2017 Boat Projects

The wiring inside my electrical cabinet was sort of a rats nest of unlabeled wires running helter skelter all over the place. I bought some new terminal blocks an re-wired much of the cabinet. As part of this process, I re-did the wire ends using crimp + solder + heat shrink + label. I also made drawings of how everything connected together. There were a few wires that I never did figure out where they went. A few more wires were removed since I discovered they didn't do anything.

When the weather got warm enough, I finished the job of rebuilding my lazarette. In addition to a floor to walk on, I added a wooden ladder to get in and out of there.

I flushed-out and re-filled my boat's hydraulic steering system. This was the first time I messed around with a hydraulic steering system on a boat.

One piece of wood on the bulwark's cap rail was badly split, so I replaced it.

I managed to re-finish most of the exterior teak on my boat in 2017 (but not all of it). I used a heat gun to remove the old finish and BROWN PAINT that some goof ball prior owner had put on, the applied 7 coats of Epifanes varnish.

I had the "boatyard blues" for about 5 weeks in the fall. I had the hull soda blasted. Then, I applied West Epoxy with 404 filler to smooth out the hull. Other boatyard jobs included some blue trim paint, new depth sounder transducer, repacked both stuffing boxes, sanded swim step, new zincs, and new bottom paint. The boat looked pretty good when she went back into the water.

I finally bought a dinghy for the boat that I found on Craigslist. Now I need to build a cradle to hold the dinghy on deck.

One of the last projects this year was replacing the old Raytheon radar with a new Garmin radar and chart plotter. I now have at least one piece of navigational gear on this boat that was manufactured in this century.