Friday was a beautiful day in the upper 70s, unfortunately I spent most of it dealing with the long distance closing of our home in Florida. Eventually I made it to the boat and got a few things done. The boat is jammed with everything you can imagine, tools, parts, cushions, interior furniture etc. In an effort to free up interior space I started installing things that could go outside or just put things back in their place if possible.  I finished cleaning up a bit in the head, replaced the sanitation hose, repositioned the intake hose, so then I was able to reinstall the head.

All connected and back where it belongs:

After the head install I moved the main boom from the saloon out to the deck, then I installed the davit stabilizer. Those three things freed up quite a bit of working space below.

Saturday morning Tanya came down and we were able to tackle the through hulls.

First we made up some backing plates. We don’t have a workshop so everything is improvised and I’m pretty sure we are pushing the safety envelope working without the right tools. Ya just gotta do it…

While Tanya cleaned up the backing plates I cleaned up the hull.

Once everything was prepped Tanya applied the sealant, inserted the through hull, then I installed the backing plated and tightened them down. 

The two in the bow are finished…

We started on the two larger through hulls but we were missing a tool so that came to a quick stop.  We’re heading to the boat on Sunday so we will pick up the tool and finish the remain two.

We are installing a new NMEA 2000 depth-speed-temp transducer in place of one of the two archaic non functioning speed transducers. Later this summer when we have more time, we will remove the other transducer and fill in the hole.

Of course it would not come out without a fight which is I guess what you are looking for when installing a piece of equipment below the water line! Anyway, I thought I could get it out with the dremel but that didn’t work. The dremel had a major malfunction and burned up in my hand, lots of putrid thick electrical smoke (great hang time), we had to evacuate. Out came the big guns, the 4 1/2 inch grinder with a cutting wheel, that did the trick.

Working without our dremel is like attempting pull-ups with out arms. Since we couldn’t put the finishing touches on this project we decided to rough up the mounting block and call it a day. I think we’re going to swap out the plastic transducer through hull with bronze anyway.

Half of this mounting block will go outside the hull, the other on the inside, to keep the transducer as vertical as possible.

In rough form for illustration purposes:

All in all another very productive day!