Day 365-1 YEAR!

It seems like only yesterday when we chose the design of our boat, received the plans by mail, and poured the concrete pad on which to build her. It was 365 days ago but those days were in between others totaling over 7 years. It would have been nice to get this far in one year, if we'd had an unlimited supply of money and were robots with no back problems, it may have been possible ha ha!

Gena, on the other hand, thinks it may have been possible because so much time is spent on setting everything up and pulling all of the tools out after sitting in the sheds all week as well as weather related issues. She may have a point there.

If we were to do it all again, there would be several changes:
- We would build a decent shed to build her in. One with corrugated plastic panels and a wood frame, or a portable building.
     the weather was a major factor, especially in the winter here, and could make or break our progress over a month
- We would press harder to overt having to install a diesel engine and go with electric instead ( not that we didn't try! ) with
    the recent push to cleaner fuels because of global warming , I believe acquiring an electric motor is easier now than it was 4
    years ago. I almost feel guilty launching in the year 2007 with a black smoke puffing, CO2 belching engine!
- The interior layout would have been different (partly due to the above i.e. no exhaust system or fuel tanks above the keel etc)
    I feel the pilot house would have been better sunken on one side with a couple of portlights below the large window.
- The gantry would be on rails with steel wheels not rubber. Moving it in the winter was sometimes an all day affair!
- Left up to me it would probably be a kit. ( See Arkadi's site link at bottom of page )
- The lead would have been poured directly into the keel after the boat was turned over. The keel bottom paint was ruined
   by water dripping on the bare steel edge and rusting its' way under anyway.
- The hatches, oh the hatches. A slightly lighter duty version may have sufficed
-And finally, I will admit, the portlights would have been done differently, in a way the interior wouldn't have to wait for them.

We didn't celebrate or anything, we'll save that for the launch party, but we have a definite boost to keep going as it's not much further now! The whole neighborhood and all of you online are waiting for that day. It will come soon. We promise :)

Back to work, the photo to the right shows insulation tape around the hot water line which, even though only uses a couple of cups over the long run, will loose a lot of heat on the way. Of course the tape wouldn't stick to the hose. At all. Why would it?

Tape was coiled around it instead. Maybe it'll anneal to itself...eventually.

The hot water system is an elaborate thing for a sailboat, but could come in handy. On a cold morning after a miserable night, a hot shower or bath might hit the spot. It does for me on land.

The hot water will come from 2 sources, the engine ( which won't be started *just* for this purpose ) and the overcharge load diverter -or just switched on from battery power. Load diversion is a great method of using otherwise wasted energy from nature. The solar panels, water generator, and wind generator all have the capacity to over charge the batteries if the current isn't being drained off as fast as it is being generated. Diverting excess charge to the water heater is a convenient way of using this energy. The water heater with a 12 volt element could kill one of our 4 batteries in 4 hours, but it would never take much more than 20 minutes to bring the water to temperature. Enough to have a shower.

Basically this is an automatic system in two ways, if the batteries get to the overcharging voltage, the diverter kicks in and takes the top off. The second way is if we want to have a hot shower, we must not use the computer ( bad in a sailboat! ) or watch TV ( equally bad ) or the batteries may not make hot water ha ha!

Joking aside, what if the hot water tank reaches temperature and shuts off? An alarm buzzer we are installing across the element thermal switch will warn us of this and one of the charging sources will need to be shut down.

The engine, like it or not, will also be able to charge the batteries, as well as its' own battery. As above, we won't be running the engine exclusively for charging the batteries. Fuel is much to expensive for that! I'd rather use a wind-up radio and flashlight all night thankyou.

Day 365 :
365 days of sharing our project with you, our faithful readers out there all over the planet, who have kept us going
towards our dream more times than we can mention with your emails and comments and praise. Thankyou!
7 more hours - Built foot locker, assembled fittings for water intake, bow line pump etc, hot water lines.

		(Photo left) Gena proudly displays her latest valve contraption that has to do with the salt water intake side of the system. A full explanation will be provided tomorrow. ( Providing she gives me the promised outline of the system by then! ) I am totally lost when it comes to pipes and fittings even though I can design and build just about anything electronic. Weird huh? The top of the page photo may intimidate even a plumber with all of those adapters and fittings. I do know that some of the pumps are being a problem to find conventional adapters for. I always say RV threads or home threads, RV sizes or home sizes. It seems like a conspiracy. Once an RV / marine plumbing part is employed, it seems like one is forced into using everything RV/Marine....
As can be seen below, my job was to build the foot locker at the end of the forward berth. Notice how the ply is routed into the oak board. I like to do this because it ends up looking good and strong as well. The old bulge in the sail locker bulkhead came back to haunt me during this project. The reason there are no top frames is because our antique sewing machine wouldn't fit in there otherwise. It has it's own box and is really cool so it *had* to fit! The lid, made from 45º cut oak boards, will flip up on hinges mounted to the small end section. It's lid will be permanently attached and a "cubby hole" circle will be cut out of it's face to throw junk in. I'll post a photo of that once it has came out of my mind and into reality. I am made a neat latch experiment at work for this locker but forgot it there so it'll be installed next weekend, on another day.
*foot locker ready to go in*
Gena had to do some coal tarring on the inside of pipe fittings and at their connecting areas inside the stand pipes, so finally had the opportunity to paint the mast plate. It has been useful for holding down floor sections while glue sets etc because it is so heavy, but it's in the way and needs to go home!