New porthole project complete - finally

This project seems to have gone on forever although it's really only been four cold weekends.

On Saturday, Frances arrived to help and she was full of energy. That enabled us to get the third new porthole assembly - the one in the head - in and by the time we left that day, the old one removed from the port side v-berth.

Like a lot of projects that we attempt, we learn a lot as things progress. It took us forever to remove the old porthole assemblies, mainly due to the way about half the "stainless" nuts had fused onto the machine screws and the fact that since Silverton didn't use washers behind those nuts, they were firmly embedded in the plastic porthole housing. No way to get a wrench on those things.

By the time we got to the third porthole, it was time to add a little muscle. We used our tool with a cut-off wheel and hacked the old bolt heads off. Wow!  Lots of sparks and melted plastic but the old hatch was out in 15 minutes vs. 90 minutes doing it the hard way, bolt-by-bolt. We don't know why we didn't think of that before. But, "Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot," as they say.

The new portholes are sealed properly and look great. Better yet, they all open and latch closed, which is more than you could say for the old ones. We now have some old mold around each hatch opening on the carpeted walls to deal with, but Frances has some really good stuff that removes it easily.

Having someone on the inside also made it easier to tighten the ten mounting bolts on each port.

 In the shot above, Bill is wearing his "headlamp," something that is really effective in a dim, cold storage shed. The fact that he looks fairly stupid wearing it makes no difference at all, except to Frances who breaks into wild laughter whenever she sees it. Odd, since she took the picture.

 At least you can see that we still have fun even in the winter storage shed.

We shot some video that includes Frances doing a "wrap up" comment on this project. She starts slow but quickly produces a take that covers many subjects. If you know her, you'll agree that if we didn't shut the camera off, she'd still be talking.

No worry. We wouldn't have her any other way.