Author Archives: David

The State of the Stateroom

Posted on by under misc

The stateroom is done–for now anyway.  Getting our berth finished was a priority.  The original plan was to have the berth done before we moved aboard on August 1.  That didn’t happen.  Plan B was to put down the sole in the main cabin and put our mattress there.  That gave me more time to do the joinery for the berth in the main stateroom.  I’ve decided that it is a hard fought battle for every square inch of flat surface in a boat.

We wanted to maximize the size of the berth and we were constrained by the door opening into the main saloon, the door into the scuttle room and the foremast which sits almost right in the middle of the room.  We did have control over the height, but the stateroom doesn’t have that much headroom to begin with.  I can just stand upright if I stand amidships with put my back against the aft wall and I turn my head sideways so it fits up between the deck beams.  At the forward end of the stateroom I think the headroom is down to less than 5 feet.

We wanted sufficient headroom over the bunk and settled on 36 inched over the mattress.  That meant we needed determine how thick the mattress would be.  We decided that 4 inches of latex with a plastic spring set would be less than 6 inches.  The deck and corresponding overhead slopes in the stateroom.  The wide end of the bunk is at the aft end of the room which, given a level bunk, has the least headroom.

To have the biggest bunk, we decided to set the headroom at the foreward, small end of the bunk.  That means less headroom at the head of the bunk, but the width of the bunk is slightly larger than a full size bead at the head and quite a bit narrower at the foot.  A big benefit, however, is that the bunk is over 7 feet long–luxurious for an old wooden boat.

With those decisions made, I was able to build the bunk.  Of course, the bilge stringer runs right up through the bunk–adding a nice challenge.  The area under the bunk was divided into three large storage areas (some of the first storage we have put on Mahdee).  Meanwhile, Brenda bought a really nice latex mattress which arrived two days ago and is really comfortable.

As of the end of work today, I can also say that the entire sole is down in the stateroom.  And with that done, it was time for our cat Beamer to be moved from his happy place in the forepeak into the stateroom.  Actually we just moved his carrier but his carrier is his “safe spot” when work is going on.  He rarely goes far from the carrier during the day.  But this move makes it possible for me to start working on the forepeak for the first time since Beamer moved aboard on August 1.

Project Water Tight

Posted on by under Projects

Last weekend an old friend called to get the latest news on the Mahdee project. He asked if Mahdee was water tight yet. These sorts of questions always get my blood pressure up as I think of all that needs to be done. I said that no she was not water tight. I was thinking about all that water that could end up in the bilge if it rained. And the water that would run off the deck and into the bilge through those hatch-less openings on the deck. And through the leaky section of the chart-house roof, and so on. I am pretty sure that my friend was thinking about holes in the bottom of the boat that let water up and into the bilge but I was totally focused on the other type of holes. I suspect that many boaters worry more about the top-side holes. After all, holes in the bottom are very rare and aren’t the type of event that usually sinks boats. Water from the cockpit or open hatches flooding the boat is a real world possibility and can do significant damage even if the boat is on the hard. So, I said something to my friend about needing to put together a priority list to get things like those hatches water tight. My friend may not be a boater, but he is sharp and he immediately picked up on the problem that those hatches could be if our bed were underneath–which it was.

So we put together a list titled project water tight which has little to do with the hull other than we needed to drill some holes in it for the deck drain hoses–not everything moves forward in lock-step. The three big problem areas included the cockpit. We had already put in a temporary drain, but we needed to remove it to put down the water tight elastomeric membrane on the cockpit sole. While the first coats of that water soluble membrane were drying, of course, we had our first rain in months–fortunately it stopped after only a few drops. Before the next thunderstorm rolls through, we wanted at least one functional drain. That was at the top of our Project Water Tight list, and we now have that drain.

Next on the prioritized list were the hatches. The word hatch was a little bit of an overstatement. At the time they were really just holes in the deck. The hatch bases were nicely refinished and varnished, but still sitting on the bench. The butterfly hatches, nicely varnished, were right next to the bases. The old lexan…well one piece some how got turned into a router base and the others are MIA. New glass has yet to be ordered. The forward two hatches were the biggest potential leak because they are not on the centerline of the boat and water can drain “down” the deck into these holes. With a team effort, Brenda and I got those two bedded and fastened. The center hatch turned out to be a much bigger problem. John, who framed that opening, insisted that the center hatch was different in size from the forward two. It turns out that is the same size and that a (rare for John!) measurement error probably caused the hatch opening to be too small. Today, I cut the opening larger. Fortunately the aft beam was oversize and only a partial beam so it was a simple decision to open the hatch opening by cutting out some of that beam. More work on finishing up that hatch tomorrow.

The deck of Mahdee is nice and water tight, but the chart house roof is the original and leaks like a sieve. Brenda had already covered the main part of the roof with plywood, elastomeric roofing layer, and canvas anti-skid. The lower forward section of the deck house needed the same treatment. We glued and fastened the plywood and are now ready to put on the elastomeric coating and canvas.

The scuttle opening needs to have the scuttle base bedded and fastened. That’s on the list for tomorrow. That will take care of most of the potential “big leaks” should it rain. The various deck drains still need thru-hulls, but there are now some other thru-hulls that have been given temporary duty as exit points for those drains. While much work remains to get the deck drains plumbed to their appropriate outlets and the cockpit painted, varnished, and sealed, by the end of the week we should be ready for rain. Then in a few weeks we will have the Project Water Tight redux to address the issues my friend was certainly thinking about when he asked his question.

Holy smoking mallet

Posted on by under Planking, Projects

The caulking of the hull is finally nearing completion. We are getting our second wind as we approach the 1/2 mile point. The caulking of the hull was really blazing along at the 1/4 mile point, but not without incident. At one point, there was a delay of a couple of hours to make a new mallet to replace the smoking one. Yes, I was in the groove and laying in the caulk fast and furious on Mahdee’s starboard aft quarter. I was getting an occasional whiff of burning electrical.

John was sanding the rub rail on Mahdee’s port side, so I figured he was pushing his poor heavily tasked sander. John vigorously denied any such tool abuse. Then Brenda who was caulking near the starboard bow, nearly 50 feet away, asked what was burning. I joking said it must be the big floor fan that we had put in Mahdee to keep Ryder from being overcome by Smiths CPES epoxy fumes inside the boat (which was pretty well sealed up to protect the inside from all the sawdust being generated by John’s poor sander).

As you can see, everything on this project is highly interconnected even if not well coordinated. Ryder wasn’t working that day, so Brenda was shocked that that old fan might be on because she didn’t trust it. I told her that I found the fan stopped but turned on the day before, so I unplugged it–with the immediate effect that I could hear all the power tools in the ship yard speed up a notch. That was more than slightly disconcerting, so I also really hoped that it was still unplugged.

Brenda decided to go investigate (so easily called away…any excuse to stop caulking). She let me know that it was still unplugged, but as she spoke, she noticed that the burning electrical smell was really strong where I was working. I jokingly told her that I was caulking so fast my mallet was overheating. She, either missing the joke or deciding to play along, asked me for the mallet. “The mallet is the source of the smell,” she exclaimed.

The mallet was wooden, but built up with phenolic resin. The constant tap-tapping was causing the resin to turn to powder. i decided that if I wanted to avoid an ugly immune reaction to the phenolic resin dust, I either needed to wear a mask while caulking or make another mallet. This was all the motivation I needed (so easily called away…any excuse to stop caulking) to give the old mallet back to John, its rightful owner and start searching the ground around the band saw for a suitable chunk of oak. There was some bronze pipe of just the right size and within two hours, I had the perfect caulking mallet for me.

I have put many hundreds of feet of caulking in with my new mallet and it is holding up great–better than me for sure, but that may not be saying much.

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