Port Side Status

I finished applying the coats of white paint to the port side of the cabin at noon yesterday.  I spent the rest of the afternoon sanding the wood that is to be varnished.  This morning I spent two hours removing masking tape and restoring various fittings that I had removed for the painting, then devoted the rest of the day to sanding wood.  At mid afternoon I reluctantly accepted the fact that I would not begin varnishing today.  The cabin was full of dust, I was sweating like mad (No wonder: the cabin temperature was 37.2C, or just under 99F), and was getting tired from the overhead work. 

Varnishing in close quarters requires concentration and a steady hand and I figured that it would be best for me to start that work in the morning when I would be (relatively) cool, calm, collected - and clean!  I contented myself with spending an hour cleaning dust from every nook and cranny that I could find, including the bilge.  I left the boat at 3.30 PM feeling slightly guilty at my early departure, but satisfied that the work site was ready to go.

The first photo shows the bulk of the white area.  You can see the port side 140 liter stainless steel water tank with one of the boat's four 230 a/h gel batteries just ahead of it.  (The starboard side has a similar arrangement, and under the cockpit are two more gel batteries yielding a total of 920 a/h for the "house" bank.)

The other two photos show the navigation station prepared for varnish.  That reddish patch on the aft bulkhead is where the lamination peeled off when I removed some frayed notices.  My plan is to screw a nice rectangular piece of wood over that area and hang the radio microphones on them.  To the right you can see the HF radio and the slim gray Pactor modem below it.  I installed the new Micom radio in Hawaii.  Because the new radio was slimmer but wider than the Kenwood that it replaced I was forced to do some carpentry work but did not have the resources for completing the job with a good frame around the new transceiver.  I was resigned to putting up with that rough setup until I got back to Australia where I would have access to my electric saws but I think that I'll have a crack at doing the job here in La Paz.

Behind the white VHF radio is the electrical panel door.  The bottom left quadrant of that door contains 4 gauges,  2 lights, and a key switch rendered obsolete when I replaced the Sabb engine.  This area now provides expansion room for my circuit breakers.

Below the electrical panel doors are the main switches.  At the left is a relay that always provides a charge from the 115 amp alternator to the two Delkor 130 a/h maintenance free "starter" batteries.  When the relay senses that the "starter" bank has reached 13.6v it begins to also supply charge to the "house" bank. The red switch on the left is for the "starter" bank and the red switch on the right is for the "house" bank.   Between them is a yellow crossover switch for joining both banks in an emergency.  This switch setup was installed in New Zealand and I like it very much.  With the old switch ("1, 2, Both") whenever I started he engine the voltage drop would result in the chart plotter and gas sniffer going down.  With this setup I've got two independent circuits.