Windows etc.

Been quite awhile since I have posted anything here. Not that I have not been doing things but I have not managed to finish anything. :) Story of my life I guess. But here is a summary of what has been done so far.

I got a new radio. An Icom m422. Linda took the Coast guard ABS class and decided she liked the idea of have a DSC distress button. She got a %100 on the test btw and I am still hearing about that. The radio we had was just a basic radio and would not even scan through channels. I still have to get the gps hooked up to it so the distress button sends out location information.








Got a motor for the dinghy. A Yamaha 2.5 horse. The Dinghy is rated for up to 5 horse but weight was a big factor and the 2.5 is light enough to lift up onto the back of the boat. Its a bit of a trick in steady water I am sure it will be quite a feat to do it in waves of any size.







We got some vinyl lettering to name the dinghy as well. I am sure the humor is somewhat diminished by not being able to see both boats together. The dinghy still has a leak in it someplace. My patch job apparently did not quite take but I guess having wet feet is all part of the charm.

I am still trying to find oarlocks for the dinghy too. So if anyone knows anything about BoatUS branded dinghys imported by Severn let me know. I am just about to the point of rigging something up with zip ties because I can find almost no information about it.



The big and still not quite done project involved replacing the leaking windows on the starboard side. The original windows were set in a plastic frame that was glued to the side of the boat. I found quite a few people who were replacing their windows and using screws to hold the windows onto the fiberglass. This is the main story I followed on how to do windows this way. I could not find a place to get the neoprene used so I used butyl tape from RV Wholesalers. They don't sell the same stuff anymore but they sell something called Tacky tape that looks to be similar. It was a several week job to get the windows on mostly because of poor planning.

Once we took the vinyl off the wall to take here is what we found. Over the years water had pretty much rotted the wood to dust. The dark strip at the bottom was where a grab rail was attached. It was basicall a trimmed down 1x2 and it was basically like styrofoam. You could push a toothpick through it and not break the toothpick. We used a dremel and cut out the bad parts and scraped it to the fiberglass. Linda turned out to be quite good at getting rotten plywood off of fiberglass.


Here is a closeup of that wood along the bottom. I found someone on craigslist to cut a 1x2 down the funny angle you see. Above that you can see the good job Linda did of getting the rotten and some not quite so rotten plywood off.







The next part was filling in the spots we had cut out with some nice new plywood. I was looking for some marine plywood and could only find one place that sold it. They had the kind that is used for a finished surface. I planned to veneer it but I bought it anyway. When I do the next side I plan to get exterior grade plywood and put penetrating epoxy on it. I put west marine branded penetrating epoxy on all the plywood I put up anyway. I was kind of worried about it setting up properly but it hardened up just fine.

This is the end result. As you can see the plywood we got has a finished surface and looks pretty nice by itself. We used posterboard to make templates to guide us in cutting the pieces. For the window holes we made them a bit big and then trimmed them up. We attached the plywood with west systems Gflex epoxy.



We filled in the gaps with west systems epoxy and the 410 fairing filler. We sanded and tried to get the surface as smooth as possible. As it turns out the veneer is not too finicky about the surface. So next time we know not to put quite so much effort into it.







I used the same plywood and expoxied pieces along the bottom. The dowels and other wood are holding it up in the correct place while the expoxy sets up. We are working on getting another peice to put under thier to cover the wires and other bolts. It will be held up with barrel head screws so it looks good and you can still get in there if needed. Once that was in place we went on to putting up the veneer.




Not much to say about the veneer. We used posterboard and pieces of paper to make the template to cut the pieces. Stuck them up with contact cement. I used a utility knife to cut the windows out and trim up the bottom. I got the veneer from cabinetparts.com. The rest of the boat is a dark mahogany and I needed to make sure the boat did not end up too dark so I picked this light mahogany.



Once everything was trimmed up we could finally put in the new windows! That took pretty much a day because we found we had too few screws and then we needed some longer ones so Linda made several trips to west marine to get screws, bolts and different kinds of washers.
We are going to make a piece of trim to put around the window and cover the bolts as well as provide a place to attach curtains. The original plan was to have the trim made prior and attach the bolts with barrel head nuts so it looked good. However not having the trim and the fact that barrel head nuts are about $1.24 each and needing close to 90 of them dampened my enthusiasm for that route.


So this is the result as it is now. We put a piece of rope trim along the top to hold the headliner up and put the rail along the bottom. The curtains are held up with zip ties. I am finding quite a lot of uses for dowels and zip ties. When we do the other side we will get more trim and finish the piece that is missing.







Here is a picture from outside and how the new windows look. They look a lot better than the old windows in my opinion. Plus they are water tight so that is a big plus!








Some of the things I learned in this process:
Next time I would make the windows larger. I told the guy at the plastic place to cut the new windows a half inch bigger than the old edge of the framed window and put the screw holes a half an inch from the edge. That only gives half inch of plexi from the screws and I think more would be better. Also next time I will have him use 3/8ths plexi rather than 1/4. If I had extra money I would like to have another layer of plexi glued into the window hole for extra strength assuming it could be done without having bubbles in it.