Friday, September 21, 2012

svHorizon.com is live

At long last I spent a little time and updated svHorizon.com to describe this Morgan Horizon instead of our Rafiki Horizon.


Saturday, September 15, 2012

Forward cabin sole is done

We finally finished the forward cabin sole, I think 3 weeks after starting.  After the last piece work, Cate gave it 5 coats of Epifanes RapidCoat and man does it look nice!  We have now started the aft cabin...
Before with carpet
After














Before I forget, last weekend we got the old genset out of the engine room.  I still have to clean up the area, give it a fresh coat of paint, then start mounting watermaker and washdown pump, and ...
Empty 4.5' x 3' space!
Genset in transit


Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Cabin sole and solar panels


We had some real movement this past weekend on the forward cabin sole.  The individual plywood pieces have all been laid along with the teak joints between, and everything bonded in place with Sikaflex 219.  Julio will visit one final time to plane the joints flush and then we can sand and varnish.  

This has turned out to be a much more involved process than we ever expected and takes 4 full days of work to get to the varnish stage in each section including the full day Sikaflex cure time:
  • Day 1 is filling low spots and leveling the subfloor with lots of sanding to give a flat bonding surface.
  • Day 2 is bonding the pieces of veneer plywood to the subfloor making sure the holly stripes all align.
  • Day 3 is chiseling clean edges between the plywood pieces and fitting and bonding the teak joints.
  • Day 4 is planing the joints flush with the plywood pieces and attaching trim molding. 
  • Days 5-?? will be complete general sanding then applying coat after coat of Epifanes Rapidclear varnish.
So far we are still working on the first section, the forward cabin.  We still have the aft cabin section then the much simpler walk through section.

Solar Panels


This weekend we got our two new Hyundai HiS-S240MG solar panels mounted but I will need to do some more work on the bracketing to make sure they cannot flex and that there is sufficient air flow underneath them.  I hope by next weekend we will be ready to complete the wiring then throw the switch and see just how much power we can realistically expect from 480 watts of solar panels.