One of the things on our winter list is to remove the four old original Silverton portlights and replace them with new ones and we started that today, February 7. (Bill says on the video that it's February 8, Super Bowl Day, but that just shows how little he cares about professional football.)
Anyway, we've found that portlights come in dozens of sizes and before we can even go shopping for new ones, we need to know the exact size of the originals and even more precisely, the size of the cutout in the hull. To get that information, we decided to remove the easiest one in the guest berth.
Why replace them now? The originals always seem to need repair and they have weathered badly over the 36 years since the boat was built. They also leak from time to time, so now is the time to bring them up to date.
Our idea was to remove just one of them and get a a new one that fit the hull cutout size. That way, we'd be able to learn from that installation process. Once we were happy with that one, we'll order three more.
It turns out that getting one of these things out isn't easy. That's due to the fact that its been in there for 36 years, of course, but also because the original porthole assembly wasn't very good quality to begin with and wasn't installed with much care.
When we got all but one mounting bolt out today, we could see that there was no apparent use of sealant around the outside trim piece or between the hull and the portlight itself.
We couldn't get he portlight out but we will be able to next week when we come equipped to drill out one remaining bolt.
Then we go shopping for something that will fit the opening, has proper gaskets and will be really usable.
On another ongoing project, we continued to work on our sink insert.
After sanding a nice bevel on the underside edges, it actually slipped right into the sink. Not perfect, but it will work. Now we can apply 6-8 coats of Sikkens Cetol to it. We love things we can do in the evening after work and make the whole house smell like varnish.
Some video from today:
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