Avoiding Paint

October 11, 2016 Hours spent building to date: 2,950

I spent almost a week avoiding pulling the big sander, paint and rollers onto the boat, very successfully. Here are all the interesting jobs that took the place of sanding, taping and painting:

— Ran every wire I could think of that didn’t need to pass over a painted area, and cleaned up the main north/south wiring bundle, since I think it is pretty complete.

— Added a lot of circuit protection (fuses). I hate to go into a technical digression for those of you just reading to see if this boat ever actually gets done, but this is important. Skinny wires covering a long distance carrying a lot of current can cause fires. Thick wires running short distances with circuit protection (breakers and fuses) don’t. On Memsahib I was very lucky in that the batteries, charger and circuit panel were very close to one another joined by thick wires, so I really didn’t have to do much fusing. The Tardis situation is just outside the American Boat and Yachting Council and Coast Guard rule book, so every positive wire running directly off the batteries needs a fuse. There are bunches of them, since the equipment manufacturers of the ACR, battery monitor and charger all want the wires to go directly to the battery terminal posts. And they specify three different types of fuses. And fuses can’t be in the battery box itself to prevent damage from gases. So figuring all this out and hooking it up took a while, plus two trips to West Marine. At least the fuses will be in a very accessible area for replacement and checking.

— Fuses in, I hooked up sub circuits for the head, cockpit lighting, USB and cigarette lighter outlets, and main cabin lights.

— Made a nice cherry top for the battery switch/fuse box.

— While I could get to them easily, I cut holes in the hull and installed bronze through hull discharges for the two bilge pumps, galley sink and head sink.

— Measured up and patterned the windows one more time to send a massive window order out to Peninsula Glass in Vancouver, WA. UPS said the package will take a week to get there, which is actually good news, since I am not looking forward to getting the price quote for the windows prior to being flush with cash from my Social Security check.