Aft Cabin Project

Please welcome new contributors Deb and Tim, who live aboard and cruise their Tartan 42, s/v Kintala. If you live aboard your boat, you undoubtedly work on your boat. So where do the tools, electrical connectors, plumbing bits, spare pieces of precious teak, etc go? Deb and Tim created a nicely organized storage area for just these things...

The aft cabin is finished with the exception of a few coats of wax so here are the pics for your perusal.

This is the starboard aft cabin berth that we removed the mattress from. We bought these hardwood drawers from Lowes in a kit for less money than we could have bought the materials.

Tim built a bulkhead across the foot of the berth at the same location as the front of the pantry cupboard. The area behind this bulkhead will store boxed tools like drills and the Dremel. In this picture he's working on installing the wire shelves that will hold our Harbor Freight plastic storage boxes. And yes, we know the shelves are upside down. We needed the lip to keep the boxes from sliding back and forth every time we tack.

The finished project minus the waxed finish. There is a handy shelf on the top for putting the tools currently being used. Below the hinge are the two drawers that hold tools. You can now see the door on the bulkhead to access the boxed tool storage. We left enough room then in front of the drawers for guests to put their duffels.

Here it is with the front panel lowered on the hinge. This makes our workbench which will soon have a quick-mount vice on the corner in the front of the picture. It's hard to see in the picture, but under the workbench are three drawers that we put 100# heavy duty sliders on and locks to hold our heaviest tools.

The drawers have good sliders on them and are stopped by the fiddle.

The cupboard at the foot holds an amazing amount of junk tools.

The Changing of a Hanging Locker

All of us have boats with storage compartments wedged into any void space in the design. Not all of these spaces provided by the designer are useful to our particular needs. Dana on s/v Rubigale, tackles this issue head-on...

Empty Locker Before

I was frustrated with the inability to store much of anything in the two hanging lockers that I had, and the lack of storage in general on the boat.  The shape of a hanging locker doesn’t lend itself to any item of clothing I can think of other than perhaps a miniskirt or skinny jeans, and I doubt that is what most people want to store in them.  I decided to convert the locker in my V-berth to shelves instead and see if I could recover some of that space.

Supports Installed

The first challenge was that with the curvature of the hull, nothing looked straight.  I ended up measuring down from the top and then using a level to draw lines on the walls where the shelf supports would go.  Never would I have thought that those lines were straight due to the visual tricks of the curvature and I had to trust the level.  Each of those lines were measured for the supports which were cut 1” short of the back wall and angled at 45 degrees due to the slant of the wall.  These were predrilled with a small countersink.  Once this was done they were coated in polyurethane and screwed onto the side walls where the marks had been made and the holes filled with wood filler.

Logan Helps With Patterns

The second challenge was that the back wall is the hull of the boat and curved not only top to bottom, but from forward to aft.  After starting, I discovered that one of my two “straight” walls was not straight.  Not being a geometry genius, I had to come up with something that would allow me to cut shelves with as few tries as possible.  I took a piece of scrap trim and drilled a hole the size of a pencil at one end. I used a thin piece of balsa wood about 4 inches wide as a temporary shelf, put brown wrapping paper over it and placed it on the supports. I then used my pencil “protractor” to trace the hull shape onto the paper.

Once I had the side measurements and the shape of the back, I cut the shelves. I left a one inch gap at the back for air flow. I used 1/2’ plywood for the shelves – anything thinner wasn’t going to be strong enough and thicker just took up room I could use for storage.

Cut Shelves With Rail

After a few coats of polyurethane, a small fiddle-rail, stained to match the outside of the locker was attached to the end with small brads.  The shelves sit on the supports unattached. The fit is snug enough that there’s no movement, but they can still be easily removed.  The fiddle-rail keeps containers from sliding into the door when the boat heels.

Finished Shelves

A relatively large amount of storage was gained by changing a traditional hanging locker to shelving.  This solution works well for me since I don’t really have clothes that need to be hanged.  I plan to convert the only other hanging locker as well, but will use L brackets instead of wood supports to save some steps and time.

Valkyr’s Hard Dodger

Scott aboard s/v Valkyr needed more solar power to run his A/C (he is in Florida).  And shade is also a very nice thing...  So he took on the project of making a hard dodger to support all those new solar panels.  This is not strictly a small boat project, but shows some excellent construction techniques.  Enjoy!

So I thought I had posted pictures of Valkyr’s hard dodger long ago but it seems that I didn’t. These are not the best formatted pictures but should help to give an idea of what I did.

Starboard view of whole dodger frame

We had 1/4 inch aluminum plates welded into frame to bolt the top rails onto. In finished dodger this is what actually holds it to dodger. There are 6 of them.

Aft partial view of dodger frame

We drilled the holes to mount frame to boat and then filled with epoxy and drilled again to make sure we would never have an issue with water penetration into the core.

This is picture of the above deck mount and two of the backing plates for under the deck. As you can see the deck mount has a pivoting base. The reason we went with this is that once mounted we could unbolt the entire dodger with four bolts, and have no risk of water ingress while it is off the boat. also 4 bolts vs 16 bolts is a lot quicker and easier.

Underside of one of backing plates for top rails.

aft portside view of entire dodger frame

starboard view down top of frame. You can see the next attachment point at the center of the handrail and then forward attachment point. Dodger has 3 rails, hand rails on either side that are full length of dodger and attached with 12 1/4 inch stainless bolts. I’m almost 200 lbs and can yank on a rail as hard as I can and it barely shivers the dodger. More rocks the boat the the dodger. The third rail is what you can see in the left foreground of the picture and is simply to keep the boom from hitting the dodger if it falls and for tieing it down if you need to.

We spent a lot of time making drawings and sitting on the boat taking measurements to get the height of the dodger correct. This is the view sitting at the helm. You have clear unobstructed view under and if you stand up you can see over it. We also did a lot of different version of the side supports to finally end up with the graceful design we got. The curves added strength and elegance yet still left us with a lot of unobstructed view forward under the dodger. The top of the dodger has the same camber as the deck under it.

dodger bolted down with sealant.

sealant to keep water from running down the bolt.

again sealant to keep water from running down bolt. All epoxy filled holes through deck were counter sunk to allow the built up sealant around bolt here to fill and compress in the holes.

It took several go around over a few days to fully tighten down. The sealant we used was pretty thick and it would gradually ooze out as it sat after being tightened. After a couple go arounds it was all good and hasn’t leaked in the 4 years since it was installed.

Temp attachment of forward port side handrail on dodger.

temp attachment on starboard

port side view of dodger frame

Middle starboard side attachment for handrail.

This is a bit out of order but has to do with dodger. This is the central junction for all the solar panels on the dodger near the starboard aft leg of the dodger that the main wires from it run below to the charge controller. We used a water proof document case that we modified into a junction box. notice all wires into have a drip loop. All exposed wire and buss bars are coated in di-electric grease. 4 years later it still looks like new. No corrosion.

You can see the deck penetrations where the wires from the solar panels penetrate the dodger. It was a lot of work drilling and then filling all the holes with epoxy and then drilling again. We actually glued the wires to the underside of the dodger in neat runs to lead to the junction box. It has also worked well.

Solar panels on dodger roof. We used a adhesive sealant to attach them to roof. It has held really good. Forget what it is called, something kevlar 400? from PPG.

another view of solar panels. Each one of the panels is 25 watts. They are a thin flexible panel that it is safe to walk on. There are

junction box closed

roof penetration for solar panel wiring and runs glued to roof as they go to junction box. I used quick set gel super glue to do the gluing. Run a line of glue and press wire into it for a few inches and hold for 15 or 20 seconds and then repeat. It took a while to do it all but in the end it was very neat and held good. when I painted it is hardly noticeable under there. Sadly I should have sanded before glueing the wiring in. Not that it was an issue with the wiring but some of the paint flaked off on the under side.

another view under dodger. If you notice the chips in the white paint on the aft upper edge of the dodger, That edge takes a beating sometimes an has to be touched up on a regular ( annual basis )

Hand rails being attached to the top of dodger once roof is installed.

Picture with 12 panels attached. For some reason I think I added a 12th panel behind the aft most two panels for a total of 275 watts on the dodger. There is another 190 watts in one big panel on the dingy davits also for a total of 465 watts on the boat. We had power hooked up at the dock when we lived on the boat to run the AC. Since then though the boat has been powered by the installed solar. We turned off the dock power to save money and never noticed the difference.

Kaylin helping paint!!

Zsanic in the galley and kaylin hanging out under dodger.

forgot to mention. If you look in the lower left corner of the dodger you will notice a drain. We custom made drains in all 4 corners of the dodger with 1/2 inch hose leading down on deck from it. No matter what angle of heel rain will drain off and if we wanted we could lead it to the tanks.

Good view of the aft rail that protects solar panels and dodger top from boom if it falls.

Room in the Reefer

This post originally appeared on Windborne in Puget Sound

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Guilty.

I am guilty as charged.

Yes, there has been an unconscionable gap in posting to this blog - it's just that not everything in our lives is related to boating, and a bunch of that stuff came up recently.  OK, enough of the Mea Culpa.

Eolian's refrigerator compartment is huge for a boat.  But because it is so tall, much of the space in it either goes to waste, or we spend a long time sorting thru piles of things in there with the door open, looking for something.

Something had to be done.

I decided to make a shelf that would add 50% to the horizontal storage space in there, and put some of that vertical space to use.  Because I am a professional scrounge, I have a good collection of teak scraps discarded by others, gleaned from the dumpsters.  I brought some of this, and a collection of tools to the boat:

Some of the tools

Making a mess of the dock

In a project like this, it is important to make dimensional decisions that will fit with what you plan to store in the reefer.  To that end, I think I may have disturbed some folks at Safeway by walking around with a tape measure, measuring beer boxes, soft drink cartons and other things.  It was kind of surprising to see the variability in carton sizes, even for canned drinks.

The trick in building this shelf was that it needs to be removable, yet it needs to stay in place with a load of food on it when the boat is in a seaway.  I was most worried about the shelf tipping over toward the door when on a starboard tack.  Here's how I dealt with that:

• The left-hand support bracket has a foot that goes all the way to the door, about twice the length of the bracket.  With this extension, it would be very difficult indeed to tip the shelf on this side.
• On the right-hand (aft) side, I made the last of the shelf boards extend behind the holding plate, preventing any movement on that side.

Finally, to lock things together when it is in place, I made rabbits in the top edges of the support brackets to accept a rabbit on the cleats on either side of the shelf.  When the shelf is installed, it cannot move toward or away from the door because of these interlocking notches.

Three pieces, with clever interlocking

Yes, the shelf slats seem to be sort of unevenly spaced from side to side.  This is because the left-hand side of the reefer is deeper than the right-hand side due to hull taper.

Sadly, in my first attempt at making the side brackets, I failed to take into account that the rear wall of the reefer matches the hull contour.  So I had to redo the brackets.  In fact, every board was custom cut and fitted because of the hull contour and because the hull is tapering in as you go aft (to the right in the picture).

But in the end I got it.  And we've added 50% to our reefer storage.

Et voilà!

Seems like a pretty small thing for a day and a half's work.  But there was a lot of thinking and trial fitting.  And that beer box is no longer full...

The making of a hard dodger

This is not an easy project.

It is well beyond the "small boat project" range. And yet, it is so well executed that I couldn't resist drawing your attention to it. Mike of s/v Chalice has tackled the creation of a hard dodger. And he has done it in yeoman fashion. Pay particular attention to the tools and tooling that he creates in order to do the actual project work:

• A rib glue-up table
• A buck for gluing up the roof panel
• An adjustable jig to support the roof panel in place in the cockpit while supports are created
• A rolling gantry (!)

Given Mike's proclivities, I'm sure that this is not an exhaustive list.  Tho creation of the tooling and tools took perhaps as much time as the project itself, the result shows that this time was well-invested.

Yeoman work indeed.

What follows is a combination of two of Mike's posts (I wish there was a third showing the completed dodger).

The Hard Top / Hard Dodger. *Part 1*

So here we go. This was spread over about a year. First I made the actual top piece, then the bottom rail was made right on the boat. Then I built the gantry crane to set the top piece up there and join the two together.

I started with a table to make the mahogany ribs that are internal to the top.

Made with OSB, filled with thickened epoxy, sanded, then clear coated with epoxy again to give a nice smooth surface then waxed about 8 times so the glue would not stick to the form.

From Update_July 20, 2016

From Update_July 20, 2016

From Update_July 20, 2016

From Update_July 20, 2016

From Update_July 20, 2016

Next a large form was made that matched the same curve as the ribs. I did not take pics of that part. I have a few of the actual glue up of the top piece.

From Update_July 20, 2016

From Update_July 20, 2016

There is a layer of 1/4" luan on top and bottom. Mahogany ribs with 1/2"foam panel between them with solid Mahogany about a foot around the edges.

I used plastic nails to nail the first layer to the form. This allowed easy removal and sanding. I used a cheap Harbor Freight 18Ga. nail gun. Worked great and saved about $300 from buying a Italian gun made for them.

Later I cut it to shape and glassed it top and bottom.

From July 21, 2016

From July 21, 2016

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The Hard Top / Hard Dodger. *Part 2*

So now we have the top up on the boat. I built an adjustable jig to hold it so I could get the right height and location. Here are some pics with the process of fitting the top to the bottom rail I had made earlier.

By the way, this was the most difficult part.

From Update_July 20, 2016

From Update_July 20, 2016

Starting to look good. I think.

From Update_July 20, 2016

Looking lean and mean.
Dirty boat.

From Update_July 20, 2016

Ok now we have it together (barely). So let's lift it off and to the ground.

From Update_July 20, 2016

From Update_July 20, 2016

From Update_July 20, 2016

On the work horses for final assembly and finishing.

From Update_July 20, 2016