Nav desk, plumbing, battery cables, holding tank
Sorry it's been so long since we've updated the site! Whew! we've been busy.......
Neil finished building the nav desk and subfloor; it is fantastic. Of course it still needs trim and doors, but you get the idea. We also spent a long day cutting, crimping, and installing the 1/0 to 3/0 cables we need. That's a LOT of very heavy cable! Thank goodness we splurged on the super high-grade, super-flexible stuff, I cannot imagine what working stiff cable that big would be like. What else have we been up to? We removed the stem and stern fittings. We also built the shelf for, and plumbed, the holding tank.
Holding Tank Installation- We had a real dilemma figuring out where to put the holding tank. The logical place for it is under the V-berth. but that is our only sail storage space! Center cockpit boats under 40 feet have pitifully scarce deck locker space, so all the extra sails need to live under the V-berth. And there's really no other locker space big enough for a holding tank. After much agonizing and measuring and rereading the Ronco Tanks catalog, we found a solution. An 18 gallon, 25x25x7" tank fits against the bulkhead in the engine room. It was sad to give up the newfound roominess we'd discovered there after removing all the old junk, but it was the only solution. Neil built an incredibly sturdy shelf for it to sit on, then made hold-down straps with metal straps and a bolt, so they can easily be removed. The tank has a well-insulated cover to keep its contents from getting too cooked (yuck) and we made sure to use the very best sanitation hose: Sealand's Odorsafe, which is supposed to be far and away the most odor impermeable available. Our aft head, then, is plumbed with a Bosworth Sealect Y-valve (through the bulkhead, mounted conveniently next to the toilet) to choose between overboard discharge and holding tank. When we're over 3 miles out, the holding tank can be emptied overboard thanks to another Y-valve before the seacock. It'll use gravity, as it's higher than the seacock, and we can flush it out well while it's emptying by spraying our seawater washdown hose into the deck-pumpout fitting. And, of course, it can be emptied dockside through that same fitting. When we were designing this we had input from Peggie Hall, who is sometimes referred to as the Head Mistress....she's made marine sanitation issues her business for many years. She was a great help!!
We made the decision to remove all of the existing plumbing, after all. The freshwater system was grey polybutylene (?) tubing. We removed it and replaced with the new Whale freshwater system. This consists of red or blue (hot/cold) cross-linked poluethylene (PEX) semi-rigid tubing, and Whale's Quick-Connect fittings. They are very easy to install, uninstall, reconfigure, etc. It cost more than using regular old clear water hose, but we wanted to avoid as much algae and bacteria growth as possible by using opaque hose to cut down on light penetration. It was a good decision, as the Whale is easy to use and will be much easier to troubleshoot or reconfigure at a later point. I also ordered all of our new plumbing fixtures! We're going with Italian-made Wilcox-Crittendon faucets and showers. Snazzy!
Also snazzy: our new Force 10 three-burner stove, sitting in a box in our living room; our new self-tailing winches for the mainsheet and reefing lines; the new, custom DC distribution panel we've ordered!!!