that Bruce (the previous owner, and an electrician) has done.

Old wire on its way to the dumpster:

In the pic, you can see the new spools of cable on the left, and on the right, you can see where the old 110 fuse box was (under the helm):

Here is a close-up of the fuse box. Wires were melted, broken, and disconnected--what a mess:

Here is a pic of the new fuse box (in place, but we don't have all the wires connected yet). We will paint the door to match the wood in which it's mounted. Very happy with how this will look:

We labeled all the wires as we ran them so that it will be easy to label the fuses once they are all connected:

This wall is starboard, near the middle of the boat. When she's finished, there will be a bar here, with the galley to the right, and the salon to the left. To the left of the porthole is a wire for a sconce. To the right of the porthole is a box for an outlet. You can see another outlet that will be in the galley. Notice that Bruce laced the wire through some sections of garden hose to protect it from the somewhat sharp edge of the aluminum. In some places, he used PVC pipe for this same purpose. Now, when the boat is underway, the movement will not wear on the wires.

This is the starboard side also, further back. This is where the split between the galley and the stateroom will be:

In this pic, notice how all of the wires are neatly bundled and zip-stripped to the aluminum beam:

The next series of pics shows how the wire is fed up through some of the aluminum beams. Since the wire we removed was thinner (not marine-grade), the existing holes were not large enough to accommodate the thicker marine cables. He widened the holes, and replaced the fittings that protect the wire from the aluminum's edge:

These pics show the wire in the larger holes. I also included a pic of the pieces he cut. Here you can see how much larger those holes needed to be.

This is under the salon. The helm and the fuse box is above the right side of this pic, all the way to the back. You can see the bundle of white cable wire heading up through the floor. We also put an outlet under here so that we could plug in a light or a shop vac, etc.

This is the where that bundle of wires ends, at the helm to the new fuse box, which you saw installed in a pic above (this is before the box was in place):

The wires are almost finished--enough to put some insulation up, then walls. Not sure what the best type of insulation is though, so more research needs to be done.

But before any building takes place, we are taking some steps to waterproof her. More on this later.

We are also trying to decide if the fuel tanks need to be replaced. My surveyor used to work for King's Craft, and he recommended that the fuel tanks be replaced, if they are the originals. I do not believe they are the original tanks, though. I have been told that the original tanks were steel, and they eventually fail. If this is the case, I would rather replace them now while the boat is torn apart. However, it is not easy to find fuel tanks that will fit in the space (the old ones are 55" x 44" x 9"), they are expensive, and we will have to cut some of the aluminum stringers and re-weld them....so...I really don't want to do this if I don't need to. As a new friend recommended, I am going to do the "magnet test" to see the tanks are aluminum or steel.

Here are some pics of the fuel tanks. In this pic, the far left is the floor board, and the fuel tank can be seen to the right of it (center of the pic, the wires are laying on the tank):

There are a couple of aluminum brackets that have been cut. This is why I do not think these are the original fuel tanks. I can't imagine what other purpose these brackets would serve. In these pics. you can see the two aluminum pieces. They are about 6 inches long, and serve no apparent purpose. Looks like they were cut off to accommodate two new fuel tanks. What do you think?