Measure twice... or maybe three times

We spent another couple of hours on the boat to charge the batteries and the get answers  to some of the questions that arose as we prepared to refinish the "guest berth" walls and now, electrical wiring.

We mentioned previously that we wanted to make an insert for one of the two sinks in the galley. We got the rough measurements last week and we used those to cut a cardboard pattern. Now we needed to get the corners right and we traced a pattern of the corners using another small piece of cardboard.

We know there's a tool for copying that radius but we don't have one so we traced it from below. After a couple of tries we got it close and we transferred the corners to our cardboard pattern.

As we also mentioned before, we're going to make this insert out of a piece of butcher block that was at one time, the top to a marine princess stove. It's amazing what we can come up with from our stock of old boat stuff.

Anyway, we have only one chance to get this right so taking a little extra time on it is worthwhile.

With the sink insert measurement out of the way, we went back to the guest berth rehab project. When we studied the photos from last week's disassembly, lots of questions came up and today was a good time to take some more photos for planning purposes.

For instance, Where exactly will the new reading light for the lower bunk go? The conduit shown in the photos covers the 12 volt power wires for the reading light in the v-berth. (The light shown up near the ceiling is battery powered and will be removed.) Do we find power for the new reading light in that circuit and if so, we'll have to hide that behind another section of conduit. We can do that provided the conduit is mounted in a way that it doesn't interfere with the raising and lowering of the top berth.

Yes, measure twice and cut once, as they say.

All of that wall covering will be painted so the lengths of conduit will not be anywhere as obvious as they are now.

New new reading lamps are flush mounted and wired from behind so we'll have to figure out how to accommodate that.

We removed the old POS plastic reading light from the opposite wall. The power wires were connected with electrical tape, something that, for us at least, has no place on a boat.

That wall is a mess with lots of tears in the wall covering, orphaned holes and a few stains. We can fill the rips and holes as we did in the galley and once painted they will disappear. If we mount a new reading light where the old one was, we'll have to rewire it so that operates independently of the cabin lighting circuit where it is currently connected.

There is also lots of other stuff going on with that wall.

This shot shows our TV folded out but normally is is folded back against that wall. The red bungee cord holds it in place when we're underway. The antique reading light in the upper left will go because it's not in a place that a guest could use and it is behind the TV when it's folded back against the wall.

The dangling wires (cable TV and power) will be hidden behind surface-mount plastic conduit and will go through the wall right under the door to that little locker. We'll have to leave enough slack in those wires so the TV will still be able to swing out.

This seemed like a simple little job for the long winter months but like everything else on an old boat, the more you dig, the more you see things that should be fixed and done correctly.

Digging into the guest berths

Since winter really hasn't started yet, we put on our old clothes and headed for the boat. Our aim was to clean up the wood trim in what we call the guest berth area and see how difficult this thing will be to take apart.

Once the cushions were removed, we were left with two platforms made of what looks like 5/8" plywood. Those are covered in brown paint and aren't in bad shape at all. We scrubbed the grunge off of the wood trim and then tried to remove the screws holding the base of the lower berth in place. One last screw out of eight will require a little more persuasion but we'll get it.

Our interest in picking up that long piece of plywood is to see if we can add a pull-out step. We're still working on that design.

While we were there, we measured the size of one of our two galley sinks. We'd like to make an insert for one of them that would increase our counter space. We have an extra, fairly nice, butcher 
block style top from a Princess marine stove. Cutting and fitting it into the top of one of the sinks will take careful measurement. Right now, we know it's 10" X 14". Getting the corners right will be the challenge.

Good things to eat

We're not "foodies" by any means, but we do enjoy cooking together and love the things suggested by The New York Times Cooking website. Thinking that it wouldn't be above our pay grade, this week we tried Rigatoni With White Bolognese, shown here. Our review? Delicious! Cooking time for us was somewhat longer than we expected and we would have been happy with something a little smaller than rigatoni, but it was good!

If you think this doesn't have anything to do with boating, think again. We met Sam Sifton, the guy who edits the The New York Times Cooking, many years ago in Greenport, Long Island where we were docked. He invited us and a lot of other people to his backyard pig roast. It was, well, a lot of hungry people and one pig. Tasted good to us and we had fun! We've followed Sam's career at The Times ever since.

Frances was on a roll in the kitchen and that's always a good thing. On Saturday night, she whipped up one of our favorites, Chicken Piccata. It's always fun to watch her reduce a huge pile of spinach and a lot of other things to wonderful sauce in which the chicken is cooked.

We could say that Frances cooks like this only during the dreary winter months but actually, she also turns out dishes like this on our boat during the summer.

Painting and refinishing: The planning phase

Our first boat-centered New Years resolution was to refinish the guest berth and the v-berth areas. When we came up with this, it looked relatively easy, especially when compared to replacing the heads on one of the engines as we did ;last summer. This weekend, we went down to take a close look at what this will entail.

The picture above shows the guest berth area with the upper bunk up in place. The bunk shown is hinged so that it folds down, making the lower bunk into something like a big sofa. Here's that same upper bunk, looking aft.

The black object on the right is our TV, which is stored against the wall but swings out and around so it can be seen from the cabin. That "thing" on the wall in the upper left is an example of the great lighting that Silverton furnished back in the day. The electrical cord is just from one of our temporary portable lights.

The old light will be replaced with a new LED reading lamp like this one.

 The walls in the boat have a fabric-like wall covering. We successfully repaired and painted that material in the head and the galley last summer. The plan is to do the same thing here, in the same color. That color, not reproduced very faithfully by our little camera, is shown on the door to the hanging locker in the upper left of the photo.

The walls don't look bad in the picture but there are some holes and all of the walls in this area could use a good cleaning prior to painting.

Luckily, we do have access to 12 volts behind this reading light so additional wiring for this light may not be needed. Read on to see why this may not work.

The lower bunk will obviously have to be removed prior to cleaning and painting. That chrome post is one of two that hold up the upper bunk.

We're also going to add another one of those LED light here on that forward wall after painting but the new light's location is somewhat limited since we have to leave clearance for the upper bunk to swing up and down. We'll also have to find a way to run the wiring to it.

Looking aft, the lower berth is a little easier. That chrome thing is a halogen reading light installed by the previous owner, we assume. That will also be replaced by one of the new LED reading lights.

Obviously, we aren't going to this much work without refinishing all of that teak trim and when you crawl in there and measure, there's a lot of it.

There are also a couple of conveniences we'd like to build in while we're at it. First, this whole guest berth area is really dark even on a sunny day. The overhead hatch is dark tinted glass and there is not  much light coming in through the port light. It would be nice to have an easily reached switch that would turn on all four of these new LED lamps and that's going to take some thought and a lot of extra wiring.

Also, the upper berth is very difficult to get in to. One has to step on the edge of the lower berth and even then, boosting one's butt up that far isn't fun for a guest, although it is kinda fun to watch. We have an idea for a pull out step that would really help. No design yet but we're working on it.

So far, we have $200 worth of new LED reading lamps and some paint. The energy to put this all to work is also about there. It should be a fun project, just like everything on this old boat.

Christmas weekend

We're sure we'll look back on this past weekend with envy when the snow is blowing in a few days or weeks, but for now, we enjoyed the warm weather, had a great Christmas and even got some outdoor things done, like washing one of the cars on Christmas afternoon.

Frances always makes sure that we have a wonderful Christmas and this year was no exception. The mantle in the living room is decorated, stocking and all.

We opened our presents on Christmas morning and even the boat got one. You can see the collapsible four-wheeled dock cart on the right in the picture. Frances got a new cookbook by our favorite food author, Mark Bittman, and a monopod to aid her in taking pictures. (Bill might even borrow it from time to time.) We also gave ourselves memberships to the New Britain Museum of American Art, a place we really enjoy visiting.

Bill has been looking for a new battery-operated drill that could reside permanently on the boat and that arrived under our little tree as well.

Christmas dinner was a pork roast and once that was in the oven, Frances made one of her famous cherry pies. Bill was tasked with taking it out of the oven.

Just to make sure it was OK, Bill tested it.

Frances decorated our dining table for the holiday....

...right down to the smallest detail.

Bill even learned what a "bobeche" is. As we said, it was a great Christmas!

Over the weekend, we took the opportunity to visit the boat. We like to put at least an hour's worth of charge into the batteries every week or so. We also wanted to take some measurements for an upcoming project to install new reading lights in our guest berth area. No real lighting to speak of there so we'll brighten things up a little while hiding any new wiring. After that, the plan is to paint all of the old fabric wall covering just as we did with the galley and head last July. That turned out to be a three weekend project but the results were outstanding. We can't wait to begin refinishing all of that teak trim (ugh!).

We shot some video over the weekend as well. It's fun for us to have and great practice where there is no client involved.

This week: computing, not boating

Before we get started on our "to do" list on the boat, we thought we'd spend some time upgrading the last of the four computer workstations we use here at Large & Page. This last one is the computer that Frances uses so we wanted to make sure we got it right.

The old computer has been there since 2004 and was used primarily to host our HP scanner and the answer one phone line and receive faxes. Yes, we still sometimes get faxes although we can't wait until that technology disappears forever.

We don't buy new computers, preferring to build them from scratch. We save only the computer cases since they really don't change much. Here's an old case with new parts installed and finally working with all of our old files intact.

The reason for the rebuilding effort was at least partially to migrate from Windows XP, which some software packages, such as our accounting system, no longer support. Our choice for a new operating system was Windows 7, which is stable, predictable, and still has about five years of support from Microsoft. Besides, it looks much like Windows XP so there isn't much of a learning curve.

Our "new" computers each have new Intel-based motherboards, processors, memory, 1 Tb. hard drives and new power supplies.

We transfer the complete contents - applications, files, drivers, and even bookmarks and shortcuts - from the old XP computers to the new Win 7 machines using migration software from ZInstall. That saves us hours of work and makes the new computers look and act exactly like the old ones.

A new computer needs a new monitor, of course.

A key element of this workstation was a scanner, which we use quite a lot. We had a good one, a circa 2005 Hewlett Packard that worked perfectly except that HP decided not to provide drivers for Win 7, thus making it completely obsolete. That's a pretty crappy way to sell new scanners, in our opinion. Sorry to see this old scanner go.

We paid $450 for this scanner in 2005. Its 2015 replacement with exactly the same functionality cost $76.00. It's a Canon because we will never buy anything from HP again.

Granted, the new Canon scanner doesn't have an automatic document feeder but that's something that was so unreliable on the old HP that we never used it.

We spent about $300 to get this all done and that's about what you'd spend at Best Buy for just a so-so computer. But, like our boat engines, we like to know where everything is and how it works, so we're happy to do this computer replacement our way.

The pace here is exhausting...

Well, not really, although we did get some things done, one of which was boating related.

On Saturday, Frances agreed to Bill's request and cooked up a big pot of chili.  While she was busy in the kitchen, Bill drove to Portland Riverside, plugged in the boat for a brief battery charge and picked up a new reading light that we hope to use as we rehab the v-berth and guest berth areas later this winter. The marina ordered them for us at a price somewhat below retail.

We have two of these reading lights that we installed two winters ago and we really like them. 24 LEDs make this the perfect reading light. The old ones were white but this time we opted for stainless. $52.00 each ain't cheap but they work for us.

With the weather more like early fall, we headed home to tackle the next exhausting task: wash the car. We did that but by then, the chili was smelling pretty good so we powered down and enjoyed a great dinner.

Sunday also looked like a fairly warm day so we dove into The New York Times early and then went out to wax our newly washed 1990 Mercury. You guys can laugh, but we hate making payments on stylish new cars, so we keep our cars as long as they will run. This particular old girl looks pretty good with some fresh wax and she runs fine even with over 200,000 miles.

While Bill was polishing, Frances turned out an apple crisp of some kind that made the kitchen smell great and will make a great dessert for this week.

This year's best Christmas Card

We get a lot of holiday cards but this year we received one of the beat. It's from Ron and Carol Ann celebrating their new boat. We haven't seen it yet but until we do, this card is perfect!

One more visit to the boat

 It was a beautiful weekend and an ideal time to take care of a few more things on the boat, the biggest of which was to remove one section of the bridge enclosure that has a bad zipper and have it repaired now, rather than wait until everyone else wants their canvass fixed in the spring. The big section immediately to Bill's right in the picture is the one we wanted to remove.

That little project went OK and we took the window section off and down to the car.

 The shed we store the boat in isn't exactly dust free so we hung an old section of tarp over the opening to give us a little protection.

Meanwhile, Frances was in the boat collecting things that she wanted to bring home. It was nice to see her in the galley again, even though we were on dry land.

With the lights and the heater on, it was quite cozy. Collecting the things that needed to go home ended up to be 11 trips to the car. No big deal; it needed to be done. It will be fun to see how much of this stuff comes back to be boat next summer.

Before we left the boat yard, Frances wanted to visit the yard's store, which does a brisk business during the winter. Karen, who manages Portland Riverside, has added scented candles that are made in East Haddam. Needless to say, once Frances got close to those candles, it was major sniff-and-chat time.

Frances found several scents that she liked and we left with something else checked off our "to do" list.

On Sunday, we tacked another job that we had been planning to do for some time: wax Frances car. Frances did a major unloading of the car's contents and Bill waxed the car. Aside from a few nicks and scrapes put on by the late night drunks at American Wharf during the summer, the old Subaru ended up looking pretty good. We finished it just as the sun went down.