Lights, compass and scratches

We will use LED navigation lights from Lopolight. Expensive, but seems to be worth it. 2.1 W power consumption, waterproof, works for 50.000 hours, certified for ships up to 50 meters long.

This is what they look like:

Lopolight navigation lights

And this is how the sidelights will be mounted:

Lopolight mount.

Tomorrow we will connect the electrics to see if they work.

We also mounted the compass today:

Compass.

We mounted it on the port side, instead of the more comme il faut place at the starboard side. I suppose that you mount compasses on the starboard side because you sit on the starboard side while on a starboard tack. And that is, of cource, the right way to go. But on a chinese junk rig,  all the lines comes down on the starboard side as well, since it is comme il faut to let the sail fly the port side of the mast. And since the Chinese invented the compass, we let the Chinese decide thist time.

We made some ugly scratches in the polycarbonate windows today… Guess that happens quite easily. Is it possible to polish the windows? Ordinary boat polish?

No pictures today

Forgot the crappy digicam, and the mobile was out of batteries after some work related e-mailing and chatting, so… no pictures today on the finnaly installed steering station portlights. They are actually a bit too large to be called portlights. More like windows. 200 machine screws. Each window hade five rounds of Sikaflex. Used up over two tubes. Two fingers on my right hand feels numb after squeezing that Sika…

These windows look bombproof.

Tomorrow we will start rigging the sail again.

And maybe wire the navigation lights. Don’t really know where to put them. Was thinking about the deck house roof first. But the bow will obstruct them. Any ideas?

Progress pics

Some pictures of the progress:

Navigators bunk

This is a good illustration of how hard it is to take photos of the interior. Everything is covered in tools, and unpainted surfaces are ugly.

Steering station port frame.

8 mm stainless steel. 200 M5 machine screws. 13 mm thick polycarbonate. Will it hold up to the furious waves of the outer skerries of the Stockholm archipelago this summer. Probably.

The dinghy on deck.

The good thing about flush deck. The dighy takes up no space at all. Maybe we are going to take down the work bench while sailing, though.

Foredeck.

The bow rollers will be bolted to the mahoghany. We will need some sort of pulpit as well to be able to climb up the bow.

That’s all folks!

Fun with Makrolon ™

Sawed out the windows in Makrolon. The same polycarbonate as Lexan but the Euro-version. Interesting material to work with. We have quite a lot left but no idea of what to do with it. Here is a good source of all construction methods. It also tells how to make that cool looking dome. I see no use for it when we have an inside steering station, though. Maybe I could make an astronaut helmet. I could have that when driving my Vespa. Should be better than an ordinary helmet, no? More ideas about what to do with the left overs?

Fun material. Makrolon.

More bow rollers and deck house windows

Some pics from yesterday:

Bow rollers platform.

It actually looks thicker than it is from this direction. High quality mahogany is a really really nice wood to work with.

Portlights cut-outs in the steering station.

See my Festo jig saw on the work bench. I really love that saw.

Portlights again

Time to show how it looks installed:

Looks good.

And we also made a fold down companionway door:

We will never have to stow that loose hatch.

Pictures and hole in the hull… and a surprise

Today we made a hole in the hull. It is always scary. But looked much better after we put a shining new portlight in it. Two pictures of the hole:

From the inside

And from the outside.

Quite often people want to see pictures from the interior. I normally come up with a really bad explanation that I don’t have any working digital camera except my mobile phone (which is correct btw). But the truth is that the interior looks really bad on photos. Often tools are spread all over the place, and since painting and hardwood trim goes on last, everything looks dirty and unfinished.

Like this:

A mess, no?

Here is another picture of one of the children’s bunks. It is big enough for any normal adult. But we made a special bulkhead to make it like their own little cabin. We also made some bookshelves. This will look much better when painted.

Did I say it will look much better with some paint on it?

And now for the surprise:

A sailing and rowing dinghy!

We would appreciate ideas for a name. Ida and Joel only created a list of 20 or so. Joels favorite name for the tender right now is “daddy” (but in Swedish of course). Personally I think it might lead to misunderstandings…

Ordered portlights

After much head scratching we finally decided to order eight of these:

We bought them from Toplicht in Hamburg. Still no progress on the big window frames though… Casting bronze anyone?