After Jason and I removed the old generator from the back of the boat, we shoved the starboard side cover into the corner and mostly forgot about it.  The generator stuck out into the port side storage locker (called a lazarette on a boat for some reason. I’m sure there’s a whole history about it somewhere…).  The area where the generator sat is mostly empty now except for my new fuel polishing system.  I think we may find something creative to store in here later, but for now it’s just going to get closed up.

While the parents were here, mom lovingly painted the starboard side door for me.  A week ago, I coerced Jason into cutting me a new door for the port side and yesterday I finally got it painted!

The port side is done! The starboard side should be much easier since the cover panel is already painted and the tie downs just have to be screwed back into place!

The starboard door was made to be like 4″ thick for clearance for the generator.  I don’t like it because it doesn’t need to stick out at all, but it’s functional and I don’t need to spend time redoing things like that right now so it gets to stay! I also bought some hooks to hang our dock lines and fenders on, but I’ll have to wait before I put those in place.

As usual, we can’t just focus on one project at a time, so we have a few things we’ve been working on.

Jason finished up installing his solar charge controllers.  Each panel gets its own controller for maximum efficiency!

I bought 50′ more water hose so I can redo some more of the nasty 20 year old water lines in the in boat.  I replaced the galley hot water with new and routed it from deck level where it gets wet and nasty to up about a foot through a different opening.  It’s starting to clear up some of the mess in the main cable run!  I also bought a pack of 10 ball valves, so I could splice one in at each branch of the potable water manifold.  I like being able to isolate water to each service in case I need to work on it!

We’re getting closer to having the engine ready to run!  Today Jason re-wired the relay that powers the starter solenoid. Doesn’t look like much but it’s necessary!

Since the electrical system is now active, we’ve been going through and testing more of the services to see what works and what doesn’t.  About half of our lights don’t work or work poorly and flicker. I pulled all of the lights on the starboard side off of the bulkhead to see what we had to work with… let’s just say it’s not pretty.  Most of the wiring is corroded at the connections, and the fans have been spliced into the lighting power circuit. (which is fine, but it’s not very nicely done). Once I can find some new round overhead lights, I can start rewiring and replacing the living room lights.

This is one of those projects that will make the boat look way better when it’s done and isn’t actually that hard to finish.  I’ll order the rest of the lights that I need when we get back from our weekend trip!