SO WHAT DID YOU DO WITH OR ON YOUR C-DORY TODAY??

Rainy and windy in B'ham today, so after work I went down to the boat and swapped out the anchor light for with and LED bulb. Then I spent some time trying to learn how to operate the Raymarine 70C system -- it's old but it will have to do for me for some time to come. Then I spent about 1/2 hour sitting in the boat as it rocked and shifted in the wind. Very relaxing.
 
Today I went to Marysville and priced a new mattress set for my Tomcat. I previously measured the berth area and produced the following drawing.
TomcatMattress1.sized.jpg

The blue area will be one mattress. The red and pink areas will be two smaller mattresses. This will allow me to pick up either of those two pretty easily to access the hatches below. The large mattress is a little wider than a twin size bed (and much longer). To get real custom mattresses made will be just around $1000. They'll be much more comfortable than the foam that came with the boat. I'll also get some custom fitted sheets made. A king flat sheet will work fine for the top.

I also spent a little time working on the interior of the boat. I previously installed the outlet to power my toaster/convection oven. Today I got it bolted down.
OvenBoltedDown.jpg

I also installed a plate holder on one of the cabinet doors in the galley cabinet. This is actually designed as to hold hanging file folders. $25 from Storeables in Lynwood.
PlateHolderOnCabinetDoor.jpg

I built and installed a shelf under the galley -
GalleyCabinetShelf.jpg
 
starcrafttom":maokcido said:
I love the plate holder. how many plates can it hold?

Depends on the plates I suppose. It will certainly hold at least 6 of Target melamine plates. I bought 4 since that's all the table will reasonably hold.
 
Doryman":151r70j0 said:
Roger, what is your convection toaster oven setting on? How did you attach it to the hanging locker top?

Warren

Warren, that's a shelf I made. It's similar to one made by Roger on Dreamer. It's attached to the hanging locker top by 4 screws that come up from inside the locker top. One of the problems I had with this simple little shelf is that not only is nothing on a boat square. the top of the hanging locker isn't particularly flat either.
 
We are anchored up at Andrews Bay on Lake Washington, beautiful day in the Great Pacific Northwest! Jan and Stacey came by on C-Change yesterday. We had a wonderful evening (and they aren now expert at a little card game called Bousche). They stayed rafted up when we turned in, a big mistake (Bill, yes, we DO know better), and then the wind kicked up during the night. We were doing the bump and grind thingee for sure, and they cut loose and headed back to their slip at 4:30 a.m. We are here until sometime after lunch, still thinking Peter and Caryn may yet make an appearance!
 
Peter and Caryn did indeed show up at Seward Park, and we walked around the loop together. Then as we were heading our of Andrews Bay on our way back home, who should appear on the path but the Catman himself (Brock Arnold, Bambina) on his bike, just a quick hello across the water! All in all, a splendid weekend!
 
Pat & Patty,

It was great seeing you today! I can't think of a better combination than visiting with friends and getting some exercise all at the same time. :thup

Peter & Caryn
C-Dancer
 
This weekend was another work weekend on the boat. Yesterday, I drilled holes through the roof for the radar mount and VHF antenna. The radar mount is in the center and goes through a cored section so I drilled the holes oversize, filled with thickened epoxy and will re-drill at the proper size when I complete the jon. Covered the whole mess with a tarp and heated the heck out of the inside of the boat. Today, all the epoxy was good and solid. I also routed all the antenna cable and the put in new wiring to power the VHF. I also installed a 4 wire data cable to hook the new Standard Horizon 2150 radio to the GPS. Today, I got the GPS and radio talking to each other and I know have the AIS displaying on the GPS! Since I live on a hill north of Lake Washington, I could only pick up AIS from a couple of boats moored by NOAA facility. I can't wait to get this out on the water to see the AIS at work in the sound.

This week, I also ordered my new custom mattresses for the berth. They'll be ready this Thurs and I'll pick them up on Sat. The somewhat thicker mattresses will likely necessitate a change to the out board-most hatches on the forward bulkhead in the berth area. The anchor locker hatch is high enough it should still open but the two other hatches are mounted lower and I may wind up putting smaller hatch doors in the hatch doors top permit access into those areas once the mattress is in. We'll see how it all fits once I get the mattresses. I'm betting that once I get the mattresses installed, other brats may want similar mattresses in their boats. I was surprised at the relatively low cost for custom made mattresses (about $1100 total).
 
Today I ran up to Slumber Ease Mattress factory in Monroe to pick up the new custom mattresses for my Tomcat. I had them made per the drawings I presented here earlier (in my album). The mattresses fit like a glove and are SOoooooo much more comfortable. Total cost just under $1100 including the hypervent material below. The larger forward mattress fits Joyce and I side by side just fine, but we have to sleep closer than we might at home in our regular bed. No problem, it's always a little colder on the boat anyway. The smaller mattresses allow for easy access to the storage in the sponsons. The total thickness of these mattresses is about 7" at the crown so we lost about 3" of headroom in exchange for much more comfort. While I was worried that the thicker mattresses would interfere too much with the bow hatches, it turns out that's not a problem. The anchor locker opens fully and the two hatches to the sides open plenty far enough to access the space. The only problem with the http://www.c-brats.com/albums/album1338 ... .jpgdesign is that the two smaller pieces, and especially the one on the port side, want to slide out into the cabin. This will easily be solved by adding a 2" x 3" piece of stained oak that I will attach to the platform just in front of the mattresses with 4200. There's a 2" lip available for that. Images are below. Sorry for the camera phone fuzziness.

Mattresses - very comfy...
NewMattresses.sized.jpg

Easy access to the hatches in the sponsons.
AccessToSponsonWithNewMattresses.sized.jpg

Can still access the bow hatch.
CanStillAccessHatchesInBow.sized.jpg
 
Replaced the cable on our powerwinch with the strap from our manual winch. The cable was a pain in the donkey, but did have to trim some off the strap so it would fit on the winch drum.
 
Today I got the seaview aft leaning radar mount, radar dome and hailer installed. Like everything, it took way longer than I would have thought. I drilled 1/4" holes through the oversize and epoxy filled holes I create last week to attach the mount. The larger center hole (through which the radar cable is fed was coated with epoxy last week. I used thickened epoxy and a popsicle stick as per Bob's instructions. Once that hardened it had a few sharp points and edges so I ground those down with a dremel tool. I also rounded over the edges to make them smooth.

I cut a 5" x 8" x 1/2" piece of starboard onto which I attached the hailer. By drilling a couple of holes through it and buying two new M8 bolts that were a 1/2" longer than those that came with the radome, I could bolt the starboard to the underside of the radar mount. I think the hailer mount came out pretty well.
I attached a shield speaker wire to the hailer and sealed the connections with heatshrink. I routed the wiring for the hailer and the radar dome into the cabin but didn't get them hooked up inside yet. With the climbing up and down and back and forth into the cabin to get tools/forgotten items as needed AND a run to the hardware store for more stainless steel fittings, it took about 4 hours to get everything done, cleaned back up and recovered with the tarp.




RadarDomeAndHailer.jpg
 
Today, I got the radar cable routed and finishing the wiring for the radar. It appears to be working fine. I also got my Standard Horizon radio hooked to the loud hailer/fog horn. It's plenty loud and when the radio isn't transmitting to the speaker, it serves as a microphone and allows you to better hear what's going on outside in the enclosed cabin (e.g. the speaker picks up sounds and it's played on the speaker internal to the radio). I installed an additional 12V outlet overhead on the electronics shelf. I now have one on each side and that will allow me to buy another 12V fan. Then I can defog both sides of the front windows.

I reattached the box that houses the stereo and V/Amp-meters. There's now a new Sony stereo in that box and new Polk Audio speakers in the overhead shelf. The previous owner had installed a stereo and speakers but it wasn't really working properly anymore and I wanted a nicer system. The Sony radio has an HD tuner, supports MP3 and WAV files on CD or USB stick, provides power to and control over a USB attached i-pod, and has a remote. It's a pretty nice system and the sound with the new speakers is good.

I installed a new shelf in the hanging locker and then cleaned the interior of the boat up. After a couple of months of weekend working on the boat, I've finally installed all the electronics and most of the storage related items that I intend to install. Here's a few photos (camera phone so not that great but you get the idea).

Here's the new shelf.
NewShelfInHangingLocker_001.jpg

The new radio - selecting PA/Fog Horn mode.
http://www.c-brats.com/albums/album1338/StandHorizon2150PA_FogHorn.jpg

The radar image - mostly the street and neighbors' houses.
RadarWorking.sized.jpg

The helm with all the electronics installed.
Helm.jpg
 
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