Yesterday ended up being a flop. I had grand plans, but only managed to get the Nav Station table cut and clean up the hatch molds for the cockpit lockers. Then we got a phone call from the Realtor, and she wants to show the house this morning. Having been working in the shop for a week, it was wrecked, so I spent until 8:00 last night cleaning, and no painting of course, to keep down the fumes. I did however get all my tools loaded back into the truck for next week. Today will also be a write off, with the house showing and family visiting later. If the house sells, we're screwed, we'll never get everything built before we lose the shop. But don't tell Serena. No seriously, it'll get done, but I might not get much sleep in the process.
Anyway, I finished the port quarterberth and the battery boxes a couple of weeks ago, but I never got around to posting the info, so that is today's quest.
First I wanted to show the fuse holders for the battery connections. Fuses are designed to protect wires, and to do so efficiently, they need to be at the beginning of the connection from the source to the wire. You can buy special connectors to do just this, but they are expensive. So I made my own. I used some discarded fiberglass from gutting the boat and ground them down with a diamond blade in a 4" angle grinder to fit the shape of the 100Amp fuses. I'll zip-tie a small piece of rubber to the wire that will provide some measure of protection in case fumble fingers drops a screw driver. There's nothing wrong with talking about yourself in the third person, just answering yourself, right?
Then I built a box to fit the 3 house batteries, with some wiggle room. The box fits the existing locker, and then there is a frame at the bottom of the box that fits the batteries. I epoxied the seams, and strengthened all the parts with epoxy. After all, this is a lot of weight. Then I added a removable 1/2" copper water pipe down the middle to make sure they never get out of the box to play on their own. Can you imagine the damage these things could do if they were lose in rough seas, or God forbid, a knockdown. Ouch, 80 lb cannon balls full of acid.
Here is how the box fits in the space. There is a frame underneath that supports the box, but it is glassed into the liner as apposed to the hull. That way it doesn't interfere with the hull flexing, and won't break apart because of it. I also added some additional bulkheads to breakup the space a little, made a template and cut the top in two pieces, then cut out all of the hatches. The starter battery goes in the last hatch, and gets strapped into the back end of the battery box. I had to build a special base for it, and screwed it to the bottom of the commercial battery box instead of attaching it to the hull. Facilitates easier maintenance and removal.
Notice below that the bulkhead is glassed into the hull, however, there is a 1/2 piece of foam between the bulkhead and the hull, and I only used 1 layer of glass to cover the joint. It is not intended to be structural, I just wanted to make sure it didn't move around. This particular piece could fall right out and not effect the integrity of the hull, or the battery compartment for that matter.
And here is what the finished product looks like. I still need to paint everything, and add some strategically placed vents. I may also add some latches to the locker hatches to make sure that they don't fly across the cabin in rough seas. More than likely though, there will be so much stuff crammed in here that it would take an act of God for them to get out. This can still be used as a berth, since I only raised the deck by 2 1/4".
Its hard to tell in the picture, but the top is glassed to the liner as well. I glassed a cedar 3/4" x 3/4" stringer to the hull at the height of the deck, and rested the deck on it. There are a couple of screws, but basically they are not attached, and there is a 1/2" space between the top and the hull. Then the top is screwed to all the other bulkheads, dividers, etc.. The theory again, being that it does not interfere with the hull.
I will mount a folding boat seat to the battery box lid, and add a cabinet under the current shelf at the top of the picture. Overall this project was probably worth it. There was a gentleman on the news group who managed to squeeze four batteries in the original space, so this wasn't really necessary, however, I got a lot more usable storage space just by adding better access, and on a cruising boat, storage is good.
No comments:
Post a Comment