More Equipment Arrived

Much of the day was spent working on the wardrobes in the main bedroom.  Richard again checked and re-plumbed the wardrobe walls before cutting, scribing and re-cutting some 7mm oak plywood which he then fixed into the base of each wardrobe.  He wanted to make sure if anyone looked at the floor in the wardrobe they would see oak rather than the marine plywood flooring. 

Together we then cut and fixed 20x20mm pine battens around the inside of each wardrobe.  This “fixed” the panels from the inside.

Once the installation of battens was complete the pine “chocks” holding the panels in place from the exterior were removed and set to one side.  We will be reusing them for fitting of the bed.

Actually the bed is also proving to be interesting as the floor is still rising towards the bow.  There’s approximately 10mm difference in floor height between the two sides of the cross-over bed.  Richard is employing the same technique as used for the wardrobes.

The sides of the bed have been roughly cut to size and then plumbed in using the softwood chocks from the wardrobe.

There is a 12”  wide “passage” either side of the bed which terminates at a bedside lowboy (top arrow).

Richard, Jan and I discussed the height of the bed.  The higher the bed is above the floor; the greater the length.  This is due to the “flaring” of the steel hull (the beam increases between the baseplate and the gunwale.  However, if we have the bed too high above the floor we will find there is a lack of headroom under the gunwale.

Eventually we decided the base of the bed will be 14” above the floor.  The mattress will add a further 8”, which will leave us with 16” of headroom.  The top of the lowboys will be 2” higher than the mattress.  By specifying the lowboys to be higher than the top mattress we hope we won’t accidentally knock anything off them whilst sleeping.

Andy informed me the morse controller, shore-power fitting and external “shower-power” fitting had arrived and I was welcome to start cutting more holes in Waiouru.

During the lunch break I took the components to Waiouru and marked out where they will go.  The morse controller gave me the greatest difficulty.  It needed to be positioned so its movement wouldn’t be “fouled” when selecting reverse.  Moreover, I wanted to ensure it was the right height.  It will be positioned on the left side of the cockpit and my thought was the top of the controller handle should be within normal reach of my left hand when standing.

The red arrow points to the proposed location of the hole for the controller.  As you can see I also made a start on cutting the hole for the flush mounted shore-power fitting.  The blade on the 3¾” hole saw is rather blunt and after 10 minutes I only appear to have polished the steel!  The cutting technique may have to be reconsidered.  At least there is currently plenty to keep me busy.