Wednesday, January 11, 2012

January 2012 Progress Report

Here is a completed navigation station. Unfortunately, this is on one of the other Mumby catamarans at Tim's Beach Boatyard. Our nav station is under construction , seen here on the left.

The interior fit-out continues slowly, but the finished product is stunning with hard wood floors and shiny panels with rattan cupboards.

Steve writes a good summary of the boat progress through December:

Work on Silver Tern is going as fast as can be expected, but still slowly. After foaming the interior, the foam was cut back to be flush with the interior aluminum framing. Then, strips of thin plywood are glued to each other to make a template which is used to cut a fiberglass sheet to the exact size needed.

A panel is then cut to match the pattern, with the edges sanded down to allow the panels to be joined together.

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The panels are then glued to the foam and aluminum interior.

Ceiling panels must be propped up until the adhesive dries.

After being glued in place, with the joints being perfectly aligned, the joints are then taped with fiberglass tape in order to make the interior a one-piece fiberglass shell.

The taped joins are then faired out with a gelcoat filler, and then sanded with sandpaper starting at 220 down to 1200 grit, then polished. This results in an essentially perfect joint (completely invisible), but requires hours of work per inch of joint and there are several hundred meters of joints on the boat.

Right now, most of the walls are done, ceilings in the aft cabins started and the shelves for the lockers have been made. Next will be the faces for the lockers (the doors are almost done) and the countertops for the galley and workshop.

We put the fridge into the galley simply because there was no place to store it. It is far too large to carry up our fire escape. So, to the left in this photo there is a space for the kitchen sink, across from that will be the stove/oven. We think the galley will be really functional.

Just forward of the galley is the “Executive Cabin”. To the left in this photo is a double bed and forward of this cabin is the starboard head with shower.


On the Port side, instead of the galley there is a workshop and forward of that is the laundry area which has a small washing machine, the watermaker and hot water heater. Forward of the laundry area is the port head, also with a shower.

Aft on both sides are aft cabins with nice berths and lounge areas over the engines.

The saloon area is yet to be started, nor have the floors. but we are assured that all of these things will go rapidly once underway. We have yet to start exterior painting or deck rigging, but that will all have to wait until the two boats in front of us have their exteriors finished.

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