Day 430 A floor, Sliding doors
Even though winter is upon us, with sub zero temperatures, snow and ice, and Christmas just around the corner, Gena still managed to coat this section of flooring with water based "Blue-Stuff" and get it inside before it froze! This section is for under the cockpit where there are many obstacles and peculiarities. The 2nd support frame is lower and there are many pipes and hoses in there. Amazingly, it all fit perfectly. There's nothing Gena and a tape measure can't do!
My challenge for the day was to make the 3 sliding doors for under the deck in the pilothouse. The frames weren't very difficult ( to this now "experienced" carpentress, but what was to fill the hole inside of the frame revealed that we are out of 1/4" plywood.

A couple of years ago, our friend Pat, a guy who hauls scrap aluminum, gave us some 12 foot lengths of aluminum plate which, aside from the occasional nip off a corner, have been sitting under the house ever since.
The face was always going to be the FG panel to match the rest of the boat, but it needs a solid backing. The aluminum worked perfectly!

I made the bottoms of the frames long ago  (days317&318), and had incorporated little wheels from screen window mounts to run along the tracks. The tops of the doors are slotted also, but with thin 1/4"  squares of oiled oak inserted. Once the doors are properly adjusted, the pieces of oak can be screwed in place from the back. In a house, this isn't necessary as gravity is always coming from the same direction, down!
Impromptu backing material used on sliding doors...
Gena's floor finished, she decided to get on with the transmission shifter assembly. Although I had already come up with a design using pivoting plates to control the shift arm, Gena found a sliding style on eBay.

The problem with having dual steering stations is that everything must work at each station, i.e. throttle and shifter. The throttle, it appears, can just be linked together so when one mores, so does the other. This is because the "position locks" aren't necessary, as they are on the shifter.

What this thing does is it allows each shifter to operate independently by either shifting the arm directly, or shifting the "other cable" and the arm together.

In fact, the ability to do this relies on the locking ability of the shifters. If they didn't lock, then the one shifter would just move the other and not the transmission arm, got it? he he.

 
It'll be a little more obvious once it's in place, which won't be until tomorrow.

 

Gena installed a triple "house-style" switch for the aft fans and lights, which looks cool. These are all low amperage so these switches will handle it. It sounds funny but these switches won't handle low voltage at high watts. That is why very old houses light switches "snap" when turned on. Those are from the days of low DC voltage/high current lighting. The must snap or the contacts would burn off before a person finished switching the light on. Just an irrelevant tidbit!

Gena went around taking pictures of all around the boat, so we can take them out to the boat haulers in Vancouver next week, which will give them a better idea of what they're getting into.

Day 430:
11 hours: Made 3 doors for pilot house, made floor section for aft under cockpit, installed triple light switch aft.

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