More Sole and a Little Plumbing & Electrical

Since I have this whole week off, I have made some good progress as of today, so I decided to update the Blog.

On Saturday, I stained the plywood.  I ended up letting the first coat dry. There were some spots where the grain was too noticeable across a wide area, so in order to try an replicate individual planks, I added another coat. This time, I used a crumbled piece of paper towel and pulled the stain to try and add some linear effects. I think I like it okay.

This photo is of the sole for the port an starboard hulls, except for the small piece at the top.  It is the piece that will go just starboard of the main cabin sole, leading to the starboard hull.

This is the main cabin sole.

On Saturday and Sunday, I added 4 coats of polyurethane to the back and sides of all of the pieces.

This is my test piece to see how the poly would look.  My biggest concern was that the pin stripe would stay white.  The poly is oil based and after 4 coats, the pin stripe is discernibly yellowish, which is what I wanted, although this photo does not show it.

Monday morning, I sanded all of the pieces with a 400 grit sandpaper and started applying the pin striping.  I ordered 150 feet of pin striping. After finishing the main cabin sole, pictured, it was obvious that I would not have enough pin striping for the rest of the pieces. It took me over an hour to lay these down.  I got about half way through with the sole that goes below the settee, when I ran out of pin striping! This screwed up my whole game plan for the sole.

Because, I am using oil-based poly, you can only do 2 coats in a day.  Right now I have it timed to coat at 7:00 am and 4:00 pm. This gives the recommended 8-10 hours of dry time between coats, but does not need to be sanded, because its 15 hours or less between the 2nd coat of the day and the 1st coat the next morning.

This is after 5 coats of semi-gloss poly, which I think I am going to stick with to offset the rest of the wood in the cabin, which is gloss.  I am going to do 5 more coats over the next few days.  I will have to wait until Christmas week to poly the remaining pieces.

While, the poly was drying, I started the plumbing. This photo shows the new location of the water fill.  There is one similar on the starboard side as well.  I know Iroquois were built primarily as racers, but this location just seems a lot more appropriate.

This is the water tank in the port forward berth area. It will primarily be empty and used as a secondary tank for trips to Catalina.  There is no deck fill tube.   I will open the valve and let the water equalize as I fill the primary tank and then close the valve until I need the water.  That way I have a reserve.  I just need to add an air relief vent.

This photo shows the 1/2" tube connection running from forward to aft tanks.  I will tee off of this tube to supply water for the head sink.  I will be reusing the pump that was installed by the PO, so I can have a hand shower.  At this point, I think that I will put the bilge pump in the recessed area in the head.

This photo also shows some added stingers to better support the sole.  I still may need to double up on the plywood, but that is okay, I have enough left over.

I also started building the support for the waste tank. The ledgers on the bottom will support the 3/8" plywood floor for the tank.  I will add a strip of plywood to the floor to give it some rigidity.  I also have a piece of aluminum tubing that will also add to bridge fore and aft.

The top piece is to provide a place to strap the top of the tank.

Today, I tabbed in the ledgers.  The piece on the left is screwed into the wall with a backing strip on the other side, which is in the berth cabinet.  The top strip, not shown, also got tabbed in as well.

Here is a shot with the tank in place. The 1.5" intake is upper aft. The tube, top forward will be used for the air vent.  There is a 1.5" port on the bottom right.  This will eventually all get closed in with a removable face, once all of the plumbing is complete.

The tank was another Minney's purchase for $18 and I estimate is about 9 gallons.  I was looking at a new tank, which was going to cost over $100.

In anticipation of laying down the cabin sole, I decided to run the electrical/wiring.  This photo is looking aft toward the electrical cabinet. On the left is the starboard bilge hot wire and a duplex wire for the refrigerator.  I am just going to use the ground from the duplex for the bilge, since is oversized.  I also ran the cable for the tri-ducer and depth transducer.

On the right is the 110V romex that will feed power to the forward part of the hulls.

This photo is looking forward, under the settee table. The wires/cables run inside the cubby and through the settee seats to the corresponding hulls.  I think I am also going to add some pull lines before I put the sole down to make it easier to add more wires in the future.

This shot is in the starboard hull, near the forward berth, showing the wires coming out and down into the locker. I am going to put a (+) and (-) bus here.  The duplex is 8 ga. and the refrigerator takes 10 ga..  I was originally going to put the buses in the locker, but both electrical wires came up short.  This was not my original path of travel, when I cut the wires a few months ago.  I will eventually cover this gap between the cubby and the refrigerator so you don't see the wires.

This is a shot of the transducer wires leading into the locker.  I discovered that the thru hull from the previous depth ducer was not compatible with the new triducer. If you are following closely, you are wondering why I have a tri-ducer (depth, speed, temperature) and a separate depth transducer.  The Raymarine depth and speed gauges I purchased are older ST60 and so the triducer was purchased to be compatible.  I also purchased a Raymarine DSM 250 Depth/Sonar to feed to the Raymarine Chartplotter.  Since I am not sure if the triducer will provide the correct information, I went ahead and purchased a separate depth gauge that I know is compatible.  Not sure if I will need it, but just easier to install now. Plus the triducer is angled off to the side, so it will be interesting to see how accurate a depth it reports.

This photo shows the 110V romex in the port forward cubby, coming from the settee area.  I will install an outlet here and continue the romex to the head.

This is the same cubby, taken a couple feet back.  The romex will be attached to the shelf above, so it will not be visible.

The romex will then be attached under the top step and into the head.






















Its been a busy few days.  Celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, but I will still get my 2 coats of poly done!

Sole Prep Continued

Decided to make some progress on the sole.  The polyurethane I have has a 6 hour dry time between coats, so it makes sense to get that started while I work on other things.  I have the week of Thanksgiving off, so that is when I am likely to start the coating process.

This is the template I created for the main salon sole.  I am going to attempt to lay as big a sheet of plywood as I can.  It will take some maneuvering to get passed the settee table and under the settee, but I think I can do it.

Here is the template in the port hull. I am going to add more stringers to help support the plywood sole.

I also decided to add more stringers to the depressed area to support the plywood.  To cut down on weight, I made a decision to go with 1/4" thick plywood.  The main salon is 4 feet wide plus the small area between the settee and the nav station, so there will be a joint there. Hopefully the plywood will be rigid enough to allow for a clean joint. Right now I am thinking of not using any adhesive on the plywood and simply using border base board to keep it down.  Time will tell if that will be sufficient.

Here is a shot of what the sandply (home depot) plywood looks like.  It has a very soft grain pattern, so hopefully it will not be too obvious after I lay down the pin stripes, that it is one piece of wood. This was $30 a sheet.  I anticipated using 3 sheets. In reality I ended up with 4 sheets since I did not take the time to lay out all of the templates at one time.  That is okay, two of the remnant sheets will allow me to double up on the thickness in the hull sections if needed, since I ripped out the existing sole leaving only the supporting "joists", I may need the extra stiffness.

Here is a close up of the plywood to show the grain pattern.  The 1/2" thick sandply had an even softer grain than this that I much prefer.

I was able to cut out all of the sections of the sole and they are now sitting waiting for stain and poly.

I dry fit the facade for the electrical chase in the starboard berth.  This should clean up nicely once I trim out the edges with some "L" molding.

Prepping for Sole

Still tackling various odds and ends.  Today, I decided to start prepping for the cabin sole.  As mentioned previously, I am going to use a piece of plywood to replicate teak and holly.  Bought a gallon of Minwax Polyurethane for Floors today off of Craigslist for $20. I am now toying with using white pin striping to replicate the holly. I read someone else did that.  Don't see why it wouldn't work, especially after about 5 or 6 coats of poly!

Since I am going to use plywood for the sole, I needed to bridge the depression in the soles. These are 2" high pieces of wood that I tacked down with some all-purpose adhesive.  I am going to use this cavity for an electrical chase. There is enough room on either side of the wood to run wires. 

There is also room beneath to allow any miscellaneous water to sit without rotting the wood.

I went back in forth deciding how to adhere the wood to the fiberglass. Screws would have been easier, but I am not quite sure how thick the fiberglass is here. So I decided to tab it into place.  I don't expect much lateral movement, so a couple of tabs on each end and side should suffice.

I then moved on to prepping the electrical chase, in the starboard berth area, for final facade.  The strips of wood are backers that will provide something to screw into. I used the same adhesive to temporarily hold the strips of wood and then fiberglassed them in.

Here is a shot of the same area.  The facade will be screwed to the backers so I can easily access the area if I need to run anymore cable or wires.  I am going to install a 110V outlet on the forward facade.

Today, I cut the pieces of facade and gave it an initial coat of varnish cut with mineral spirits.

This is the hole where the water fill hose passed to get to the water bladder that the previous owner used.  This location, required that the berth cushion be notched.  I didn't care for that and did not want to see the exposed water hose.

So I decided to move the water fill location so that that the hose dropped down through the cubby storage area. Since I was mixing resin, I decided to fill in the old hole. I used 4 layers of different mat and fabric, with a backer piece of fabric on the bottom.

Since the resin ran aft, I filled in the area with this surfacing putty.  I will then sand it down and cover with paint and non-skid when I do my touch up work.

This is the underside. I still  need to apply some resin on the backer mat layer that I laid out prior to pouring the initial resin. You can see the new deck fill and the hole in the cubby storage area below it. The new water hose will run in the corner, down to below the storage area beneath the berth, where my new 9 gallon rotomold tank is.

While I was in the starboard berth, I remembered to take a photo of the PVC beadboard headliner. I have not trimmed it out yet, since I will need to remove it when I install the running rigging on the cabin top.  This photo is a little funky.  I was having problems with the rotation when imported into blog. Oh well, you get the idea!

On Friday, I installed the horn. button.  Now I just need to figure out where to put the horn!  I tried a couple of spots, but don't really care for those locations.

I heard back from CMC regarding the Tilt/Trim gauge.  They think the problem is with the sending unit, which will cost $165 to replace! I will have to think about that.  Problem is the hole for the gauge is already drilled!
















I have a 3-day weekend coming up.  I need to decide if I am going to start on the sole or not.  I might just start prepping for the plumbing now that I have the water fill hole closed up.

Daylight Saving Time..Blah!

OK, so much for getting stuff done after work, now that it is dark at 5:00 :(.   Friday I finished cutting out the PVC beadboard for the headliner in the head and starboard berth area, so that is now complete.  No pictures to share.  

Last week, I created this avatar of my boat.  I have since created similar avatars for other Iroquois owners.  One has already had his printed on a coffee cup and another will be using it for is sailing team shirts.

Yesterday, I helped deliver this catamaran from Oceanside to Long Beach (about 60 miles). Unfortunately there was little to no wind, so we motored the whole way.  I am told that this 30' catamaran was built by Hobie Alter as a prototype in the early 1960s before he began mass producing the Hobie Cat.

I drilled the holes for the tilt/trim gauge and switch as well as the fuel gauge. I finished wiring the tilt/trim today.  It works but the gauge is not reading correctly.  Put an email into CMC to see if they can trouble shoot it.

This side of the helm station is coming together. I ordered a momentary switch for a horn and will install it below the fuel gauge.


























Thats it for now!