Being retired is sooooo much better!

I retired 10 months ago and have been chugging along working on getting SD up and running, with an interior, electrics and everything. Some members of the executive saw what the COVID shut downs had done to the 2 year plan to stay on the hard and rebuild her. They took that into account and granted me another year, til April 2023 to get her operational.

To that end, the main sail is at the loft, getting the slugs replaced with slides. The mast is in a good spot on the racks to allow me to pull new cables/antenna wire in. The boat is in a good position, so lots of power both 120 and 240v.

I’ve been working on getting the interior framing done. All 1/8 x 1 inch angle, and it’s nearly completed, as far as the main cabin goes. All that needs doing now is to grind down the welds and redo the bad ones (of which there are a few). The last part that got welded up were the two end pieces for the C shaped dinette. These were a bit of fun to do, as they are cantilever boxes that hang out over the floor with no supports.

They are simple rectangular boxes but I added a diagonal on each face to support anything put on them. They work very well. I can stand on them without any problems or flexing.

The next thing is to clear out the forward cabin, and see about laying it out so the Air Head has a place to live, while still leaving me a good sized single bunk. The problem is that the head is taller than I have space for where I’d planned on putting it. So, either I put it under the berth or raise the berth up a few inches so the head can sit in its original planned location. We’ll see. Should be getting to that in the next few days.

I am just about at the point where I have to start bringing crap wood plywood up and start fitting panels to the frames. Thankfully I had stashed away a fair bit and a trip to the locker got all of that down to the yard. Grabbed the forklift and lifted it all up on deck a couple days ago. As it is, I have the counter tops already in place, and some of the settee lockers have lids and floors. (Stbd side only so far). I’m not too worried about looks right now, hell the settee tops on the stbd side caught fire once or twice from welding spatter. I use the chart table as a work bench, and it’s getting kinda beat up too. All this panelling will eventually be replaced with decent marine grade plywood.

I’ve gotten a start on the electrical panels, both AC and DC. I put the AC set up with the isolation transformer on the port side, with the starter battery. I figure on having two 120v circuits, one at the galley and the other at the forward end of the settees. The 12v panel is temporarily positioned, and the master switch and house battery are on the stbd side. Got a nice Blue Seas panel from a gent in the US, looks pretty sharp and has more than enough circuits for my needs.

So far it’s been a pretty strange spring. I remember moving into my apartment 11 years ago on the 1st of June. Lying in a pool of sweat, not able to sleep, and making a dash to the hardware store to pick up a portable AC unit of about 13,000 BTU. Even with that, keeping the temperature down was difficult, it was always in the upper 70s so I worked at keeping the humidity down. Made it liveable.

Right now it’s just over 70F, very pleasant and low humidity. Been that way since spring started. According to the forecast it will be staying in the 65-75F range at least til late June. We had a two day heat spell about 10 days ago, ran the AC then but its been shut down since. My bedroom? I open the window and put a fan up there. It gets down to about 55-60F at night. Very comfortable to sleep.

Since I retired, I’ve started to do an online course on climate change, just to see what they are basing it all on. Early days yet, so far most of what they’ve covered was stuff I know at least generally. The good stuff starts shortly. If you are interested, go look for Edx.com and see. The course costs nothing and runs til the end of August. Believe in it or not, this will give you some ammo for those fun discussions.

Anyway, I’m about to take my buggered up knees and go down for a few hours of grinding and rewelding. I may get started on panelling, I have a couple of half sheets of 1/2 inch ply up on deck, too big to get down the hatch, so I might as well do that and get that cheap crap wood out of the rain before it delaminates. I’m taking my camera along to get some pics. Next blog entry will have them.

TTFN. Away the boarding party!