Finalizing cabin and interior

Here are some pics of recent progress belowdeck.  Currently (June 20th) I am finishing the cabintop, fitting the Dorade boxes and hatch shroud, and remedying the PO's repair of the bow in preparation to paint the hull and fit the stem fitting.

Hanging locker

Aft of the port-side rode locker, opposite of the microwave and toolbox, was planned this locker.  In framing it I realized there was much more space than I expected.  As it is now, it has several bins to hold shoes, balled-up t-shirts and cottons, various personal effects as well as 12" worth of clothes on hangers.  Shirts and coats will fold onto the floor; but it's much better than having nowhere to hang clean clothes at all.

The first photo shows the after bulkhead, where the plumbing is (which necessitated the locker being delineated from the bunk space in the first instance).  The 1-1/2" vented loop is for the holding-tank pumpout; the smaller standpipe is the holding-tank vent which goes to a 3/4" through-hull in the hull.  The wiring will go to a 3-gang panel over the head sink for the lights.  The little 1-1/4" elbow shown coming through the wall is the head-sink drain, going to its trap and thence to 3/4" hose for the seacock.

I don't know if I've said this before but, when fitting plumbing traps to boat sinks, one should always make them turn forward or aft first and then inboard only after they have gone downwards, to ensure sufficient drainage on either tack.  (This says nothing about the shape of the basin which may retain water to leeward of the drain; but that can't be helped unless you have a basin more steeply sloped than the usual angle of heel.)

The other pic shows the forward side of the same locker.  The "Get A Grip' placard came from a hook-and-loop strap display at the West Marine store where I worked; I thought it was hysterical and swiped it from the trash when the sale was over and cut it to a minimal size (and then spilled acetone on it, causing the blur).  It's been in the boat for about 6 years and by now deserves a place as decor.

 

This locker will get covered with a canvas curtain to keep water out, as the foredeck hatch is directly overhead.

The vertical door-jamb pieces probably need some cleaner way of terminating outboard of the sill-- I'll look to that later.

Main cabin, aft

These two pics show the back corners of the main cabin, the electrical panel to port and the galley and bookcase to starboard.  Among other things can be seen my re-use of the (1974) teak fiddle rails that were originally fitted to the outboard hull shelves over the settees.  This wasn't an easy task since the cabin, as molded, is not symmetrical-- the port-side bulkhead was fully one inch wider than the starboard side, as is evident since the vertical posts are keyed to the hatch's opening.  The solution lay in justifiying the space between two spindles on the center of the opening and then ensuring that no spindles are too close to the ends.  I think one of them is a little off, by less than 1/8", but you won't be able to tell (and one strict rule of Diana is that no one is permitted to visit this boat with a ruler in hand!).

In the spirit of complete disclosure: the cheek piece at the after end of the overhead cabinet (where the radio goes) is teak, not mahogany!  It came from a very weathered piece in a trash bin and I didn't recognize it till I'd sanded it down and applied varnish.  Oh, well-- at least both sides are the same (from the same board in fact).

On neither side is the cap fitted to the top of the divider bulkhead.  I've been getting impatient about getting this stuff varnished and installed, just so it doesn't clutter up the cabin and inhibit other progress (as it's all been doing for too many years) and so I screwed this stuff into place as it is now.  I'll fit the cap pieces after I finish the after side of these bulkheads (more on that-- and a surprise! --later).

I haven't had the motivation to build the drawers for the galley yet and so the cabinet bulkhead beside the ladder is still missing.

I don't go in for the trite little piracy fetish so many yachties favor; but the skull-and-crossed-bones can cooler is in tribute to my late cousin Peter, who co-founded Raider Yacht (for which this was a logo).  So it shall remain on the boat.

  

Other stuff

Here is a cool pic of the foredeck hatch.  It lets in some phenomenal light-- you can read by it in the saloon, even during a rain, even with the other hatch closed.  I've been saying all along that if this project is taking far too long, at least I get to spend my days with gorgeous bits of varnished Honduras mahogany; and here's an example.

The stick holds up the hatch because the hardware isn't on yet.  The cords are what secures it down against wind, rattles and motion.

The green tape is a sign reminding me which end goes forward.  Remember that the hatch frame is cut from the base on the deck, to ensure that they fit together, before the base is installed.  Even with a rectangle it matters which way it goes.

Below is a pic of the (too dusty!) sink in the head.  The cabinet lift-out panels are not painted and so not fitted yet.  The leaning board is the divider, not screwed in, that will hold a shelf in the forward locker.

The portion of counter after of the seam in the fiddle hinges up for access to a 4-inch-deep bin (the original bin over the footwell of the settee berth.  The astute will recall that this idea was my contribution to this boat's design in 1972; see here).

I messed up the trim stick that goes atop the blue countertop along the forward bulkhead and it hasn't been remade and installed yet.  In (typical) impatience I had just "eyeballed" the angle against the fiddle and cut it; and it's too wrong to be tolerable.

I could have tugged the wire loom a little more tightly into the upper shelf, under the window, for this pic; but there's still wiring to be run in it.

Don't say anything about the after cheek piece protruding below the upper fiddle rail while the forward one remains even.  This is an oversight and will be remedied!  The trick deserving the credit is in the making of both cheek pieces, one wide and one narrower, so that they align with the locker face which, which like the sink-counter face, is parallel to the centerline.  How else would it have been done?

And this allows the curtain rods to be fastened to the cheek pieces, more or less parallel horizontally.  My mom, the accomplished seamstress, is currently making the curtains for these hull windows.

Main saloon

Lastly here is a pic of the saloon bulkhead after I fitted the cheek pieces along the top.  This had been long unfinished because I just didn't know a way of making it all in one piece; and then (in the shower, as so often happens) I conceived of the positively brilliant notion of making each side in two pieces.  I wanted some straight line to avoid emphasizing the roundness of the cabintop in here; and here is my solution: an ogee curve descending to a second cheek piece and a further horizontal line.  Together these just about cover the ragged fiberglass tape (though not quite) and represent an apparently-structural deck beam in conjunction with the compression post (the true structural deck beam is on the forward side of the bulkhead, requiring the horizontal door header).

In keeping with the conceit of having these pieces represent a real deck beam, I deliberately made these of Phillipine (lauan), not Honduras; so they appear greyer, darker, a little greener than the footwell trim and table cleat mounted lower on the bulkhead.  The cheek pieces to cover the gap between bulkhead and cabinside will be of (thinner) Honduras.

All of these pieces, as well as those on the forward side of this bulkhead, are "permanently" installed now.  If the white or varnish requires any more touching-up, it'll be done with them in situ.

I should have reinstalled the arched door header here; but in fitting the cheek pieces I ran one screw into the bulkhead, thinking it would be covered by the door header, and just missed; so I have to fill it and paint it again first.

Dave saw this and commented on my practice of simply screwing these pieces into place without concern for hiding the screw heads behind plugs or multiple cleats, saying it was just like what Uncle Joe would have done.  I took that as a high compliment, as I have long admired Uncle Joe's clearheaded sense about what's least complicated being the most aesthetically pleasant... but I really meant it all this way to be able to remove all these pieces for varnishing (and revarnishing.  As I always say, 'It's never the last coat of varnish!').

I have a really cool idea for after I paint the fiberglass around the companionway hatch (where the centerline is indicated, top of photo); but I won't share that till it's been done.  Stay tuned.

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It's been a long, cold, lonely winter.

The winter of 2013-2014 has been harsh to New Jersey. Most people of a certain generation are hard-pressed to recall more nasty weather. It hasn't been the frequency of snow, nor the intensity, but something like a combination of the two. We had two major power outages in the region and the township plowed exactly once in six major snowfalls. Plus I was commuting 52 miles each way to work at a marina on the Shore and lost plenty of time and income due to weather. Nearly nothing got done on Diana between early December and about five weeks ago.


Here are some updates, in no particular order.

Foredeck hatch

I finally got the foredeck hatch done (or done enough) and set it on the boat the other day, just before one of the rainfalls we've been having on and off all week.

The poor contraption has been kicking about for about three years. Here it is getting a coat of varnish after I plugged the screw holes in the two sticks on top. (They are aligned over the two ribs which stiffen the frame and the Plexiglas.) I had to take the mahogany down to about 80 grit in some places. Right now it has about three coats of Captain's Varnish on top and about five or six on the sides (on the frame).

 

Here it is (below) after I set it onto the hatch base. The construction of this is exactly as we do on the Cherubini 44-- it is essentially two boxes, a frame and a coaming, made separately. When you have fit the frame box to the deck, you slice off the top portion (in this case 2-1/4") with the table saw, rolling the thing over the blade to cut the four sides. This ensures you have a mated base and hatch. Once the base is installed on the deck, you install the coaming inside it. I set the front of the coaming back about 1/16", using some lauan doorskin plywood, to allow the bottom inside edge of the hatch to clear the coaming as it hinges open. I also slightly tapered the outside faces of the coaming, above the base, to provide clearance. Actually there is a bit more clearance than is necessary or desirable; but it's not bad.

 

As viewed in profile, the hatch base is probably too high. During my usual intellectual communing with my dad, I apologized to him for it. He would have had it a whole inch lower to the deck.

At 24 x 26 inches, this opening is sort of a forward "command center" from which one can lower or raise the anchor, navigate and deploy or stuff headsails. The dimensions also allow for the hatch cover to be unpinned from its hinges and lowered through the opening to stow it below-- a consideration I considered paramount and one which led me to increase the former molded coaming's opening (in essence I sliced out the whole molded coaming entirely).

Today I got to enjoy this in a light drizzle, which was actually pleasant. The translucent white Plexiglas allows majestic light below and even when only partially open allows adequate ventilation.

Electrical panel

I have since added the rest of the trim to this; this is a pic from a few days ago. Today I concentrated on wiring the guts of this panel. As you can see the electrical space is located along the hull shelf above the quarter berth, using the original faux-teak-plywood shelf and just adding a front and top.

 

 The small panel to the left (aft) is the 115VAC panel.  Below the double breaker is the slot for the battery-charger's breaker.

The two main 12VDC panels are for the lights and other circuits.  There is also the bilge-pump switch, voltmeter, fuel-level gauge and a 12VDC outlet.  The voltmeter reports the status of the three batteries (a two-battery house bank and one starting battery) by way of three push-button momentary switches.  There is a switch to turn on or off the fuel gauge as well (switch is not in this pic; it was installed today).

The two rotary switches forward of the double panels are selectors; one is on the running-lights circuit to choose between the masthead tricolor and the pulpit-mounted lights and the other one is on the cabin-lights circuit to choose between the white and red lamps.  In this way no one can activate a white light below when the boat is being navigated at night.  The two rotary switches are aligned with their respective master switches in the panel to their left, as though pointing towards their home circuits when they are in the "normal" positions.

Bookcase

I installed this a while ago but never got a decent pic of it. (This isn't really a decent pic either.) The bookcase is an alcove built into the head (aft end) of the starboard-side settee, under the galley counter. It is scaled for paperbacks of 6 x 9 inches and accommodates things like the Eldridge's, novels and certain tools manuals. There is a blue LED lamp inside, activated by a switch above the galley. The little plywood end (to the left in this pic) opens to a compartment outboard of the books where I can "hide" (stash) CDs and DVDs that are not immediately needed or already loaded into the computer or iPod.

 

Head compartment

Almost all the trim in the head has been installed. As built, the Hunter 25 did not come with a basin in the head; there was just an open bin above the footwell of the berth on each side. Diana's PO took out the floor of the starboard-side one and added a hanging bar so that coats on hangers draped into the footwell of the bunk. I restored a floor here and made two "duffel-bag lockers" for guests' gear. This pic shows the top of those lockers (without their access panels installed) and the trim.

 

To port I installed a proper basin for foot-pump pressure water.  The portion of the countertop aft of it lifts up to the old bin's original floor, providing a space about 4" deep for "lady products" (for my daughters) and other stuff that isn't needed every day.

The old-style black-based Whale faucet is mounted in a 7/8"-ID stainless-steel flat washer serving as a trim ring.  The other washer lying on the countertop was meant for the bottom but I haven't been able to get my (arthritic) fingers up into the access hole underneath to install it.  The aluminum tube of the faucet is a little tatty and I may opt to replace it later; so this is a job that will remain "temporary" "for now".

The lockers outboard of the sink are for towels (aft) and toiletries (forward). Right now they hold everything I took out of the galley lockers in order to finish those now.

In this picture I still owed the fiddle of the lift-up some varnish; but as of this writing it's been done.

The black conduit tubing will get tidied up. But due to the crossmember (on which the junction box for the spar wiring is mounted), the wire loom can't drop straight along the bulkhead; so it is led about an inch away along the cabin side and through a hole in the top of the locker. I did not make a fiddle here; the trim is just a common corner bead. It's too narrow a space to put anything on it anyway.

My mother, the accomplished seamstress, is making the curtains for these windows. They will span the full width of the space so that, when closed, they will be proper drapery that regularizes the oblong shape of the deadlights. The same will go for the main saloon as well.

I still have not connected the fresh-water lines to this sink. The holdup is solving the water-filter question. It's looking like I will install two undersink cannister types, one here and one in the galley. RVers tend to use a "pre-tank" filter, hooked up to the garden hose as they fill the tanks; but this requires that the water in the tanks is presumed good. Most of the bad-tasting water I've encountered has gone bad in the tanks. I'd rather apply the charcoal and coconut-shell filtration at the tap(s), so I'm looking into Purete and Whirlpool compact filters. The one I've got in mind for the head sink is meant for icemakers and its connections are for 1/4" tubing. I may be able to do without the small-ID "quick connectors" and adapt it to 3/8" supply hose for the head sink. The galley can get a 3/8" one adapted to 1/2" supply hose.

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Head compartment

In these photos this is far from being done; but I was just fooling about with the camera and took some photos of the head area to record progress.


This is the head sink, which, as all H25 owners know, the boat did not originally come with.

The stainless-steel basin came from an old Chris-Craft; I bought it on eBay for $19.00.  Its drain goes through the forward bulkhead-- to get out of the foot area-- and then to a trap and down to the drain seacock.

The after portion of this countertop (to the left) lifts up for access to a 4-inch-deep compartment above the foot of the bunk.  The two openings outboard of the sink are for toiletries and towels.  The little mahogany stick on the forward bulkhead, inside the locker, is the cleat for the shelf in there.  The shelf divider is sitting against the hull.

I put the tissue dispenser in there to calculate the space for it; but I certainly won't rely on a cardboard tissue dispenser to be kept in the head, under the large foredeck hatch, aboard a 25-ft boat!

There is no headliner or hullliner in place in this photo.  The trim is not installed here either.

The wiring isn't really this messy-- it's just dangling down from the connections block above this doorway where the spar wiring enters the cabin and the cross-cabin circuits pass by.  When it is connected properly you won't see the danging bits in and out of the lockers.


This Wilcox-Crittenden Head-Mate toilet was given to me by a guy called Bill who was working on his friend's boat in Hancock's Harbor, NJ.  I saw it sitting outside the boat on a Sunday and left a note on it: 'If you are getting rid of this toilet, call me and I'll take it.'  The guy called me as soon as he returned to the boat.  It pumps perfectly well-- they must have been switching to either a larger bowl or just an electric one.  The intake/flush lever is a little rusty; that's all I can find wrong with it.

I had intended to mount my existing 'Frankentoilet' with the crossover sanitation pipe underneath this blue shelf; so the shelf is mounted a little higher than it would otherwise be.  Unfortunately this toilet's pump doesn't mount on the level; it mounts at a slight angle (like a modern Jabsco) on an angled flange on the crossover pipe.  So I can't mount this pump on the shelf, with the crossover pipe underneath, because it won't sit flush.  I have no idea why Wilcox did it like this.  I really wish I were reusing the original Raritan Compact Mk I; but this is similarly 'retro' and works fine-- and best of all the price was right.

The two little openings under the shelf are meant for access to the bolts; and this was supposed to accommodate the crossover pipe underneath so these would allow for cleaning out as well.

Behind the toilet the black ring is a Starboard trim piece around the exit pipe (PVC) leading to the holding tank.

The all-plastic Rubbermaid tool box is actually in its intended place-- this V-berth area has become a true forepeak, having room for only one to sleep but getting equipped with a tool box, workbench, hanging locker, microwave oven, plenty of outlets for charging cordless tools and possibly also a fresh-water supply tank for flushing the toilet. The holding tank is underneath, with most of the plumbing and all but one of the boat's through-hulls.  And that's in only the aftermost 26 inches of it! [wink]

The mahogany in the foreground is the backup to the compression post, underneath where the maststep really is.  It's a piece of the stock I cut for the cabintop handrails, but here it is solid except for only one hand hole (through which the vacuum cleaner's cord is running).  I gauged this hand-hold for someone sitting on the potty and only after installing the stick I realized that the head door's latch has to go at the very same elevation-- so when you reach through it you will stub your fingertips on the edge of the latch plate.  Oh, well.

At the time this was taken the lockers behind the toilet were taken up with the stereo, the outlet strip and the lift-out panels for all the lockers about the boat.

The bronze Barlow selftailing winch (vintage 1977) is a leftover from Warren Luhrs' C44 cutter and served as a doorstop in my mother's bathroom for about 20 years.  It's now slated to be the foredeck-mounted anchor-rode winch for a first-generation Hunter 25 called Diana.  Funny how things turn out!

Here is an 'aerial' shot of this space, minus the toilet, taken from the foredeck hatch opening. 

The door jamb, to the right, was excessively tedious.  It is a T-section and has to fit a very awkward three-sided space and accommodate the natural crookedness of the boat as-is.  It turns out that the face of the head's sink cabinet (side of the port-side berth's footwell) is neither in one plane (it's twisted) nor parallel to really... anything.  Fitting delicate mahogany (the lower portion of that stick is 5/16" square) to a crooked boat is an exercise in near-futility.  But I got it to fit!


The threshold of this doorway is somewhat more robust.  If it appears crooked, it's because the main bulkhead of the boat is not square to the centerline.  Believe it or not that threshold is in the only place it can be to make the (not yet built) door work.

I still have to countersink those screw-holes to fit them with plugs; but I'm keeping it as removable in case something happens with the door later.

The rough plywood sole is only temporary.  The finger-hole, however, will be in the finished mahogany panel.  It's the drain for the space, as there'll be a shower hose here too.


The black square is the pedal for the Whale Gusher foot pump for the head sink.  It feeds from only the port tank, however, despite being likely to be the most-used water source in the boat.

In the foregound (top right of photo) you see the coaming for the foredeck hatch, not yet varnished.

I like the deep-blue/white/black/stainless/mahogany decor theme of this boat.  It's bright, cheerful, nautical and traditional.

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