We hoped to get an extra day of work in during the New Years weekend and we did, but that was shortened somewhat by the cold. Inside storage is nice but it's sometimes like working in a freezer. We have a small electric heater that that can raise the temperature inside the boat by about 15 degrees. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to work outside and that's when it gets difficult.
The salon isn't what we'd call neat right now but all of that stuff will be gone by spring. It looks nice and cozy in the photo but it isn't.
We need to button up the wiring on the fly bridge but on Saturday, we looked ahead to the next thing on our list: providing some storage space in the bilge behind the engines. There is a lot of wasted space between the stringers and our intent is to cover that space with plywood both to make it easier to step down there and create some space to store fenders and other stuff we need to have on board. Here's the space we intend to reclaim.
Then there are the four batteries, in what will pass as a battery compartment and one extra on the port side to operate the windlass. I know that the wiring is somewhat sloppy and not color coded but we are going to have to leave it the way it is for this season. We'll also cover the batteries with 3/4" plywood and provide some space for ventilation.
We enjoy discussing these projects, often in advance, to figure out how to best do them. For the discussion of covering the battery box area, we made some drawings, in this case on the most recent To-Do list. The drawings look crude but they help us envision problems and how much material we will need.
This weekend we mounted an antenna bracket on the port side. The bracket is of our design and is inended to keep the radio antennas away from the enclosed bridge. The port side mount holds one VHF marine antenna and the GPS antenna
We just found your blog and think it's great. We are Jack and Sally, we used to live in CT. We are now in Anderson, SC. We also bought a 1980 34c 6 weeks ago and it really needs work. We like your ideas. Jack is raising the counter top and putting a fridge we bought from Lowes with a freezer in the top section. We then are goingto ad cabinets on the portside for storage. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteHello Jack and Sally.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to our blog. Congratulations on the Silverton 34C you just purchased! We hope you'll share the details of what you are doing to her with us. When they are that old, they all need a lot of work but underneath it all, there's a pretty solid fiberglass boat. We've found that a lot of the work is simply undoing all the stuff that the previous owner (or owners) did.
Since we've had a chance to crawl around our boat since the end of the summer, we're sometimes a little critical of some of Silverton's work but beyond that, we think ACT THREE will make a great, although not fast, cruiser.
Where did you live in Connecticut? As you'll remember, it is cold here and we wish we were in South Carolina about now.
Hope to hear from you!
Bill & Frances