March 18, 2024

Calliope Girl 86

Monday

The ceiling strips came out well with their satin varnish, and now I set them aside to await installation.

I milled another cupful of bungs, and set forth to install them in the various berth fiddles.

With the v-berth platform complete, it was a good time to set up and sand the remaining portions of the molded liner/overhead, after which I cleaned up, masked as needed, and applied a coat of primer.  This caught the area up with the head and cabin sides in the forward cabin, and over the next couple days I planned to finish up the paintwork in these areas before dismantling the v berth for its own painting, and to finish up necessary work beneath (such as finalizing the water tank installation and bracing, painting the exposed hull, and reorganizing and securing the wiring and plumbing I’d dismantled early in the project).

With work complete in the port cockpit locker and no anticipated further need for access from inside the boat, I reassembled the port side of the galley, securing the countertop with a few screws that would be hidden beneath trim later.  I also reinstalled some original companionway trim that I’d removed back in November when I was working on the water tank mockup, as the extra clearance had been required for tank passage.

Next, I installed the new refrigerator in its locker and secured it with straps to the padeyes I’d installed earlier for the purpose, then reassembled the removable front panel.  I ran in to a fitment issue with the lid/final countertop and would have to do some small modifications to get that installed properly.

With a little time left in the day, I started to sort the pieces of bulkhead staving from the forward sides of the aft bulkhead, with an eye towards their upcoming reinstallation, but remembered that they still had gobs of old construction adhesive on the back sides, which I needed to remove before they could be reinstalled.    Not excited at the prospect of laboring to remove this all by hand, I set up my planer at a height to just remove the old adhesive and clean up the backs of the board sufficiently (3/8″ stock), which made quick work of the removal.

Total time billed on this job today: 7.5 hours

0600 Weather Observation: 31°, mostly clear. Forecast for the day: Increasing clouds, chance of showers, 47°