Repairing Hunter 40 damage from Hurricane Matthew

[jssailem]

Very interesting. I have been looking at similar flooring. It has so many of the properties that work on a boat.

You cut the locking bit off. Wonder why, your thinking?

 

[B757Captain]

Very interesting. I have been looking at similar flooring. It has so many of the properties that work on a boat.

You cut the locking bit off. Wonder why, your thinking?

I cut the locking part off the flooring mostly for ease of installation. Most interlocking flooring is designed for a large-ish area where the floor will "float" and the ends will be covered with some type of trim. This allows for the end gap at the wall to be big enough for the installation tool to fit to lock the final pieces. I wanted much tighter gaps, which left me with a choice: lock the pieces together after patterning and try to fit a large multi=piece section in place. This posed a problem since the tiles, even when locked together, are pretty flexible at the joints and will separate. I thought about epoxying the joints but finally settled on my solution - cut the locks off, keep the tongue & groove joint but secure the tiles individually with screws.

To me this solved another problem - boat floors are by nature slightly less uniformly flat than house floors! I did what I thought was a much better job of leveling the floor on the boat when I reinstalled the plywood but there is and will always be some humps, bumps and dips. Removing the locks lets each tile find its natural resting point and they conform better to the floor.

Finally, with everything I have been doing to the boat, in the back of my mind I've kept serviceability and repair a top priority. If the floor needs to come up it's much easier to remove a few tiles (even if you have to start a few tiles away) than to try to remove great big sections. You'll see this in one of the upcoming photos where I pull up some tiles to clearcoat the umbrella stand .

Mark

 

[jssailem]

Thanks Mark. You gave me support for the ideas I have been conjecturing about.

 

[nightowle]

I think the edging helps with providing a distinctive accent to the floor choice. You've probably come across a worthwhile solution to interior flooring for a vessel. Excellent thinking 'outside the box' matey!

 

[Will Gilmore]

Excellent thinking 'outside the box' matey!

By thinking inside the box store.

-Will

 

[B757Captain]

I think the edging helps with providing a distinctive accent to the floor choice. You've probably come across a worthwhile solution to interior flooring for a vessel. Excellent thinking 'outside the box' matey!

Here I was all worried that I was committing boat heresy, and you guys like it! Seriously, I'm just a simple guy who got tired of walking on plywood .

 

[B757Captain]

Making a table:

With the floor done it's time to fab up the eatin' platform. Firstly I measured and temporarily placed a few mounting blocks on the forward bulkhead and umbrella stand and got busy with the slats and hot glue gun:

When I was happy, I transferred the pattern to a piece of (my rapidly dwindling) stash of plywood. Then cut some edges and screwed and glued it all together. After drying I mounted it and did some final trimming:

I'll route the edges with the table in place so there's a tight edge between the table and the center column. I also made a table support though that's not in the pic.

While I was sitting around wasting time I figured it was about time I finished the garbage can situation. I cut the opening in the galley side to fit a can size - in case the specific can I can get right now needs replacing in years to come - and cut a piece for the can to drop into:

This slides on rails. Next fitting the door. I scratched my head for a while, worked up major engineering design ideas, then went simple instead:

Then clearcoated the whole shebang:

We have garbage control! Just to be clear, for normal boat usage, not the hardhat construction zone debris I toss out every few days .

Next up, a big paint & clearcoat session.

Cheers,

Mark

 

[kappykaplan]

Awesome craftsmanship, Mark!

 

[B757Captain]

Making things pretty:

I started Round 4 (or 5, or 6 - I lost track) of painting and clearcoating interior parts & pieces:

This is just about all the port-side aft cabinetry. I also pulled up a few floor pieces so I could get to the base of the center column (or umbrella stand, depending on who's asking ) and started finishing it:

And finished and reassembled:

Next up, working in the aft cabin.

Cheers,

Mark

 

[Hayden Watson]

Somebody looks like they what to go sailing soon! (Relatively speaking)
Looks great!

 

[B757Captain]

Somebody looks like they what to go sailing soon! (Relatively speaking)
Looks great!

Shhhhh!! That's supposed to be a secret!

 

[B757Captain]

Improving access to the bilge:

I have had an idea brewing for a while about making bilge access better than the original setup on the boat. Originally the boat had two bilge access hatches - the one big one under the companionway steps and the other the long narrow lift-out board to get to the front of the bilge. The original floor was solid between the two, making the center of the bilge hard to access. Of course, that's where the bilge pump was located! Neither of the original boards gave good access and were always sort of a PITA. Well, I thought I could do a bit better so when I rebuilt the floorboards I tried to allow for a continuous lift-out board, but the floorboards just didn't cooperate and I ended up with three bilge covers as you can see here:

This was part of the plan, I swear!

So, now with the floor complete I can put my plan in action. i had a few days where a bunch of boat parts were in the garage getting multiple coats of paint and/or clearcoat so I had so time to play. Here's what I came up with:

Those are flush hinges - I broke out the Dremel and routed out the hinge locations so the hinges would be flush, and:

Now I can flip up the center and have direct and quick access to the bilge pump, or just get a quick look at the bilge condition:

But why, you ask, is there a hook in the middle of the cover? This was Part 2 of my plan - I hinged the forward end of the front cover so I can raise and latch it to the umbrella stand:

No more trying to find a convenient place to stow the cover while working in the bilge, it's out of the way and more secure than being loose. Still have to do some finishing on the hatch trim though

Next up, finishing parts of the aft cabin, and unboxing some new parts & pieces.

Cheers,

Mark

 

[nightowle]

That double hinge sure shows some smarts!

 

[jaysweet]

Sometimes I get a bit paralyzed between wanting our boat to look perfect (like it did the day it was new), vs. making improvements which look tidy and nice and yet utilitarian. As I look at more and more boat blogs (and your thread qualifies as one), I think I'm leaning more towards well done, utilitarian, but not necessarily glitzy improvements. In other words, I like the way your new floor looks! It's got LVT instead of teak and holly (boats get wet), it's got visible screws (because they make sense), and it's got nicely recessed polished hinges and pull tabs. It's not like a new Swan or a Hinkley. But it makes sense and looks good. Of course, most of what you've done in your refit doesn't qualify for the word "utilitarian": it's just plain fancy. So I'm talking myself into a corner here, but I hope you know what I mean.

Here's something I did last Fall that I wasn't too sure about, when I replaced our old chart plotter:

At first, I thought: well, there's these exposed stainless screws, and I had to put in a backing plate to cover the hole. But what the heck: it's a boat, and it looks pretty good! Not perfect, but nice.

I should probably stop here. Please take my comments in the spirit in which they were intended. Your boat looks great, and I wish I had half your skill.

 

[SFS]

Jay, I think you are selling yourself short. That install looks very clean and sharp.

 

[B757Captain]

Sometimes I get a bit paralyzed between wanting our boat to look perfect (like it did the day it was new), vs. making improvements which look tidy and nice and yet utilitarian. As I look at more and more boat blogs (and your thread qualifies as one), I think I'm leaning more towards well done, utilitarian, but not necessarily glitzy improvements. In other words, I like the way your new floor looks! It's got LVT instead of teak and holly (boats get wet), it's got visible screws (because they make sense), and it's got nicely recessed polished hinges and pull tabs. It's not like a new Swan or a Hinkley. But it makes sense and looks good. Of course, most of what you've done in your refit doesn't qualify for the word "utilitarian": it's just plain fancy. So I'm talking myself into a corner here, but I hope you know what I mean.

Here's something I did last Fall that I wasn't too sure about, when I replaced our old chart plotter:
View attachment 205222
At first, I thought: well, there's these exposed stainless screws, and I had to put in a backing plate to cover the hole. But what the heck: it's a boat, and it looks pretty good! Not perfect, but nice.

I should probably stop here. Please take my comments in the spirit in which they were intended. Your boat looks great, and I wish I had half your skill.

Welcome aboard Jay,

I don't see where you talked yourself into any corner at all , and I fully understand the spirit you intend and thanks for it!

I think you did a bang-up job on the chart plotter. There is and always will be different thoughts and ideas on our boats about, for lack of a better term, how they age. While the desire to keep the boat as factory original as possible might be desirable, it's not very practical sometimes. Case in point - my original head plumbing was an Orwellian nightmare, with a spaghetti-like array of soft, flexible and VERY permeable hoses that my nose determined had to go at the first opportunity. Unfortunately replicating that factory setup with better materials was impossible, necessitating a wholesale change and complete re-engineering of the plumbing - which required major changes - cabinetry, fixtures, etc. - to everything surrounding the factory setup.

Everything on and in the boat has a lifespan, no matter how hard we try to keep on top of maintenance. Eventually parts & pieces will need replacement and the likelihood of the replacement being an exact match diminishes with time. That alone means adapting a replacement in place of the original, or sometimes a redesign/reengineering job. This is where my attempt to balance form vs. function - utilitarian vs. glitzy leans towards maintainability. I KNOW that eventually I'm going to have to fix or replace something and to do it I will have to remove parts & pieces to get to the parts & pieces . Thus, leaving (for example) screwheads exposed makes sense to me, or - in the case of the flooring - using screws to secure the tiles makes more sense than other more permanent methods to secure them.

Having said all that, there is a sense of style I'm shooting for. Just like what I said when building the hard dodger - I didn't want it to look like the box the supplies were delivered in, I wanted it to look like a factory option - there's no harm in adding a little style to the utility, even if the style appeals only to me. If it appeals to someone else too, yay!

As a final thought, as I'm sure many of you guys do, I follow a few sailing and cruising channels. blogs, videos, etc. Ever notice how much of those folks' time and energy is spent repairing things while underway? What percentage of time in that faraway exotic locale they spend wedged under a cabinet with a wrench? And how much of that time is spent ripping out that nice looking (factory-built as a unit and dropping one-piece into the boat before the deck was put on) cabinet or locker? While I know that when I do get to that faraway exotic locale I also will have to spend some of my time with a wrench in hand, I don't want the first tools used to be the hammer & chisel!

Cheers,

Mark

 

[B757Captain]

Looking for ideas:

I'm not sure who ordered this spring weather we're having - (whoever it was, NOT a fan ) but a few days ago we went from big-boy pants to little-boy pants to big-boy pants to - well, you get the idea! During a brief spell of very un-spring like heat I noticed that I am definitely going to need some insulation on the inside of the hard dodger. I have been buried in other projects and this kinda snuck up on me and haven't had time to any research on what would be the best insulation to use.

I intentionally left the underside of the hard dodger unfinished because I knew I would need insulation but now I'm thinking it will need to be bumped way up on the to-do list! Here's a pic looking up from the galley to see what I have to work with:

I have about an inch of depth between frames to work with, planned on being able to add panels between the frame sections, but I'm wide open to suggestions as to the best material to use.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Mark

 

[Will Gilmore]

https://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-Honeycomb-Grid-Core

Honeycomb core for strength and insulation while staying light weight.

-Will

 

[Tally Ho]

https://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-Honeycomb-Grid-Core
View attachment 205239
Honeycomb core for strength and insulation while staying light weight.

-Will

Does that honeycomb have any insulation properties?

With 1” of space, I was thinking some sort of foam board. Not going to get a lot of R-value in 1”, but better than nothing.


I used Reflexite (maybe 1/4” thickness) under my canvas hatch covers to provide a little bit of insulation last summer.

Greg

 

[Hayden Watson]

EXP board gives R5 per inch.