Newsletter 12 Dec 2004 < click on text to go back to news page

October passed and Sea Otter was still on land. Nothing goes as expected, there are delays and more delays. During October and November Béa and I have worked full time on the boat to save costs. It has paid off, see New Pics page, we have finished the basic parts of the front (owners) cabin including the bathroom. It has been painted twice with epoxy paint and sanded twice. The main cabin has been painted once with epoxy paint. The sofa is almost ready and next week the new cupboard will be ready. The guest cabin is ready on the interior side, but not painted yet..

Not to forget, we have insulated every part of the hull-sides down to just below the waterline. Below the waterline, the hull was mostly double anyway, moulded to get support for the original furniture. The deck is originally insulated by the thick “sandwich” construction. However, we will insulate the deck and the sides of the trunk-cabin as well. If we do not, it is most likely that we will regret this at a later stage. The deck and trunk-cabin roof is sandwiched but not the trunk-cabin sides, where the portholes are. Typically we would have condense dripping down from there, if we do not insulate the sides. The windows (portholes) will produce condense anyway, if we do not have double glass, but that we can live with. Béa has done a wonderful job, she has done all the painting and sanding as well as most of the insulation job. I have mostly been occupied with the woodwork and covering the insulation with panels.

The next job is to finish the nav-place and the guest bathroom. The mast has been stepped provisionally, but will be taken off again in January (2005) to fit the last details, like a new sail track with ball bearing track-cars and a new mast collar and boot. We have also fitted the new engine, a Yanmar 110 Hp turbo-diesel.

During the winter when the entire interior is finished to the point of closing up the front panels, we will fit the systems like the heating, plumbing, electrics and instruments. We have a better grip on the time needed to get all things in place and with a very conservative schedule we will be surprised if we do not have a sailable yacht in the water by mid-spring 2005.

Only a few things on the plans have been changed since the last newsletter. The main item was the arrangement of the engine box and the sofa in the main cabin. As we have moved the back of the sofa out from the hull, to be able to have some storage behind and bookshelves above, we are loosing the engine-box as a sofa. Originally a sofa was placed on top of the box. We wanted a very simple and easy access to the engine and finally ended up with just a sound-proof box on top of it. The table-plate will be folded down on the engine side and the box can be lifted in the forward end. The box is hinged at the floor-level on the aft end and when lifted, will give full access to the engine. Ok, we can not use the place as a sofa, but youngsters can sit there on cushions and if we are more than six persons round the table, two can use foldable deckchairs at the open end of the table. The sofa at the top end will be a bit short to fully stretch out on, but will be a cosy reading place with the feet on the galley cupboard-side. We have had some comments from other people of this arrangement, like it does not look good and it is not a practical solution. Well for us it is a good solution, it can easily be changed if a new owner wants to do so. The main thing is, that it is our boat and we want to design the interior to suite us and our living onboard.

We have enlarged the sitting width on the sofa to 70 cm, this will be 60 cm when the backrest cushion is in place. As the sofa will be used not only for sitting at the table but mostly reclining on, one need at least 60 cm when laying down.

In the gust cabin we have lined the hull side, on top of the insulation, with a fur-tree panel, it looks rather Scandinavian.

If no newsletter is printed before X-mas, we whish you all a Merry X-mas and a Happy New Year.

Béa and Chris.