Christmas Bling

December 22, 2016 Hours spent building to date: 3,174

For the last two Christmas holidays, Tardis has received a set of beautiful bronze opening ports from Newfound Metals. This year the tradition continues with exquisite bronze handrail hardware from Newfound, which I had been admiring for years. But every time I thought about them, I was leery of the metalwork involved in producing a set of rooftop jewelry. Then Online Metals had a sale on brass tubing with a really thick wall (almost 1/8-inch), a 20% off coupon and custom cutting. So there they are. Believe it or not, this could be seen as an economy measure given the extraordinary cost of long lengths of teak handrail these days, caused by the worldwide crisis in tropical forests.

Still working in short bursts of 2-3 hours, I also managed to install a tiny, but powerful Whale bilge pump under the cockpit between the two water tanks, hook up the fuel tank sensors which eventually will go to the gauges, and fasten down the stove and refrigerator.