1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Last of the Portholes

The Boatamalan painter just found a line of four hollow-sounding spots under the port lower rub rail today, and another one just below the upper rub rail yesterday. Three of the five spots have cracks; the other two will crack through the topcoat eventually if they’re not repaired. Which means that’s another five spots along welded joints in the hull where the super expensive Interlux fairing compound failed to adhere (whether from product problem or operator error (i.e. bad mix) I can’t say for sure. But I’m leaning heavily toward the latter.

Ironically, the Boatamalan already tapped all these areas last month, listening for hollow sounds, and repaired a crack nearby, just above the lower rub rail. He insists that these five spots weren’t there last month. So, it seems, the Interlux waits until he finishes a spot repair in the area, THEN, after binding tightly to the substrate below for seven years, THAT’s when that devious Interlux product just gives up and lets go. That’s his theory.

An alternate hypothesis (i.e. mine) is that the Boatamalan simply missed these spots before. I don’t think he’s doing it intentionally. But I think he’s incapable of admitting he screwed up. But, as I explained previously, I don’t want to launch the boat with cracks that will allow weather to make the cracks and damage to the fairing even worse.

So…we’re not launching in November, either. But on the bright side, the yard manager indicated he’s got only five boats requesting haul out, when he’d normally have 25+, and that’s after a week of mid-20°F overnight temps. Could be the yard won’t fill up this winter, and there will be a path open to launch my boat whenever we finally finish the crack repair. All things considered (and there are a lot of factors involved) I’m better off launching late with no known cracks than splashing in haste and regretting it later.

That said, since the laundry closet porthole gasket is done, all I needed to finish that porthole assembly was the plate that the dryer vent will exit through. I decided to use aluminum plate, since I had a bunch leftover from the aft deck enclosure build. I actually cut the plate, tapped and drilled the holes, and primed it months ago, but the Boatamalan painter just painted it this week!

3/16″ 5052 aluminum plate is cut and sanded, holes are drilled, and threads are cut using Tef-Gel

Typical louvered dryer vent will work great here

This plan is coming together

You can see what a mouse did to my custom silicone porthole gasket

I can’t imagine there’s much nutritional value in silicone gaskets, so maybe the (literal) rat bastard was using it for nest material. Either way, enough of the gasket remained uneaten for my purposes here.

Take-home lesson: always make more than you know you’re gonna need.

Snip here, cut there, and–PRESTO!–the porthole gasket is done

Perfect!

Porthole dryer vent plate is finally back from the paint shop

All the pieces are ready for assembly

It’s kind of strange when I think about it. I came up with this plan for this porthole back around 2014. I refurbished the hateful portholes in 2013 and they got new glass installed in 2016. I made the gasket and dryer vent plate in 2020, but it took until 2022 to finally get that one aluminum plate painted so I could finally bring it all together.

First, loosely assemble the porthole, and tape around all joints

Taping in advance saves lots of time on clean up when the caulk squeezes out of the joints.

That’s a good bead of caulk all around. Next I pressed the glass and plate into the caulked porthole frame, with the silicone gasket between them. After installing the window clamp ring, I used a squeegee with a sharp 90° leading edge to remove excess caulk.