1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Redoing the New Salon Light mounts

Ending 2018 with a total bonehead move, I installed all of the salon LED light mount panels wrong, so I had to re-do them. This time around, I made sure the panels were aligned along a plane 1/2″ down from the overhead frames, which is the height of the Whisper Wall headliner tracks, and spaced 54″ apart–the width of the headliner material. And in another bonehead move, I lost the memory card that documented that effort and a bunch of other stuff.

I’ve almost never written articles in real time. I generally write about things I worked on a week or two ago and sometimes more. There have been many times where I started work on something, detoured to do something else, and finally got back to the thing and finished it months later. If it made sense to hold off writing about that thing until it was done, that’s what I did. With the loss of that memory card, all the pix of the various mini-projects are gone. And since this is a photo-heavy blog, I didn’t have anything to write about.

One of those mini projects was the salon LED light mount panels that I mentioned above. After getting all of them re-installed 54″ apart and aligned in a  plane 1/2″ down from the overhead frames, the headliner installer guy came to look at my handiwork. Turns out the Whisper Wall headliner is too heavy to stay in place overhead if the tracks are installed too far apart. In summer especially, the headliner will sag 6~8″ with 54″ track spacing. So I had to redo them all over again with no more than 30″ spacing between the tracks. Because the overhead frames aren’t perfectly aligned (the height varies by as much as 3/4″ between any three frames), I had to move the panels vertically quite a bit. Once I FINALLY got the salon panels done right, I then moved on to the aft stateroom and then the V-berth and got the LED light mount panels and wiring installed there. Alas…all those pix are gone. But the work is done.

Three weeks worth of effort and the corresponding blog posts covered six short sentences.

It was around that time that I got a raging case of tendonitis in both elbows. Instead of going to the doctor, I thought I’d take it easy for a while and see if it resolved on its own. I had a bunch of projects at my house that I’d been putting off for ages, like installing gutter drain pipes that take rain water far away from the foundation. While that might sound like work that would aggravate elbow tendons, last year I bought a used Kubota BX23 tractor with a front end loader and backhoe, which pretty much eliminated stress to my sore tendons during that project. The pipes terminate 100′ from the house, and the basement is completely dry now, so I’m really glad to have gotten that done.

I also got rooms painted and crown moldings installed, the latter of which made my tendonitis worse. I cleaned my garage and threw away a bunch of stuff that I’d kept in case I need it one day. If I don’t use or even touch something for 10 years, chances are I really don’t need it. I took a bunch of pictures (new memory card!) of boat parts and other stuff, and put it all on ebay. I posted links to it all on the For Sale: Refit Parts, Tools, Supplies & Leftovers page. Of course, it would have been easiest to just throw it all out. But anyone who’s experienced the joy of seeing that thing you’ve been looking for forever that one day pops up on ebay will understand my motivation for putting them up for sale rather than tossing them in the dumpster.

One other thing that’s kept me from posting is that my insurance company, Chubb, sent me a cancellation notice not long before my annual renewal date. They said I didn’t provide a survey before the renewal date, and so they were cancelling my policy. I let them know that I had no record of them requesting a new survey and pointed out that I could still get one to them before the renewal date. After several weeks, my agent told me that it didn’t matter. They were going to cancel the policy regardless because of the burglary loss in 2014 and the Nor’easter damage in 2018. I pointed out that neither of those losses were due to my negligence, and that I’d installed alarm systems and video surveillance cameras to discourage thieves…didn’t matter. So I have been working hard to get insured through another company, and I hesitate to work on the boat while I’m uninsured. Letting it sit fallow seems less risky than working onboard using electricity, powerful tools, and with flammable chemicals present. I’ve got a quote from Hagerty and am working to address all of their requirements.

For whatever it’s worth, Tent Model XXX survived yet another snow storm unharmed

So…that brings the blog up to date. Once this tendonitis is resolved and the boat is insured again, I’ll resume the project and the blogging. Stay tuned…

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Repurposing Old Doors