LuckNews!

Towards the end of this article I'll tie it into sailing in a very round about way...but well, its really not a sailing related post.  What do you expect?!  Luckness has been tied to the dock for 4 months now.  I'll get around to sailing again at some point here...


Seattle in the winter is coldish and rainy.  Lots of grey skies.  This makes for an ideal environment for staying inside and being creative once you get tired of reading books one after the other.  If you're a retired software developer with lots of time on your hands, with access to a speedy internet connection, and you have access to a high quality free development environment for the laptop you have (my MacBook Pro) and happen to have an idea for an application...you might as well do some programming!  That's what I've been doing for the last little while.

I've been playing around with computers and programming since I was in high school, which was a long time ago.  I spend 20 years as a professional software developer.  In all that time, I have never had an application that I wrote be published.  Many apps that I contributed to were published of course, which was useful as that was how my salary was paid all those years.  But I could never point at a program and say: "Look, I made that!"  Well now I can.  Look!  I created an application!  Its called LuckNews and was just published on the Apple App Store!  Check it out!

The little story behind the app is that...  I upgraded my Mac to Mountain Lion (10.8) a few months ago and found that the blogs that I had been reading through the Mail program were no longer working.  Apple had dropped support for RSS feeds from Mail and Safari in Mountain Lion.  I went to the App Store to look for an app to read the blogs and bought one and tried it out.  I didn't like it, so bought a second.  I didn't like that one, so I bought a third.  I didn't like that one either.  I didn't try them all and there may be a kick-ass amazing blog reader on the App Store that would have done just what I wanted...but hey, I'm a software developer with time on my hands so I decided to write my own.

I hadn't programmed since I retired from Alias/Autodesk before leaving on my first cruise.  I had forgotten how much fun programming can be, it can be an incredibly addictive and engaging activity - especially when you get to work on what you want to, not what someone else wants you to work on.  I've had a lot of fun creating this app.

Version 1.0 is ready for consumption.  I have a list of things I'll be adding to it over the next little while, but what's there is usable I think.

The app only works on Mac's and only on those mac's running version 10.8 (Mountain Lion) or higher.  (There is nothing higher as I write this, but at some point there will be...)  Its cheap!  Its simple.  It comes without documentation of any kind and no built in help.  If you have a number of RSS or Atom news feeds that you read, I sure hope you can figure out how to get the app to read them.

As an added bonus, if you recently upgraded to Mountain Lion and had been reading RSS news feeds in Mail and are annoyed that you can no longer do that, you may be wondering what happened to all those news subscriptions?  As long as you didn't do a clean install of the OS, they are still around and LuckNews can get them back for you.  Use the 'Import Subscriptions..." menu entry and follow what I hope is an easy set of steps to get them back.


And the sailor connection I promised is...a little lame.  LuckNews allows you to control how long you retain blog articles, including keeping them around forever.  I have a few blogs I follow that I've switched into this mode, for the rest I let their articles expire naturally.  LuckNews also allows you to read the downloaded articles when you have no internet connection.  So if you're a sailor, at sea or at anchor without an internet connection and want to be able to read old blog articles, you can use LuckNews to do that.  I'll be adding a few features to make it more sailor friendly in the future, unless I decide to get out and start sailing again in which case my software development may have run out...

Enjoy!  Or ignore, as the case may be.

Later eh.

Newly Salted

Carol and Livia on Estrellita 5.10b have a number of web sites. They left the PNW around the same time I did, mid to late 2011, made their way down the coast to Mexico, crossed to the South Pacific and spent a season exploring that area.  They have a blog which describes their adventures, its good reading.  They also have two other web sites, which publish interviews.  One site publishes interviews with cruisers who have been cruising outside of their home country for more than two years, and a second site publishes interviews with cruisers not meeting that criteria - cruisers who are Newly Salted.  They invited me to publish an interview on Newly Salted.  The procedure is, I post here, they review my post and if they choose, they post it on Newly Salted.  Here goes...

Hi.  I'm Craig McPheeters.  I'm an early 50's single man who was raised on the prairies far away from the ocean.  I moved to Seattle from Toronto in 1996 and started enjoying the ocean in various ways.  After Sea Kayaking for a number of years, I started sailing in 2006 and still remember approaching a sailboat for the first time and being a little overwhelmed by all the lines, wires and apparent complexity that there was to figure out.  I figured it out, going through the Windworks sailing program pretty quickly.  I bought my Pacific Seacraft 37, Luckness, in 2009.  Luckness arrived without a lot of equipment and I started outfitting her for coastal cruising in the PNW.  In 2010 I started outfitting her for offshore cruising.  In early 2011 I retired from my job as a software developer which I had held for 20 years, sold my house and moved onboard.  On September 1st 2011 I left to go cruising, single handed.  I had a one year plan which I thought of as an initial trial.  I had a lot to test out in this year.  My plan was to sail a triangle: Seattle down the coast to Mexico, Mexico to Hawaii and finally Hawaii back to Seattle.  I thought that if all that went well, I would continue the cruising lifestyle with an open ended trip.  That brings my story up to date with where I am now, in Seattle, working on the odd boat project, waiting for summer to arrive so I can leave and head south again.

You can follow my adventure on my blog.  Feel free to contact me with any comments or questions.

Luckness in Neah Bay after returning from Hawaii

Why did you decide to cruise?

I had reached a point in my life where I was asking myself the question: are you working to live or living to work?  I needed a change and this change seemed to be about as dramatic as I could imagine.  Cruising also seemed to be a sustainable new lifestyle, something that if I enjoyed it I could spent years and years doing.  I was attracted to the possibilities, the freedom each day could bring, the variety, the people I would meet along the way and the adventure of traveling around by sailboat.

Is there a place you visited you wish you could have stayed longer?
I was only out for 12 months, split pretty evenly between the west coast of the USA, Mexico and Hawaii.  If I could rearrange those 12 months I would spent more time in Mexico.  From my experience so far, Mexico is a cruisers paradise.  You are welcomed where you go, the country I saw (the Southern Baja Peninsula) was absolutely beautiful, its warm, sunny.  Hawaii was not nearly as cruiser friendly in comparison, although I met great people there and had some good times.

Tell me your favorite thing about your boat

There are so many things to like about this boat.  She sails well, moving in light air as well as gracefully handling heavy weather and larger seas.  She is very well built, does not creak or groan while moving   through larger seas and tracks well.  She's also a pretty boat, Crealock really nailed this design - she's pleasing to the eye.  I have no regrets about my choice.

Tell me your least favorite thing about your boat 

Having a canoe stern, I lose a lot of interior volume compared to wider stern boats, so storage can be a challenge.  (I feel a little conflicted saying that as I have friends on a Dana 24 who are getting by with much less storage, extremely well, so space may be something you can make do with what you have but you always wish for more.)  Also backing up in close quarters can be nerve wracking - I love going forward in this boat. Backwards, not so much.

 
What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?

I have a few favorites. AIS is fantastic. I have a VesperMarine AIS receiver which also has an anchor watch mode that I use while I'm at rest. Its the best anchor watch I've seen and having a very low power consumption dedicated AIS receiver has been fantastic. I'll be upgrading this before I leave this summer to a VespeMarine AIS transceiver as I want to transmit as well.  I have a small Katadyn water maker which was an easy install, does not occupy too much of my limited storage space and has been reliable.  I would run it every day to make water as it only creates 1.5 gallons/hour - but water makers are happiest being run frequently.  I have enough solar power to power the boat if the days are sunny, indefinitely (2x135watts.)  My chart plotter is a couple of generations old (Simrad NX45) but is very low power, drawing only 0.75amps with the backlight on full, meaning I can leave it on full time while moving.  My sails are fantastic, made by Carol Hasse and her merry crew.  I have an Iverson's dodger which is super strong with lots of very firm hand holds making moving into and out of the cockpit in heavy weather much safer than what I used to have.  I have a Rocna 20 anchor which I've been really happy with - it sets quickly, holds well and seems to reset quickly when necessary as well.  My Watch Commander timer is an essential piece of gear to enforce my sleep patterns on passages.

How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad?

I experienced two gales, one off the Oregon coastline, which seems pretty standard when leaving the PNW heading south. The winds reached 38 knots with the seas maybe 15+ feet. I hove to for almost a day as the conditions south of where I was appeared to be worse from the weather information I was receiving. That wasn't pleasant, but the boat felt fine and I didn't worry - there were far worse gales that season other boats were caught in off that coast.  The second gale was as a Norther raced down the Sea of Cortez while I was trying to head up to La Paz from Cabo San Lucas. Sockdolager, Clover and I ended up anchored off of Muertes for around a week, through Christmas 2011. That was fine too - the anchor held without budging and if I had dragged anchor I would have been blown to sea (not onto a shore or another boat, which would have been nerve wracking.)  Aside from those two times, all the rest of my sailing had winds of less than 30 knots, I had some really nice sailing over those 12 months.  There were some strong winds in Hawaii between the islands or several times while at anchor, but not into the gale category while I was there.

What type of watch schedule do you normally use while offshore?

This depends on where I am and how long the trip is. As I am single handing, I was always on watch...however, I wasn't always awake. I was normally never close to shore (less than 30 miles) for more than a day. That is, on my hops down the coast to Mexico, if I was going any distance I would arrange to be farther offshore so I could sleep more easily at night.  My sleep schedule is to never sleep more than 20 minutes, and I have an alarm (a Watch Commander) which enforces this.  I kept to this sleep schedule for all of my passages, the longest of which was 21 days from Hawaii to Neah Bay.  I was able to put up with this schedule, although I was always very happy to arrive at anchor and be able to sleep soundly through a night.  If the trip I'm on is not too long (no more than roughly 30 hours) or close to potential traffic, I'll won't sleep at all - but obviously this only works for shorter trips.  If the trip was long enough, I would plan it in a way that I could sleep in 20 minute intervals somewhere along the way.

Finish this sentence. "Generally when I am provisioning..."

...I buy too much. So far all my trips have started from a port which had lots of provisions available to me, and I would find myself loading up on goods to ridiculous amounts.  I would be going through 'what if...' scenarios constantly and find myself walking by a grocery store and stop in and load up, again and again.

What is your biggest lesson learned?

That a prairie boy can do this! You don't need to have been born on the water into a family which has sailing in its blood back for generations. That might help, but if you dedicate yourself to learning everything that is required, you too can go cruising. Buy lots of books, take lots of classes, listen to smart experienced people every chance you get, get out and gain your own experience. Its working for me, which is still a little surprising sometimes.

What do you find the most exciting about your cruising life?

I just love the life of possibilities you have when cruising. You are constantly presented with choices which can alter your future in meaningful ways. The people I met during the year I was out were fantastic and one of the best things about my experience.  I also found cruising very satisfying - every now and then I would be out in some remote anchorage or on passage reflecting on where I was, how I had gotten there, being astounded at how beautiful the area was and how centered and present I felt.

Its not all "beautiful sunsets and cocktails in the cockpit" - this life can be a lot of work at times, from what I've seen of it so far.  But the rewards so far outweigh the other loses and costs.

I'm looking forward to starting my cruising adventure again this summer as I leave Seattle heading toward New Zealand via Mexico.

Another project done: head plumbing

Yet another boat project post.  Sorry, no pictures of warm, blue, inviting water.  If you're interested in those stories, please look back to my travels last year for some beautiful blue warm waters.  Or better yet, read one of the blog's from people out there now, such as Sockdolager, Estrellita 5.10b, Swell or Alex and Taru.

Also, note that I use this blog as a way of keeping track of my records so that if I need to refer back to how I approached some project I did in the past, I have a record of its details handy.  I don't expect everybody to be as fascinated by these stories as I am.  With that said, onward.


While I was preparing to leave Hawaii one of the last things I did was to ensure that my head Y-valve was moving freely.  The Y-valve is used to direct the head's 'black water' to either the holding tank or to a seacock in the hull so that it can go directly to the ocean.  While on passages, I have the head pump directly offshore rather than into the holding tank.  So, I was going through my departure checklist and went to make sure the Y-valve could move.  Much to my surprise, the Y-valve's handle broke off in my hand as I tested diverting it from the holding tank to offshore.  After swearing is surprise, and then swearing some more, I realized that fixing this little incident was going to be rather painful but that it could safely be left to much later.  Well, that much later started a couple of weeks ago and just finished.

Look Ma, no handle!

(Note that the picture above was taken after removing the hose clamps which are normally there.  I realized at the last minute that I almost missed an opportunity to amaze my readers with an incredible project photo and snapped it during disassembly.)

For avid readers of this blog, you may recall how much I enjoyed removing the original head hose and installing the hose that has been in the boat for the last couple of years, as described in this old post.

The general layout related to this project is shown below.

The black water runs from the head up the hose at the back on the left to a vented loop, then down to the top of the Y-valve and either down to the left to the holding tank or to the right directly to the ocean.  The vented loop is below.

Vented loops need to be installed high.  One of the problems with the installation I had was that the vented loop was installed high in the cabinet behind the head beneath the cap-rail, which also turned out to be behind the ducting for my forced air furnace.  Its location meant that the vented loop was pretty much inaccessible.  You'll notice on the picture above that the vented loop has a removable cap on the right.  This cap contains a little valve that should be cleaned and inspected periodically.  You can guess how often this happened in my installation.  The valve failed sometime last year and as a result I would now and then get black water escaping out of the vented loop and dribbling down an adjacent hose.  This wasn't a pretty sight.

A second more subtle problem with the previous installation is in the hose from the Y-valve to the holding tank.  It heads down from the Y-valve and then up again to the entry to the holding tank.  This loop of hose would pretty much constantly contain black water from the head as it is 'uphill' to the holding tank inlet.  I've since read that its much better if the plumbing can be self-draining, that is all of the hoses are normally empty.  If you can design the system this way the hose will remain odor free longer.

So, similar to the sink project, I wasn't sure how I was going to solve all of the related issues, but the first step is to rip out what I had so that I could make progress.  Since the hose I had previously installed fit so snuggly onto all of the different hose barbs and inlets I had to cut the hose off.  Doing this meant that I couldn't reuse any of the old hose.  So I cut the hose off, pulled the vented loop down and freed it as well.  At this point I could verify that the vented loop was the cause of the black-water-dribbling problem and that the valve had completely failed.

I wanted the vented loop to be more easily maintainable and the only way I could think of solving that was to make it easily accessible, and only place I could picture that happening was outside of the cabinet, external and visible.  I didn't like this so much as I thought it would be ugly but in the end, I chose Function over Form and now that its all done I see the beauty inherent in an easily maintainable system.  This decision meant that I would need to drill two large holes in the counter top - it was a bit of a Bold Move.

The proposed area, without any holes drilled yet

Before drilling any holes I needed to decide how large to drill them.  The hose I had been using was Sealand Odor Safe Plus, and it is a bear to work with.  I just hated the idea of working with it again, its very stiff and extremely difficult to get onto all the different fittings it needs to fit onto.  Also once its on you have to cut it off, and it would be much better if the hose could be removed every few years and pounded on a dock somewhere to remove the scale which builds up inside it.  I did some reading and discovered that there seem to be two leading sanitation hoses - the one I had used last time and Trident 101 sanitation hose.  They both have a 5 year warranty against odor failure which shows both manufactures are pretty confident in their product.  I found some of this hose at Fisheries Supply and bought a 3 foot segment.  It was very bendable and fit onto all of the various inlets and hose barbs easily.  I decided to use the Trident hose and having worked with it now, would chose it over the Odorsafe hose every time.  The outside diameter of the Trident hose is larger than the hose I had been using.  I found a larger hose which had an inside diameter that would hold the Trident 101 and bought a short segment of this to be used as a chafe guard.  Time to start drilling.

First hole cut

which eventually lead to:

Two holes and chafe guards

To mount the vented loop above the two holes I had drilled, I needed a mounting plate.  I had some teak from a previous project, so I cut a square of it and shaped it into a triangle that the vented loop would fit onto.  I teak oiled the wood, drilled the mounting holes in the wood and then used 3M 4200 to bond the teak to the wall.  I used 1" nylon spacers to hold the vented loop slightly off of the teak.  From here on its simply a matter of fitting the hose, cutting it, re-fitting and clamping.  This last part went very quickly.  Or it would have gone very quickly if I had planned a little better and had enough clamps of the proper size (larger than the old clamps were) and had decided on the best routing of the hose before cutting (oops,) it actually took me a leisurely 3 days to finish up.

My new beautiful vented loop.  Look how easy it will be to maintain!

Behind the head I changed the geometry of where the Y-valve was mounted and have a setup in which all the hoses that could possibly self-drain, do self-drain.

You may notice that the Y-valve is no longer mounted at all.  I tried to mount it in its old location on the hull but the hose just wasn't making it easy.  The hose from the vented loop through the counter top to the top of the Y-valve just wasn't going to bend into place and the hose from the Y-valve to the holding tank inlet would be uphill again.  The three hoses the Y-valve is clamped to are all sturdy and pretty inflexible.  It turns out that the Y-valve doesn't need to be mounted to the hull or a wall - the Y-valve is fixed well in place even though that place is not attached to anything except hose.

Also notice that the hose leading to the holding tank is short and self-draining, and that the one from the valve to the ocean heads slightly down.  When working on boat projects its useful to develop a different aesthetic than normal - I look at the picture above and think: That's Beautiful!

The last thing I could point out, if you ever plan to do this yourself, note the routing of the hose up to the vented loop - it was originally in front of the valve-holding tank hose and after staring at it for a moment I decided I didn't like it there and ripped it out, bought five more feet of hose and re-routed it.  I did this to give more space for storage.

The valve I'm using is a Bosworth BM95 Sea-lect Y-Valve.  It's much beefier than my old valve.  The handle is made of epoxy coated aluminum.  This new handle is not going to break off in my hand like the old one did.

Every now and then someone asks me what I learned Out There cruising for a year and I kind of shrug my shoulders and say 'this and that' not really knowing how to answer the question.  Here's something I learned!  When its possible to make your boat more maintainable, do so.  My choice to make the vented loop more maintainable added cost, possibly made my head uglier and made the project more difficult.  But I'm glad I did it.  Having a working vented loop is important and my previous setup wasn't maintainable.

One of these days I'll get back to sailing, but not just yet.  More to do.  If this concerns you, don't let it, I'm having fun in Seattle but at the same time looking forward to taking off again next summer.

[Ok, at the start of this post I said that I write these up as a record keeping exercise.  Clearly, once I get started I just can't shut up!]

Raising the galley sink in a Pacific Seacraft 37 by 3 inches

Here is another post some other Pacific Seacraft 37 owners might be interested in.

My 1990 PSC 37 has had a double sink in the galley which is 10 inches deep.  Deep sinks are nice.  However the water line on my boat had risen by a little over an inch as I was outfitting her for cruising, and the water line ended up above the bottom of the sink.  With the sink drain seacock opened, at rest, both sinks would contain roughly 1/2" of water.  My solution to this has been to close the seacock and use the sink macerator to drain the sink.  This was working, although it was pretty annoying.  It would also stop working when the macerator failed, and it is bound to fail at some point.  During the year I was out cruising, having to drain the sink by turning on the macerator was something that bugged me and I wanted to fix it.

In early September I started in on the project to fix the sink.  I had been looking around for a new sink I could replace mine with, but which was only 8" deep.   I couldn't find a new sink with the same length and width dimensions, but with a shallower depth.  I phoned a local sheet metal shop and spoke to them about the possibility of having them cut my sink and re-weld it so it was 2 1/2" shallower.  They said this was possible, depending the metal's condition, but that it would cost roughly $1000.  I didn't ever get an official estimate, just the "over the phone" one so maybe when they saw it in person it would have been less.

I knew I wanted the sink problem fixed, I wasn't sure how I would fix it but the first step was definitely to get the sink out of the counter and then to proceed.  So I started on that part.

A 'before' picture.  The sink installed in the counter.

I had felt around beneath the sink and found 5 bolts under the sink lip (middle of front edge, both front corners and middle of both sides,) beneath the counter top which I needed to remove.  I thought that once those bolts were removed that the sink would come out pretty easily.  I removed the bolts and started tugging on the sink and it wasn't budging at all.  I found that there was a solid seal of silicone between the sink and the counter.  I needed to cut the seal between the sink and counter all the way around the sink before it would come out.  This would be easy on one of the four sides, as it had mostly open access and I could slide a sharp putty knife between the sink and counter to cut the silicone.  However the back and front of the sink were adjacent to teak fiddles, and the right side of the sink was beside a teak fiddle I had had installed to stop water draining into the garbage compartment and was also hard to access.  It took some experimentation, and swearing, to figure out how to get the sink out.  I ended up cutting a narrow wedge out of some hardwood I had around.  I slid this wedge under the lip of the sink on the back left corner, and then pounded the wedge along the back, left to right which was tearing the silicone seal as the wedge advanced.  The wedge needs to be narrow enough to fit behind the main mixing outlet in the center of the sink.  Once two edges were free, I kept using the wedge to free the other two sides and what I thought would be a 20 minute project was finished within a couple of days.

Some of the tools for removing the sink.  I'm holding the wood wedge

(Ignore the sink orientation in the two photos's above.  By the time I remembered to get the camera out the sink was out and into the hole in the counter many times and I wasn't worrying about it being backwards.)

The underside of the sink.  The metal was a little rusty, but basically in good shape.

The sink had a little surface corrosion and I removed it all using a metal polish (BriteBoy.)  Once this was done I saw the sink was in pretty good shape still.

I returned to the problem of how to proceed.  At this point, I felt I had four options:

1. Take the sink to the sheet metal shop and have them cut 2 1/2" out of its middle, reweld and reinstall.
2. Buy a new sink.  This would have different dimensions, so it would involve filling the hole in the counter with marine plywood, fiberglassing it in, grinding to blend, gelcoating to match the existing surface, and then recutting a hole for the sink I bought.
3. Raise the sink by building a frame around the hole in the counter top and mounting the sink on this frame.
4. Go back to using the macerator.  Put a bead of silicone around the counter top lip and put the sink back in and forget about this whole project.

#4 had its attractions.  The problem with #1 was that if it didn't work, I would be left choosing #2.  #2 was going to be challenging.  Also the more I considered buying a new shallower sink the more I realized that I liked having a deeper sink.  There are lots of reasons why a deep sink is a good idea on a sailboat.

The attraction to the third option was that if I tried to build a frame to raise the sink and it didn't work out, I could then proceed by picking one of the other three options.  I decided this option was the least risky and could potentially result in the best outcome, so its what I proceeded to work on.

I have never been very skilled working with wood.  The corners of frames I had built in the past rarely met at 90 degrees.  The sides were often different lengths and generally the quality was not high.  I started by buying some cheap wood, 3" high and 1" wide by many feet long.  I would build a frame out of the cheap wood as practice.  I also bought a compound saw which allowed me to more easily cut any angle out of the wood I needed (90 and 45 being what I needed.)  So I measured many times, figured out on paper the geometry of what I wanted to build, and started cutting and glueing the parts together.  I decided that the corners of the frame would be two 1" pieces of wood glued together.  The sides would then meet these corners.  The corners had enough material that I could cut holes out of them, round their edges and work with them to get what I needed.

The sink on one of the temporary corner blocks, seeing how the sink looked being higher

I cut the corners pieces, glued them in pairs and then supported the sink on them to see how the sink looked being 3" off the counter top.  It looked a bit strange, but wasn't a show stopper.  I continued with the cheap wood building the frame and figured out that my first approach of joining all the pieces together using clamps wasn't going to work.  I couldn't hold the frame together accurately enough in order to let the glue dry and have the frame be square.  I then figured out that building a jig would be a better approach and bought some plywood, a 2x4 for the jig and started hammering and nailing.  Before I knew it, several days had gone by without my taking any more pictures, but here is where I ended up eventually.

The teak frame in its jig

After working with the cheaper wood I found the approach was going to work, so I bought the real wood.  I bought a teak plank at a lumber store close to the marina.  The plank was 1" x 6" and 5 feet long for $120.  Ouch.  I had them cut the plank into two 3" strips.  At this point I just replicated what I had done with the cheaper wood (which had also been the same size.)  Teak was much easier to work with as the hardwood wasn't warped at all, so I was able to cut more accurately and have all the pieces fit together more exactly.

I decided to use epoxy to fit the pieces together, rather than screws.  Two of the corner pieces would end up having large holes cut through them, so I couldn't use screws in those pieces anyway.  Since the frame would end up being bolted to the counter, the epoxy strength would end up being needed initially but not so much once the counter was installed as by then the frame is being held in place by many bolts.  Or at least this was my decision.

So, cut the corner pieces.  They end up being long rectangles (not the shape yet as in the picture above with the corners cut to a point.) Epoxy and clamp them.  After the epoxy dries, put everything in the jig and see how it all fits.  Adjust the pieces and the jig until everything is nice and tight, with right angles everywhere.  You have a choice here which corners go where and how their grain is oriented - try to make pleasing choices.  Its also a good idea now to put some tape or paper down on the jig so that when you start epoxying you don't accidentally epoxy the frame to the jig... When you're sure the dry fit is working well, make up a bunch of epoxy and carefully epoxy everything together.  Make sure to get enough epoxy along all the joins so that when you start cutting into the wood you don't find places which have no epoxy.  You might want to do this in two batches, but don't be too slow as its nice to be able to adjust everything as you progress.

Once the epoxy was dried, I used my fein tool to cut the corners into the shapes you see in the picture above.  Don't cut flush with the side boards yet, just cut fairly close.  Use a small plane to get the corners and sides to meet flush.  At this point you should have something that looks like the piece above.

I cut the five bolts off from under the sink lip so that it would sit flush on the frame, and put the frame and sink onto the counter top.

At this point, you can start to get a better feel for how its all going to look when its finished, and I was starting to like it.  I'm 6 feet tall, and with the sink 3" higher, its easier to work with for me now.  I hadn't expected that but it was a nice side benefit.

At this point the frame probably isn't sitting on the counter solidly.  My frame would rock a little side to side.  I got my plane out and started to plane the bottom of the frame in the areas that needed it to have the frame sit flush.  I then planed the top of the frame to clean it up and have the sink sit on it flush as well.  I had bought a 12" x 24" x 1/4" piece of acrylic to use as a back spash and tried to push it between the frame and the rear teak fiddle, and it wouldn't fit.  So I planed some wood out of the lower front edge of the frame until it came forward enough that the acrylic was fitting tightly.  By now you can figure out where the frame needs to be with respect to the counter top and you can start drilling the holes to hold it onto the counter top.

I used 14, 10x24 bolts which were 2 1/2" long.  I marked where I wanted the bolts (four along each long edge, three along each short edge) and drilled a hole large enough to hold the bolt head, but only down a little over an inch into the frame.  I then drilled holes through these larger ones through the remaining frame and the counter top.  Do this once, then put the bolt in that hole to lock the frame in place at that location.  Then drill a hole in an opposite side and again drop the bolt in place.  Do this a few times and the frame should end up being held tightly - then drill the remaining holes.

Ok, so now the project is starting to come together.

At this point I started to round the frame corners off.  My approach here was to use my fein tool to cut a number of straight cuts across the corners close to, but not right up to a circle I had drawn on the wood at each corner.  The cuts only approximate the shape you want, I used coarse sandpaper to sculpt the wood into its final shape, removing material until I was close and then starting to progress to finer grits. I started with 50 grid and moved along to 200 eventually.  This was a pretty forgiving process, as long as you don't over cut the wood initially.

Then I started to cut holes into two of the corners to fit the water spouts that the foot pumps (fresh and salt water) are connected to.  I put the frame back in the counter, placed a few bolts in it to position it correctly and then drew in a circle from under the counter outlining where the existing holes were in the counter for the spouts.  I then used a hole saw to cut these holes.  The trick is that you don't want to drill entirely through the frame.  The spout will end up mounted in the frame and needs some of the teak between the spout base and the sink itself.  So use the hole saw for a measured distance, and then use a fein tool and wood chisel to open up and enlarge the space.  Test putting the spout into the hole created and adjust with the chisel until its working.

The start of a water spout base hole in one of the corners.  Working from the bottom

The second hole, offset a little, and taken further. 

A test fit of the water spout base through the frame.

I ended up enlarging the water spout hole through the counter top to match the hole in the frame.  This allows the water spout base to be easily removed in the future if this is necessary (the whole spout base can be pulled by the hose down through the frame to beneath the sink.)

So, at this point the sink frame is starting to be finished.  The sink was originally attached to the counter top using five bolts.  However the bolts on the sink were too short to be used for this purpose anymore. So I cut them off with a dremel tool cutting disc and cleaned up the remaining bolt base with a wire brush attachment on the dremel.  I bought five weld mount female stud bases for some 10x24 threaded rod I bought.  Weldmount is a system of attaching various bases and pads to a variety of material using a strong epoxy.  I had used it in the past and the attachments end up being very strong and its easy to work with.  I cut an edge out of the five stud bases so they would fit closer to the sink edge, cleaned everything with acetone, marked on the sink approximately where I wanted the bases, and then epoxied the bases to the sink.  I then put the sink back on top of the frame and marked where the bases ended up.  You want to make sure a stud base doesn't happen to coincide with one of the holes holding the frame to the counter top.  Mark on the frame where the stud bases are, then drill holes in the frame to accommodate the wider stud base diameter, and then go to a smaller drill bit to drill through the frame and counter top for the 10x24 threaded rod.

A mounted stud base with the threaded rod

Now you have a way to mount the sink into the frame.  Its time to start to reassemble the sink.  I installed the mixer spout back into the sink.  I re-used the mixer that I had.  I bought new compression rings, installed the mixer and then installed the pipe to hose connections back onto the pipe.

As the sink had been covered in a light crust of rust when I first pulled it out, I covered its underside with a light coat of Corrosion X HD.  This step is optional I think, but I had some so used it.

At this point, try dry fitting all the remaining pieces together.  One of the remaining tricks is to test the installation of the water spout bases and the spouts on top.  I found that I had to adjust the location of the base ring, which determines how many threads of the spout base are present above the sink top, several times in order to get a tight lock between the spout top and base.  Try this.  Put the sink in the frame, put the spout base in its location, install the top of the spout and screw the spout locking bolt to the base.  It should end up tight.  It took me a few tries on each corner to get it right.  Then I used loctite to lock the base plate where it ended up.

If you haven't done it  yet, do all your fresh water plumbing now.  All of the old hoses are too short by 3" so replace them with new hose.  Attach the hose to the spout bases under the sink.  (The spout tops aren't yet installed so the sink can be removed still.)


The other part of this whole puzzle is the drain.  I wasn't happy with the drain that had been installed in the sinks.  The strainer portion was made of chrome covered steel and was starting to rust.  The attachment of the drain plumbing to the sink strainers was also a little ad-hoc.  It was strong enough but difficult to work with.  I had already replaced the drains once when I first bought the boat and found working with the drain system difficult.  I looked around for alternatives and found the Scandvik line.  I bought two of their sink strainers along with two elbows, a 'T' and a straight piece.  It was easy to work with and has ended up resulting in a nice installation.  The one downside of Scandvik is that their sink strainers are larger than the hole I had in my sink - by 1/16".  I enlarged the two holes using my dremel with a cylindrical piece of grit attached - it took a while but the two strainers ended up fitting perfectly.  The scandvik system is nice as all their parts work well together.  Also the part beneath the strainer mates to the sink underside so that the strainer ends up 'inside' the wet part of the plumbing.  This means there is no need for any sealant between the drain strainer and the sink itself.  If you go this route you'll understand.

So, assemble the drain parts.  Do a dry fit and find the proper lengths for all the parts and pieces so that the sink strainers fit naturally under the sink.  I went for a little tension pushing the strainer bases up against the sink bottom, but not too much.  This involved cutting the 1 1/2" hose connecting the drain parts to the drain seacock and test fitting.  I used 3M 4200 on all the plumbing connections except for the hose connections.  I sealed the strainer base to the elbow and the 'T' to the straight section, but did not seal the elbow's to the 'T' at this point as I wanted to be able to rotate the drains easily still.

Test fit everything again and make sure everything is present and working together.

At this point I took the teak frame out again.  I wanted to silicone seal the teak frame to the counter top. So I ran a bead of silicone around the counter edge and put the frame down again.  Install the 14 bolts tightly, using washer, lock washer and nut.

Now you need to fasten the sink to the frame finally.  I applied a very large bead of silicone around the frame top and then put the sink down into the frame for the final time.  At this point you need to do three things at once.  Mount the water spout tops and screw them down to their bases.  This will pull two of the sink corners down to the frame.  You also want to fasten the five bolts to the threaded rod attached to the sink that are beneath the counter top lip.  As you fasten these bolts the sink should be pulled down into the silicone and squish it out.  You also need to clean up the silicone around the sink lip that has squeezed out as it cures within 5 minutes and if you leave it too long it is more difficult to clean up.  I had practiced putting the five washers/lock washers and nuts on the threaded rod earlier and found a system of holding the washer and nut that worked fairly well - but the area you're working in is very constrained and its difficult to get a little wrench in there to tighten the nuts up.  I used a ratcheting wrench with a little success, but ended up taking longer than five minutes and most of the silicone was curing.  I ended up pulling a little silicone out of the sink lip area and trying to clean it up the next day by applying a fresh bead and cleaning it up immediately.  This worked ok.  At this point I left everything to cure overnight.

Attach the water hoses to the hot/cold mixer.  Its easier to do now than after the drain is installed.

Now attach the drain.  I applied a bead of 4200 around the top of the sink strainer bases and then rotated them up into position and attached the sink strainers which screw into the bases.  Cleanup the squeezed out 4200 as you go.

Apply 4200 to the area between the elbow's and 'T', clamp them together.

The final piece I worked on was the acrylic backsplash.  I cut it so that it fit behind the frame between the corner pieces.  I then made it shorter than 12" as I found that if it was too tall it made getting out of the settee forward of the sink more difficult if I can't reach over and grab the pole beneath the cabinet over the sink.  Try it out.  I rounded the edges off by putting a tupperware container approximately the right size up and drawing it off.  I then cut straight sections out with my fein tool and used rough grit sandpaper to finish to a smoothly rounded corner just as I had done with the teak corners of the frame.

The 'after' picture

I've been living with the new sink setup for a few weeks now.  Its excellent.  It drains now!  I admit for those of you who have sinks which drain, this might all seem like a lot of work.  It was.  But its done now, and I can move onto something else.

-----------------------

Update Nov 25/2012:

I was asked for the scandvik parts list.  I used:

•  two 1 1/2" threaded sink drain.  I used the version without the strainer as it wasn't as deep.  The version with the strainer had the base of the drain lower (toward the water line) than the version without.
• two 1 1/2" pipe elbow, one 1 1/2" T-Pipe, one straight pipe.