We are back in the land of cold and wet. And back working on Gypsy, plugging away for that day when we, too, can head down the Columbia and hang a left.
Here’s what we’ve been working on. Holed up in the garage, Bill has been coating the settee seat backs with epoxy. They are now sanded and we’re waiting for decent weather to cut the openings and doors trim them with hardwood.
The pantry now has all its insulation in place and it has been covered by vinyl. We discovered that the vinyl we had was pretty beige compared to our white paint, so we made a trip down to our local foam store and bought a bright white for covering the rest of the insulation in the main cabin.
While Bill was making templates for the settee locker shelves, Nina was insulating drawers.
Black foam everywhere in the galley drawer bank, except for the floor. That will be covered later, once we figure out wiring and any plumbing that will need to go in that space. The foam will help minimize condensation when it’s cold out and with noise reduction when the engine is running. We’re going to leave it un-vinyled. To the left of the red wire on the left is the engine. We’ll be insulating that panel on the engine side to help deaden engine noise. It may seem like overkill, but the interior of the boat is a small space with many hard surfaces that sound can reverberate through.
Bill’s shelf templates for the settee back lockers. They looked like this when they were waiting to go home. The lockers will get covered in the new white vinyl before we add the shelves and seat backs.
Our last project of the weekend was to think about how we could better use the space where the house bank of batteries lives. Bill made a box for them years ago when we first bought Gypsy. Looking at it now, we realized we needed to add accessible switches and fuses to them. The easiest way to do this is to move the box. If we shift it over a couple of inches, we’ll have access on both sides of the box, and it won’t be a complicated project. Now’s the time to do it.
The house bank is its current location. The idea is to move it to the left a couple of inches, reconfigure the lid (which was sticking anyway) and improve access to the right side of the box for wiring and switches. The left side will get a new access panel and a new switch as well.Battery box out of the settee. It came out easily and will be easy to relocate. Meanwhile, we can touch up the paint in and around the locker.
GypsyKramer 