The best seat in the house

Despite the snow, we made some good progress this weekend. God, it was cold on that boat but after an hour or so with the electric heater it was warm enough to be productive.

With the bilge wiring and plumbing finished, it was time to bring the toilet in and test fit it.  If you've been following this blog, you may remember that this is a new Raritan Quiet Flush toilet mounted on the former storage tank we saved from the old Sealand Traveler gravity toilet.  We lugged the toilet in from the cockpit where it has been waiting for the last two months and put it in place.  Amazingly, the discharge house lined up with the old hole in the vanity.  We didn't mount the seat but the toilet looked pretty nice to us.

For some reason, Raritan made the discharge outlet a 1-inch fitting when everything else in the waste plumbing is 1-1/2-inch so we had to add a little piece of 1-inch hose and a 1-to-1-1/2 inch coupling.  That also meant three hose clamps where we would only have needed one if the Raritan toilet had a 1-1/2 inch discharge.  Just a small thing, but it would have been neater without all those extra hose clamps.  The white hose seen curving up in the photo is the water supply to the toilet.  We trimmed about an inch off the end, heated it up with our trusty heat gun and on it went.

The Raritan head comes with a double switch assembly that allows for a variety of flushing modes and it has to be connected to 12-volts DC, the maserator on the back of the head and the siphon breaker. We removed the toilet to make more room to work and drilled the two 1-3/4- inch intersecting holes in the vanity needed to mount the switch assembly.  While we were at it, we also cut a small rectangular opening in the vanity to mount the display for the Snake River holding tank gauge.

We put the toilet back in place and using the cables that we had previously pulled up from the bilge, wired both.  Together, these switches required about 16 crimp fittings.  We made the wiring as neat as possible, slid the two switch assemblies back into the holes in the vanity and drilled some very small pilot holes before screwing them down permanently.

Then, we sat down on the toilet (no seat yet) and pushed the "flush" button. Hearing the toilet motor come on was music to our ears. No "real time" testing right now, because there is nothing in the water tank but soon, we'll dump (good word) some anti-freeze in the water tank and try a real-time flush.

Next weekend, the Captain and Commodore are  going to spend some time together doing nothing boating related. We've worked on the boat every weekend except one since it came out of the water and we need a break. Weather permitting, we will be heading up to one of our favorite museums (Sterling & Francine Clark Institute), in Williamstown, MA

Oh, the ladder from the swim platform to the back of the boat is looking pretty good.  It now has three coats of Sikkens on it and because it's out in the weather, it will get at least three more.  The steps have been sanded between coats and it's looking great.

The remainder of the plan for the winter includes removing the swim platform and refinishing that too. We can't do that until all the projects inside the boat are complete since once the swim platform is off. we really can't get up onto the boat very easily. We'll figure that out when the time comes.

Our list of things to do before spring launch is now a little shorter. Somehow, I know we'll get them all accomplished.