It’s been a long month of small projects. We had visitors, and we had projects that needed more thought and design than actually getting things done.
One of them – flooring. We are floored. It’s that season. Interpret how you want. We sanded the cabin sole down to the bare wood. This gives us a clean surface to glue new flooring down. The flooring itself is a story. We bought cherry flooring with the indestructible finish thinking that we could take off the finish with our planer. It killed the planer blades. We’re going with the finish as is. We reconfigured some of the floor boards so they would be not so long and easier to deal with. We still need to lay out the flooring boards and plan how they will fit.
The floor sanded down with the odd bilge access epoxied in place. These were the old table post locators (on the left) and old depth sounder access (the square shape on the right) and a no longer remembered circular access on the right. These will be covered with cherry flooring.We got our lights and the lighting got dry fit. We ended up going with West Marine’s LED lights because the Dr. LED lights we ordered were stuck in China somewhere. It is getting dark sooner and sooner and lights become important. Cabin lighting for the most part will be white, with red/white lights over the chart table, galley sink and in the head. Nina is beginning to make patterns for the panels. The lights connect to terminal strips so they are easy to service. The overhead panels will have an access hole for the wiring, but the lights themselves will be attached through the panel and to the mounting blocks in the ceiling.
On the outside of the boat, we had a sunny day so added more rub strakes. This will help protect the paint on the way to the main sheet winches. We discovered the problem when we took our test sail. Port and starboard main winches now have strips. The problem with a fancy paint job is that there will never be enough chafe protection. We won’t need radar or AIS to alert other boats of our presence, as all the boats in our vicinity will be blinded by the glare from our bling.More wood was needed for new cabinetry. We don’t have a power joiner, so this is the Bill and Nina version of the process. We do have a Stanley joiner plane, manual version. This is Bill getting his steps in for the day. What you don’t see is Nina sitting on the saw horse providing dead weight to the process so the board doesn’t go shooting down our driveway.
Composting head ventilation. We wanted to make the hose more integral to Gypsy so Bill designed new venting for the head. This is the piece that will connect to the deck vent. A hole will be cut into the bottom, just above his finger, to connect the horizontal airflow with the vent. The diagonal part of the box will have a drop down door for cleaning and maintenance. The bigger space above will contain the wiring from the mast.The beginnings of the vanity. The front will have sliding doors for better access since the left side of the picture will be behind the head. The sink will be on the right side of the counter top. Not shown yet is a bulkhead that will bisect the space under the top. We’ll have a foot pump on the right (beyond the picture’s edge) for water.
GypsyKramer 
It never ends for you kids Respectfully, Charles Needles
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