Lex Strahorn's Home Page

Update:
Wife broke her arm so in addition to her cancer we have that to contend with. Fortunately it is not interfering with her Chemo or surgery schedule. Between taking care of the house chores, work, and other honey-dos I have had very little boat time. However, I did find a suitable material for the console spacer and started wiring it. I ended up going to the local ACE Hardware for more (and different sizes) terminals and butt splices. I also purchased a roll of 16 gauge tinned primary wire in red and black to make the connections inside the console. During the course of the wiring I also bought four brass terminal blocks, one for hot, three for ground, a new set of wire cutter-crimpers, (I found my old ones rusted together in the youngest kid’s tool box) a can each of black and red liquid electrical tape, two bags of plastic ties, a tie puller-cutter, and one of those long BBQ fire starters to heat up the shrink tube. I took a bunch of pictures of the results and showed the guys that wire our electrical panels and was quite pleased with their comments.

Update:
Hurricane last weekend. I didn’t go outside except to get meds. Played computer games all weekend. This weekend will be cleaning up all the junk that fell into boat, draining it and pretty much getting it ready to work on again. On the bright side one of the guys in electric department is going to make me some custom engraved switch tags. They will look nice on the rocker panels…

Update:
Well that small hurricane that came through slammed into Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama as a cat 4. New Orleans and every town near the coast have been completely devastated. Hurricane was named Katrina. Very, very, very bad. I spent the entire week glued to the TV and radio, as well as surfing the net for information. A lot of bad press for FEMA though it was not their fault really. But the New Orleans Mayor has to point fingers away from himself and his people…..Reality is that the feds had the relief stuff on site but there was no command and control (support structure) inside the city to even begin distribution. Hell he didn’t even have any support people at the superdome where tens of thousands where evacuated to. What kind of idiot puts thousands of people in small confines without any authority figure? But like I said he has to point the finger somewhere……

Well this weekend was Memorial Day weekend. (Yes this is the one year point of this project.) I worked 10 hours Saturday, 10 hours Sunday, and 6 hours Monday on the boat. God was it hot and muggy. I kept hosing myself down cause even my shorts where soaked. But I made great progress! The gas tank set up and foamed in. I made bulkheads to hold it in place then poured two part expanding foam in the hull. As soon as the foam was poured I placed the tank and stood on it till the foam completed expansion. Now it is well anchored.

I had the dubious pleasure of grinding all the old fiberglass off the flooring. (Part of my mistake in allowing each layer to dry before starting the next) Unfortunately it had broken apart at the seam. Maybe it was fortunate since it was much easier to maneuver the two than the one. At any rate got the pieces completely ground and ready to put in for a test fit. The fit was good so I know that I can still read a tape measure. I also set in the console and the live well in the cockpit marking the floor with a sharpie once I maneuvered them where they were comfortable.

Then I worked on the drainage system that I designed. I figured that in order to keep the floatation foam as dry as possible for as long as possible I would use flexible tube to route the water through the boat. So I made a bulkhead to separate the front compartment from the rest of the underside and mounted a one inch fitting at the bottom. Running the tube to the rear I put a T fitting centered to the center dry storage compartment and ran it up to another sink style fitting. The end of the rear T ran back through the flooring bulkheads to the rear compartment where another T was installed. Later I will run the cockpit drain down to the T and the end into the bilge compartment.

Next was running the control and electrical pipes. Because I intended to foam the underside of the floor I had to have tubes in place to run wires and such through. Since the area between the stringers was now filled with the new gas tank, I used two 2 ½” PVC pipes going from the front of my center console marking to the rear compartments one on the outer side of each stringer. For the front electrical I ran it up the center. I used a torch to give the forward tube the bend to follow the hull incline.

Console test fit