We took a brief break from the V-berth cabinetry to spray a couple more essential parts with Awl Grip Matterhorn White. I also made a new roof vent for the tent. The heat the tent captures in summer is making it very difficult to get woodwork done. Sweat running onto newly shaped mahogany is not good!
The porthole for the laundry room
The Roamer 46 came with two round portholes in the V-berth, and ten rectangular portholes with screens, two in the V-berth and four on each side of the aft stateroom. The transom also has two windows built in, but they were originally framed in painted mahogany and could not be opened. In a gas boat, where station wagon effect can draw carbon monoxide into the boat and kill people, windows that don’t open at the transom is probably a good idea. But I moved the exhaust so it exits out of the sides of the hull of the engine room, and my Cummins engines are, of course, diesel. So there aren’t any down-sides to having more windows that can open. So I searched for two additional rectangular portholes and eventually found them on ebay. One of them has no screen flange, so it’s perfect for the laundry closet, where the dryer exhaust will vent.
Kinda like this
I’ll use a piece of plastic H channel as a seal between the glass and the plywood, which will be fiberglassed and painted after I cut the hole for the dryer vent.
The transom door finally gets painted
I fitted and finished welding the seams on the transom door back in November 2016, but that was during a stretch of bad luck for my painter. He’s finally back on his feet and was recently able to fair, prime with Awlquik, fillet, reprime with Awl Grip 545, and then paint the transom door with Matterhorn white. It turned out very nice!
Painted and ready to install
In addition to the heat build-up in the tent during summer, which I’d like to vent better, we also have to spray the last coats of MS1 on the mahogany toe rail. There are also numerous places where defects have shown up in the paint job. I’ll cover those in more detail later, but it seems that the 3M Premium Marine Filler we were using had some issues that 3M has since resolved. Unfortunately, they only cover the replacement of their product, not the paint repairs that have to happen when their product cracks due to formulation errors. On the bright side, I’d rather have small cracks appear while the boat is still in the tent instead of having rain get under the paint and start growing aluminum oxide powder under ever larger areas. So…to better vent the tent, I’m getting rid of the passive vent at the roof peak and installing a vent fan under a hillbilly rain deflector.
20″ box fan mounted to 1/4″ luan plywood scrap
Cleats outline where the rain cap will go
Don’t laugh…it works…and it gets even uglier
I initially had another piece of plywood across the top, where the short pieces of 2×3 are attached vertically, but it really choked down the flow. So instead I put a 2×3 across the top from side to side to give it strength.
Don’t laugh…it’s almost ready to install
I folded the shrink wrap under the duct sides before securing them with screws, leaving 18″ of plastic flapping all around the base. I can’t climb up on top of the tent, so the duct will go up through the current passive vent hole, and I’ll push the plastic out to (hopefully) drain most of the rain that hits it onto the surrounding tent plastic. The flappy plastic covering the rain cap duct opening will work like a shower curtain: it can’t stop all water from coming in, but it’ll stop most of it.
After I installed it and turned the fan on high, the temp dropped inside the tent over the afternoon by ~10°F, from ~120 to a cool 110. Booyah.
Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Cutting and Fitting More V-berth Panels
1969chriscraftroamer46 