Day 170

To the right, the second stand pipe is in. These are on opposite sides of the keel, the pump out and the intake for the water maker.

The shelf they are going into will be accessible from floor plates ( rather cool looking ones we bought off ebay! ) in case they need to be cleaned out or a peice of plastic gets wedged in there. We have heard this can be a problem while coastal cruising.

In the middle can be seen the top of the stainless holding tank. The frames forward are part of the mast support stucture.

Meanwhile, my job today was cutting out holes inline from the area where the anchor chain will be, right back to the aft bilge.

It was a matter of sloping the pipe slowly down from the bow, without gaining or loosing too much. We will be using PVC pipe so the holes couldn't go off too sharply in any direction.

There will also be valves placed at each sealed bulkhead to allow for draining into the bilge in the event of flooding. This is a necessary consideration if waterproof bulkheads are being used - how to drain the affected area. Normally the valves will be closed.

Because of the height of the valves, an unsolvable problem as the water would have to run "uphill", not all of the water will be able to be drained this way. It will get down to managable levels though. ie 6"

How elaborate the drainage system is depends on what you want I guess.

The weather has been really cooling off of late, but our heater seems to be able to keep up and keep things warm enough to work inside. Unfortunately, there is virtually no insulation in the boat so once it gets colder ( < -10 degrees ) we may have to pack it in again.

Day 170:
5 hours - Put in forward bulkhead (tacked) and built fuel tanks, one complete the other tacked

	To the left is a view of the standpipe where it comes out under the pilothouse floor. The water take off will basically be a flexible pipe that goes down below the water line. this will be coming off of an elbow that will be easily removable in the event of plugging.
We managed to get the welder stinger through the pipe believe it or not! Gena welded up the pipe under the hull and smoothed it off. This is basically how it will look. We may weld on a "scoop" to deflect objects but not sure about that yet.