1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: DIY Marine AC Raw Water Pump Controller

I’ve got three Flagship Marine air conditioners on the boat–16k in the salon, 12k in the aft stateroom, and 9k in the V-berth–and one March mag-drive pump (model BC-4C-MD) that needs to push raw water to all of them should any one of them call for it. Marine AC pump control boxes start at $300, but I thought I might be able to DIY something as good or better for far less.

My Flagship AC units have 24VAC terminals that call for the raw water pump to turn on. So I just needed three 24v relays that can handle the load from the March pump.

I bought three Omron G7L-2A-TUB-J-CB-AC24 general purpose relays for $20 each on ebay

The relays take that 24v signal and will pass 120v to the pump. They’re rated for 25 amps, so they’re overkill for this application. That’s not a bad thing.

I’ll mount the relays in a generic water-resistant electronic project box ($12 on ebay)

A little tight, but this will work fine

I used a Sharpie to mark where the holes for mounting screws need to be

Back at the garage, I drilled the screw holes and holes for the cables to pass through

Stainless screws threaded into the holes from behind

Stainless nuts and washers attach the components to the project box

Next, I installed the cable connectors in the holes I drilled in the project box

I installed the pump control box up and out of the way near the pump

Line voltage for the pump courtesy of the big salon AC unit

Neutral and ground pass through the terminal strip to the pump. 120v line voltage is routed to the “IN” side of each of the relays.

“OUT” side of each relay is daisy-chained to the LINE terminal for the pump

If any relay energizes (or all of them) the pump will see the same 120v and start pumping.

Aft stateroom 24vac pump call line

Ditto for the salon…

…and the V-berth

Done

And that’s a wrap for the pump controller. Total cost was around $100, and there are no proprietary boards or components.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Major System Test — Air Conditioners

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Wrapping Up the Aft Stateroom AC Installation

With the salon settee done for now, and with it the salon air conditioner is ready for commissioning, I next tackled the AC units in the aft cabin and V-berth. All of the AC units get raw water from one pump, so I want all of them to be fully hooked up before turning them on.

Waaaaay back in 2018, I installed the ducting for the aft stateroom HVAC system. Then life got complicated, and I wasn’t able to install the AC unit itself until the winter of 2022. The last step before this AC unit is ready to be tested involves building the enclosure cabinetry, installing the air filter, and plumbing the raw water outlet.

The AC unit is mostly installed…just need to finish the last details

I used 1/4″ mahogany plywood for the enclosure face

And 1/2″ plywood for the top of the enclosure

I next marked off the air filter frame opening

This mahogany fiddle molding will hide the plywood edge

Since it’s inevitable that horizonal surfaces end up being used as shelves, the fiddle will also keep things from falling off of the enclosure top.

That’s about what I had in mind

The lower panel is 1/2″ plywood

Looking good!

The fiddle molding on top looks great, but I need a molding to cover the joint between the two lower pieces of plywood.

A scrap of OEM solid mahogany will do the trick

The ugly gray primer will get sanded off after I cut the molding

That’s much better

Looking good!

After sanding the panels and moldings, it’s time for ICA clear coat

I rolled on three heavy coats, one after the other

Next day, I cut the filter frame hole

OOPS!

Turns out the filter frame isn’t square, and I oriented it so the filter slats are sideways rather than sloping down! Still, the panel and fiddle turned out very nice.

I repurposed the original toilet outlet as a raw water outlet

The washing machine, jet bath/shower, and AC raw water will all exit underwater

Thru-hulls above the waterline always end up with unsightly stains from whatever water flows out of them. By reusing the original toilet thru-hulls, which are welded to the bottom, this boat won’t have any hull stains.

I’ll hide that plumbing behind some mahogany plywood

That 6″ insulated duct takes up a lot of space

Another complication is that the hull narrows as it gets closer to the transom, so the duct moves inboard from the right closet wall to the left.

Lotsa goofy angles going on here, but it’ll all work out in the end

I cut a hatch for easy access to the thru-hull valve and hoses

Next I wetted out the back of each panel with epoxy and insulated it with 1″ thick Buffalo Batt fabric

With the panels insulated, next I applied ICA base clear

Nice!

Thermostat’s installed and the woodwork is 90% done

I’m covering all of the AC inlets with auxiliary filter material until the refit is done

The Flagship Marine HVAC filters are intended for use on a normal boat, not a dusty floating cabinet shop. So I tape this fiberglass filter material over the HVAC filters to help ensure the units don’t get loaded up with wood and sanding dust.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the V-Berth AC Unit

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Remaking the Salon Settee V

These boats originally came with two drawers built into the settee: one long one facing into the galley, and another under the sofa cushion facing the aft salon wall. I’m using the space where the long drawer would have been as the salon HVAC inlet duct. But storage is always at a premium on a boat, so I’m refreshing the other drawer as part of this settee rebuild.

The drawer has potential

The varnish is more than 50 years old. The glue failed on the edge moldings, which were also held in place with staples that split two of the moldings. And somebody spilled blue paint inside the drawer. But the mahogany face and sides are in pretty good shape.

This crack in the face can be epoxied back together

The settee panels and corners dry fitted together

This is where the drawer will go

Tracing the drawer outline on the settee panel

Fitting the panel and plywood supports for the drawer slides

This is going to work!

Time to remove that varnish.

The mahogany drawer face cleaned up very nicely

I like how Chris Craft made drawer pulls by cutting angled, roughly oval holes in the wood. The holes double as additional ventilation, too.

Router and multi-tool cut slots for the drawer slides

Chris Craft didn’t use drawer slides on this boat. Instead, they tacked thin plastic pads on the panel edge under each side of the drawer for the wooden drawer sides to slide over. There was also a plastic guide at the back that ran on a plain steel track along the center under the drawer to keep it in position.

Modern, full-extension, soft-close slides are a big improvement

The drawer works!

Next, I had to finish making it pretty.

Cutting new edge moldings for the drawer face

I made up a bunch of panel edge moldings when I was working on the “Throne Room” (v-berth head) moldings, so all I had to do was trim these for the depth of the drawer face.

The mahogany sides of the drawer cleaned up pretty good

I started with 80 grit Mirka Abranet, then went to 120, and finished with 220.

But the Doug fir drawer bottom wasn’t going to come clean

That blue paint went deep into the plywood grain. So I decided I’ll just make it smooth and cover it. Because the salon is still my woodshop, I’ll be using this drawer as a storage area for a while. When the refit is closer to done, I’ll put mahogany veneer over the bottom.

Next, I applied fine-line tape around the perimeter of the drawer face

The tape will protect the bare wood from stain and varnish I’ll apply next

I’ll use epoxy on the bare wood to attach the moldings

Next, I applied the same Pettit 1095 filler stain used in the rest of the salon

The next day, I applied ICA base coat clear inside and out

Next day, I sanded with 220 grit Mirka and applied a second coat

That’s a good looking drawer

It’ll look even better when the mahogany veneer is installed…someday

Next, I miter-cut and fitted the new moldings

Then I used epoxy to bond the moldings to the face

Nice!

The salon settee drawer is done!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Finishing the Salon Settee Structure

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Remaking the Salon Settee IV

This salon settee is a big piece of furniture. I’ve never made furniture before…well unless you count the V-berth as furniture. This settee also has built-in HVAC ducting, so it’s a pretty complex structure for a weekend warrior like me. But it’s turning out pretty nicely, and I already cut the major panels. I just need solid mahogany pieces at the corners to tie the major panels together.

Time to turn a pretty piece of mahogany into settee corner pieces

The block on top of the board in the above picture is a leftover corner piece from when I assembled the aft stateroom walls. It’s a pattern, basically. But because I don’t have any more 8/4 boards that are long enough to make the corner pieces I need for the settee, I’m using 4/4 boards that I’ll epoxy together.

45° angle cuts on either side total 90° for the corner pieces

This post covers things I did last fall. It was extremely challenging doing woodwork on the boat toward the end of its tenure on the hard in Deale, MD. In preparation for breaking down Tent Model XXX, I moved my table saw and ShopSmith back to my house in the fall of 2022. So any time I needed to machine some lumber, I had to make the measurements in Deale, then drive home (one hour each way) and cut the lumber. A minor error (remember, nothing on a boat is square) that could easily be corrected with the woodshop tools on-site turned into a multi-day slog. Fortunately, the salon settee corner pieces didn’t cause me much grief.

That’s what I had in mind

It’s hard to tell in the picture, but that’s two 4/4 sticks with a 45° cut on either side of both. Put the narrow ends together, and you get two 90° faux-rabbets with 90° between them, same as the corner pieces I made years ago from 8/4 stock.

The grain is gorgeous

Two corner sticks bonded with US Composites 635 epoxy thickened with wood flour

I found a crack at the end of one stick

After thoroughly wetting out the crack with straight epoxy, I used a squeegee to force wood flour-thickened epoxy into the crack. Then I got fancy with some clamps to hold it all together.

Crack? What crack???

Next day, test fit looks good!

Semi-final dry fitting looks good

I marked off the corner pieces for rounding to match each panel

Then back to the house to round the corners on my jointer

Looking good!

Back to the boat for final shaping with a sander

Nice!

Back in the salon

Perfect!

I had some panel cap pieces I made earlier in the refit

The cap pieces are basically C-channel shaped solid mahogany, with a 3/4 gap between the two legs. All I had to do was widen the gap a bit to accommodate the veneers on either side. They look a lot better than the inside of the Tricel panels.

This is turning out very nicely

Almost done with dry fitting

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Remaking the Salon Settee V

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Remaking the Salon Settee II

The missus and I took the boat out for a quick blast up the Potomac on Saturday. What a hoot! The Cummins engines continue to light off immediately. Temps and pressures are stable. The bilge pump counter still shows zero three weeks after turning on twice during our seven hour journey from Deale, MD, to our marina on the Potomac. Adjusting the propeller shaft packing glands dried up the bilge completely. So that’s all good.

But I have no air conditioning, in part, because the air intake duct for the salon AC unit will be built-in to the salon sofa bed/settee. So recreating the settee is a bit of a priority.

But first, I just want to say how nice it is not to be in the tent

Even without AC, just throw open the hatches and windows and a cool breeze comes through

But back to the refit.

The big white box behind the settee was a closet and bathroom

Since the forward bathroom is  now in the V-berth, and I prefer mahogany to white paint, my approach with the settee will depart somewhat from Chris Craft’s white painted box.

I saved the original settee forward panel to use as a pattern

The original settee lower panel makes another good pattern

You can see the lines on the floor where the original panels attached to solid mahogany cleats. These are all very helpful in reminding me how this thing was assembled back in 1969.

Chris Craft used 3/4″ mahogany plywood for the settee, but I’ve got some leftover Tricel

Tricel panel scraps can easily be joined together using solid mahogany splines and epoxy to make a bigger panel.

I use tape to indicate depth-of-cut for my Harbor Freight oscillating multi-tool

I generally use one inch splines to join Tricel, which means I have to remove 1/2″ of the core material from each panel where they’ll join together.

Just like that

Core material removed and spline test fitted

Final test fit

Wet everything with US Composites 635 epoxy then apply wood flour-thickened 635

Slide the parts together and clamp in place

Next day, the panels are ready for trimming

Looks good

The new settee begins to emerge

Time for mahogany veneers

Contact cement works best for thin veneers

When I use 1/8 mahogany plywood as the veneer (e.g. for the galley bulkhead), I prefer to use epoxy as the adhesive. But it just doesn’t work for thin veneer, so I use contact cement instead.

Two coats of contact cement on the panels and veneers, one to go

Once the cement is no longer tacky, I put some sticks down

The sticks keep the veneer away from the panel as I get ready to apply the veneer. I use a flexible plastic squeegee to press the veneer to the panel along one edge and then work my way across the panel. When I run into a stick, I pull it out and keep pressing the veneer to the panel. This helps avoid air bubbles and blisters. Once the cement on the panel touches the cement on the veneer, that’s it…so you have to do it right the first time.

Nice mahogany panel for the settee!

Lower panel looks good, too

Next day, trim the excess veneer with a razor knife

Sand the mahogany with 220 grit Mirka Abra Net

Next, I applied Pettit 1095 Standard Filler Stain to match the rest of the salon

Next day, the panels were ready for ICA base coat clear two-part urethane

Three coats later, the salon was very stinky

Definitely need carbon organic respirator filters when applying ICA.

Looks great the next day!

Sand with 220 grit Mirka again

Before re-coating, I made my final cuts to square up the panels

Just need to knock off some ugliness here

Three more hot coats of ICA base

I prefer natural mahogany, but that Pettit stain doesn’t look bad at all

Dry fitting the floor splines

Next I removed the Tricel core material for the floor spline

You’ve got to be very careful not to bend the face veneers with the core removed or the ICA will crack

Final test fit

Looks good!

Next, glue and screw the floor splines in place

Wet out the panel joint with 635 epoxy, then apply wood flour-thickened 635

Slide it all together, et voila!

Looks good at the top corner

Floor spline joint is tight

Nice transition to the pantry cabinet

Some day, I’ll make a face frame for the pantry cabinet that covers the plywood end grain. But for now, this is turning out exactly as I’d hoped!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Dialing in the CAPAC Anti-Corrosion System

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Remaking the Salon Settee

This model of Roamer came with an L-shaped sofa, or settee, with a sliding bottom cushion that converts it into a bed. The missus likes the design, but the original was badly weathered by the rain that came through the hole in the salon ceiling while the boat was sitting on Purgatory Row in southern Maryland for several decades. When we dismantled the boat, I saved most of the pieces of the settee to use as patterns when I rebuilt it. I never thought it would take this long, but I finally got around to remaking the salon settee.

The original settee in as-found condition

Why didn’t I just run away?!?!?

Seriously, what was I thinking?!?!

The original settee back panel was barely pattern-grade

It roughly fits the hole but the angles are off

The leading edge was even rougher

But it’s got lots of clues to help me remake it

The outlines of the original framing are a big help.

I had to pull a panel from the plywood stack

The stack is getting smaller and smaller. It’s my overall progress-o-meter. When it’s gone, the project will pretty much be done.

30 minutes later, I finally had the new panel chosen

These are 4′ x 8′ sheets of mahogany plywood, so it’s a challenge moving them around the salon. Fortunately, with my EZ-One tracksaw table, breaking down full sheets in the salon isn’t too difficult. Unfortunately, it appears EurekaZone, the company that made the table, has gone out of business.

Ready to cut the panel

First cut is done

Next I cut the ends

Next I made the solid mahogany end piece

I traced the angle from the original piece to the new lumber

Looks about right

There’s a lot of character in that new mahogany. I think it’ll look great when it’s varnished.

Time to test fit

This end piece will be prominently visible when entering the salon, which is why I wanted it pretty. The other sofa parts aren’t visible and the original wood is in fine condition, so I’ll reuse them.

Test fit checks out

The salon is widest at the mid-point between the aft wall and galley forward bulkhead. So this long settee panel takes a curve to match. A benefit of using the original lower settee frame piece is that Chris Craft’s magicians formed the complex bevel on the back edge so it matches the curve of the side decks that the cabin top and interior panels all follow. It would have taken a while for me to make that from new stock.

Next, I glued and screwed the lower frame to the new back panel

Test fit looks good

Next, I coated the panel with ICA base coat clear urethane

The tape is where I’ll be epoxying the solid mahogany parts that will be visible when the settee is complete. No point in applying ICA there only to have to sand it off when I glue and screw the new parts in place.

Next day, sand the first coat of ICA with 220 grit

2nd coat of ICA base looks good

The panel is ready to install.

Next day, I coated the bond areas with US Composites 635 epoxy

I applied wood flour-thickened 635 epoxy to the solid mahogany cleats

This is very strong glue

Boom

So that’s the first part of this salon settee rebuild. It’s a complicated piece of furniture, and I’m doing some things differently than Chris Craft did. That makes this project even more complicated, but I think it’ll turn out nicely in the end.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Remaking the Salon Settee II

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Salon Cabinet Install

For the foreseeable future, I’ll be posting new things on this blog, but it’ll be a mixture of things I did years ago but never posted and very recent stuff that’s wrapping up aspects of the project that began as much as a decade ago. Longtime readers who find themselves thinking, “wait a minute…I think I’ve seen that before” will be right to a degree. There’s just a lot of stuff that I started on and wrote about but never finished up until much more recently.

Waaaaay back in 2015, I cut some mahogany panels to replace rotten ones we found just under the surface of the original salon cabinetry. Chris Craft didn’t finish the inside of most of the salon cabinetry, so when you opened the gorgeous mahogany cabinet doors, you saw not particularly attractive gray and white paint on plywood or the bitumastic-coated aluminum hull. I decided I wanted attractive cabinet interiors instead. So with the mud dauber screens installed in the engine room air intake vents, it was time to build and install the port interior cabinet box.

In fact, I did all of this work sporadically over the last three years, but it was only days ago that I installed those wasp screens and put a bow on that part of the refit.

I’m going for the same basic look as the original, but without all of the rotten mahogany

The bulkhead behind the stairs and the panels next to the stairs and behind the settee were rotten in spots. Those were the ones I replaced in 2015.

Under the blue plastic, those stairs are gorgeous

You can see the ventilation hose from the aft stateroom air conditioner. With all of the insulation in this boat, I believe the Flagship Marine 12k HVAC unit will be far more than the aft stateroom needs. So I decided to run a vent line to the salon, since that’s where most of the air conditioning challenges are on these boats.

Building the cabinet box on the back-side of the panel I cut in 2015

The idea is that I want the interior of the cabinet to be attractive when the doors are opened. But I also want to be able to remove the cabinet box if necessary, so it will all be held in place with screws that are easily accessible from inside the cabinet but not particularly visible without putting in some effort. At first glance, you open the cabinet doors, and you’ll see pretty mahogany.

The HVAC vent transition box will attach near the top of the panel

The 1″x1″ mahogany cleats that all the panels attach to are glued and screwed in place

I used US Composites epoxy to wet out the back-side of the panel, then added wood flour to make the glue. The screws are applied from the back of the cleats, so there are no bungs on the panel face.

24 hours later, the epoxy is cured

You can see that I left an inch-wide strip around the perimeter of the panel dry. Those are the contact areas where I’ll glue and screw the panel to the new cleats on the floor and the original Chris Craft mahogany joinery that remains in the salon.

New mahogany 1″x1″ panel cleats got glued and screwed to the floor and aft bulkhead

I used 1/4″ marine plywood to seal the edge of the floor to the vertical plywood panels

This is the same approach Chris Craft used to keep engine room smells in the ER

A tight fit is the key to keeping engine smells in the ER

Upper panel cleats are coated with epoxy glued and ready for the panel

Sliding the wetted out panel into position

Clamped in place, then screwed from the back to pull the panel tight to the cleats

That HVAC transition box needed a bit lopped off

Nice!

A bead of caulk will seal the HVAC transition box to the panel

Nice!

Nylon zip ties screwed to the panel will hold the HVAC duct in place

Just like that!

A bead of caulk will ensure no engine room vapors seep through the floor

Give it a nice fillet to smooth it out

Finish off the floor filler pieces with a heavy coat of brown tinted US Composites 635 epoxy

Time to install the cabinet box parts

I left an access panel in case the mud dauber screens need servicing

Just enough clearance for the HVAC hose

But if anybody needs to service or replace that HVAC hose, the cabinet box top comes off with just a few screws from inside the box.

Viewed from down low, you can just see the stainless screw heads holding the box panels in place

At a slightly higher elevation, you can only see a few screws

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Remaking the Salon Settee

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Home Port Trip Follow-up

It’s been great having the boat so close to home and not having to make that awful hour-long drive through Swamp suburban traffic. I’ve been rigging the boat in my new slip, cutting the dock lines to just the right length so when they’re all attached, the boat floats in just the right spot so I don’t need fenders.

But I also found a problem in the bilge: there was a half gallon of diesel floating on top of the water that came in through the shaft logs while we were transiting from the marina in Deale to our current place. After splashing the boat the second time, I had adjusted the shaft logs just to the point that dripping stopped at the marina in Deale. But over the course of the trip, more water was coming in than was necessary to lubricate the shaft packing. Nothing to be concerned about, the bilge pump only came on twice in almost eight hours under way and kept up just fine. And my bilge pumps are designed to leave ~1″ of water in the bilge, so no diesel was pumped overboard.

The first clue I had that something was off was a strong unburned diesel smell in the engine room.

Second clue: starboard injector pump was covered with fuel

Diesel had collected on everything near the starboard injector pump

Diesel accumulated in the bilge

Problem identified: loose injector nut on cylinder #1

When I started the engine, everything looked fine. But when I aimed a bright flashlight toward this injector, I could see fine droplets of diesel spraying from the top of the injector nut. After shutting down the engine, I tightened the nut.

Leaky injector nut resolved

Presumably, the mechanic who sold me these engines loosened the nut to prime the system when I came by to see them run. This is similar to the loose starter bolt I found on the port engine when it wasn’t starting. But fortunately, nothing was harmed by the sloppy workmanship. I pumped most of the diesel from the bilge into a bucket, then floated oil absorbent pads on the water overnight to pick up the rest. This also gave me an excuse to clean the bilge.

While I do that tedious task, I’ll post about things I did previously but never got around to posting. Gotta clear out my camera’s memory card one of these days.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Mud Dauber Screens

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Transiting to Our Home Port!

We made passage from Deale, MD, to Port Tobacco, MD, on Libertarian, our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46, on July 1, 2023, after 4,994 days with the boat in a giant shrink wrap plastic-skinned tent getting refitted.

The 420hp Cummins 6CTAs performed extremely well. The 108 mile trip took 7 hours and 45 minutes, from cast off to first tie-off at our new home port. The gorgeous OEM tachometers are wildly inaccurate, so I can’t say for sure what RPM they were turning. The gorgeous OEM temp and oil pressure gauges, likewise, are obviously not reading accurately, but they were stable for the entire trip. There were no mechanical breakdowns or major issues.

Oil pressure and temp probably weren’t 120psi and 110°, respectively

But they were consistent side-to-side and stable for the whole trip

The Chesapeake Bay was snotty as it can be; we were running south on a rising tide with a southerly breeze, so we saw 1-2’ swells, then white caps, then 2-3” cresting waves, then it got particularly nasty while transiting the confluence of the Patuxent River, forcing us to drop to idle at 6kts. After two hours bobbing through the snot, we were back to 2’ chop with white caps, so I put the sticks forward, got that Roamer hull up on plane and smoothed out the ride by getting on top of the snot.

Lotsa spray when we approached the Patuxent River confluence

The turn onto the Potomac River was fun. Suddenly, the swells we’d been pushing through while heading south turned to beam and then following seas. We’d surf down a swell and stuff the nose gently into the next one, then plow through it and repeat for an hour. The entire boat was very thoroughly leak tested with saltwater coming over the bow…and passed the test. The V-berth portholes saw lots of action, but kept it all on the outside.

By the time we passed Colton’s Point, where we found the Roamer on Purgatory Row of Colton’s Point Marina in December 2007, the Chesapeake’s influence had waned to the point we were just cruising along on the calm Potomac. It’s hard to tell for sure with the inaccurate tachometers, but I believe our comfortable cruising speed was ~1850rpm at 15.5kts for the majority of the trip.

Nice wake at 15.5kts and ~1,850rpm

Now let’s see if I can make a video link work right.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Home Port Trip Follow-up

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Retiring Tent Model XXX’s Alarm System & Depth Sounder Install

A depth sounder is one item that wasn’t on my pre-launch punch list but I feel is essential before leaving port. While I was waiting for the replacement seacock to arrive after my failed Splash Day, I was installing a new sounder head unit and stared for a while at the tangled nest of wiring for Tent Model XXX’s alarm system. I decided to remove all of the associated wiring, sensors, and noisemakers, and that really cleaned up the helm wire chase in the salon.

What a rat’s nest

But the thing is…it worked. I installed the alarm system after the bastard thieves stole many tens of thousands of dollars worth of materials, parts, and tools in 2014. I suspect that the thieves knew the marina and the boat. But once the motion detectors were in place and the tent would light up with strobes, scream alarms, and even an air raid siren if anybody entered the tent or came onboard, the streaming cameras picked up no more nighttime visitors.

Recently, after de-tenting the boat, several people with boats at the marina have come by to offer congratulations. A few have commented that they gave Tent Model XXX a wide berth so-as not to set off the alarms. At night, the LED strobes would absolutely light up the white shrink wrap plastic if anybody strolled too close (<5 ft), with scream alarms going off inside. I didn’t tell them that was intentional, but it kind of was. 🙂

Infra-red motion detector on the left, depth sounder head unit on the right

The alarm system is based on a commonly available car alarm, so all of the inputs (i.e. IR sensors) and outputs, like LED strobes and air raid sirens, are 12v. I used cat5 cable for the long wire runs around  the tent.

Tent Model XXX’s alarm system

I will probably reuse parts of this to alarm the boat once it’s in my home port. Better safe than sorry.

Alarm wiring removed, but it’s still messy

I applied clear shrink tube to the OEM wiring identification stickers

Much better!

Many of the OEM wire ID stickers are unraveling

The shrink tube fixes that problem.

Now, that’s much better…on to the depth sounder

I grew up on the West Coast, where the sea floor drops from tens of feet deep to hundreds pretty quickly, and it doesn’t get shallow again until you get to Hawaii or Asia. When we moved to the East Coast and first bought our 1967 Chris Craft Constellation 52, we were motoring north to DC on the Chesapeake, a mile from shore. On the West Coast, there’d be hundreds of feet of water below us. So I thought that the depth sounder on our new boat was defective, because it kept showing just three to five feet!

Chart? What is “chart”? Who needs a chart when there’s hundreds of feet of water below your keel?!?!

When the sounder alarm went off and indicated one foot of water below the transducer, I happened to turn around and see the chocolate-colored trail we were leaving as we motored through the muddy shallows a mile off-shore.

And that’s when I realized the importance of charts and depth sounders. On the East Coast, don’t go anywhere without both!

Hawkeye head unit should work once it’s in water

The Hawkeye DT2B is the one gauge in my dashboard that doesn’t look even remotely period correct. I considered installing a depth sounder from the era, which show up on ebay frequently, but they’re incompatible with modern transducers. I installed a new transducer in this boat back in 2009, before moving the boat to Deale, MD. So all I had to do was connect the transducer wires to the Hawkeye head unit and give it a 12vdc supply, which I pulled from the starboard ignition switch. I don’t like the plastic factory mount for the depth sounder, so I’ll have to figure out something more attractive. But for the purpose of motoring the boat through the treacherous Chesapeake Bay to my home port on the Potomac River, this will do fine.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Transiting to Our Home Port!