The marina manager says Friday they’re too busy to launch my Roamer and that next Monday would be best. So unless the surveyor or my insurance company lob a grenade at me, Tent Model XXX is being retired this weekend and the bottom gets wet around noon on Monday, June 19, 2023. The boat will have been on the hard in Deale, MD, for 4,998 days, or 13 years, 8 months, 7 days. I mostly worked on the boat on weekends, which converts to ~four years spent refitting the boat to this point.
A proper accounting of the time it’s taken me to get to this point would have to also note the numerous time-sucking disasters that I had to deal with, starting with the Paperwork SNAFU, which took two years to resolve, during which the boat sat fallow. Then the bastard thieves who cleaned me out in 2014 cost me around six months. Then there was the boat next door that blew up, damaging the tent and my paint in 2015, which took a couple of months to recover from. The next big one was that Nor’easter in March 2018 that whooped Tent Model XXX and badly damaged my brand new Awlgrip paint, which cost another three months. And let’s not forget all of the paint repairs that had to be done last fall and winter when we found cracks that originated in the Interlux Watertite epoxy fairing compound a former boat worker had applied to the sandblasted hull in 2008.
I will never, EVER do anything like this EVER again…unless somebody offers to buy the boat for a cool million. That’d make it all worthwhile. 🙂
Anyway, so in preparation for de-tenting the boat, I remembered that the gap around the transom door would be a straight shot for rain to get inside. I found an off-the-shelf solution that doesn’t look too bad.
The gap around the transom door will absolutely leak rain inside the boat
Frost King Door Seal to the rescue!
I thought these gaskets had a peel-n-stick adhesive strip, but it turns out they don’t.
Contact cement to the rescue!
I applied two coats to the back-side of the door seals and to the painted door frame.
Nice!
No more open gap!
When the canvas is installed back here, I expect the transom to be weatherproof.
I’ll close with a couple of shots from the day the surveyor visited. That was the first time I’d seen the entire dashboard dust-free and shiny. It was a good day.
Good looking helm dashboard
Remember what I started with…
The surveyor really liked my custom welded aluminum instrument panel
Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Polishing More Side Deck Stanchions
1969chriscraftroamer46 
Very exciting, after such a long time. Would love to see some videos, it gives a much better sense of everything. Best of luck!
Have you given up on the trim plane position indicators, or did you get the smoke replaced correctly?
Thanks for asking!
The trim plane position indicators (Roamer Cruise Control is what Chris Craft called the system) are still sitting on my desk, 18″ from where I sit…same place I left them when I last wrote about them. lol
I definitely haven’t given up on them. But getting splashed is my focus now, and I’m down to a week before splash day. I still want to get them functioning again. It’s just a matter of priorities.
Stay tuned!
Q
Can you retrieve the questions I asked back then? I think with answers to them I can figger out what resistance the smoke had when new. Key is the resistance values of the pots on the plane elevation ‘mover’ at the up/down limits and whatever else I asked re your bench top trials.(meter indication vs plane position).
BON Voyage TO THE H2O.
Maybe you can help each other!
The final countdown. Can’t wait to see photos of the boat free of its covering tent and out on the water. Aluminaughty on the stern?
Thanks Steve!
I’ve got some leftover transom lettering from my old 1967 Constellation 52. It’s a pretty script, with the name Libertarian (ie the inherently American lover of liberty mindset, not the political party). I think I’ll run with that for a while.
Cheers,
Q
Congratulations! I have so enjoyed reading along. I thought you also should have mentioned the paperwork snafu early on that sucked a bunch of time. You are one of the very few who stick it out to the end of a major refit. These boatyards are not called the “field of broken dreams” for nothing! Congrats!
AH! That’s right, Eric, I forgot all about the paperwork SNAFU! It’s probably my subconscious blocking it out to protect me from recall trauma! lol
And thanks for the kind words!
Cheers,
Q