This was the second major project I tackled and so far the most fun.

When we bought the boat the cabin interior was pretty rotted out from what appeared to be a lot of water in the cabin from either a partial flooding or simply sitting in the yard for an extended period of time. After some thorough investigating it was determined that the best way to restore the cabin was to rip everything out and start from the bare hull.

Once everything was ripped out and the rebuild began I realized that this was going to be the one part of the boat where I could actually be a carpenter! Below are some steps and pointers to the project.

V-Berth

Steps:

1. I removed everything and decided to start from a bare hull
2. I SAVED ALL V-Berth pieces, head, and nav station boards...tp use them as templates
3. CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN
4. I found that it really helped to round off sharp edges, lips etc. Boats...especially old boats are not plumb or equal in anyway...I tried to make as many straight edges as I could to help install the new construction.
5. Sand all areas smooth and re-clean the hull etc
6. In this boat the v-berths were made out of 1/4 inch plywood with 1/2x1/2 pine joiners
7. The new v-berths are constructed out of 3/4 inch plywood and 1x3's that I ripped down the middle to be 1x1.5 strips
8. To save some time I utilized the old v-berth sections and traced them onto the new plywood. I used a table saw for the large cuts and a jig saw to cut out the gaps for the stringers. These gaps were cut larger than the stringers to allow for the v-berth lockers to drain out into the bilge for when I spill my captain and coke ;)
9. The v-berths are joined at the v with a 3inch pine board beveled on each edge
10. The v -berth panels are secured in place to the bilge by stainless steel screws through the fiberglass lips that the panels slip behind.
11. The pine strips are secured with screws into the top of the panels, as is the 3 inch board. This completes the sides
12. The top of the berths are a 3 piece construction of the two sides and one front piece
13. On this boat there is a bulkhead that runs in front of the v-berth and when enclosed by the v-berth top holds ballast in the very front and foam floatation above
14. I attached more pine strips to the bulkhead to give the plywood tops more support and a better anchoring points
15. The side panels are not pure rectangles...nothing is on a boat!.....they are more of a trapezoid or some similar geometric shape and of course the other side is not the same shape or measurements!
16. I measured the distance from the rear support to the above mentioned stringer and then did the same measurement on the side that runs against the hull. This sides measurements truly depend on the distance from the v-berth side panel to the hull rather than from rear support to the stringer since as I said before...the hull is never a perfect curve.
17. The top panels are attached to the pine strips and screwed up to fiberglass lips along the hull.
18. As for the front top panel....measure from the widest point, the middle point and the top then attach just as the other top panels....if you need more instructions...email me.

The next part of the cabin restoration was removal of the shelves.

1. Unscrew them

Next- Removed all though hulls and seacocks

The seacock/through hull for the head discharge had seized so bad I had to cut it in half to get it out of the hull. As far as seacock bedding....a little tip.....if you use plywood rings or squares etc....seal them with polyurethane or resin...mine were pretty much rotted away from the constant dripping/leaking of the seacocks

Next.....more cleaning with tsp and dewaxer

SAND EVERYTHING and grind the fiberglass lips the v-berth panels are attached to.

After grinding and cleaning, I fiberglassed the lips/panels with 4inch glass tape that covered over the screws and left a nice clean edge to everything

Sand

PAINTING

1. If you haven't caught on to a theme on this page....I'll tell you.....CLEANING. I read it over and over in marine how to books, and it is sooo true. If your project is clean, you'll get better measurements, fits, and results from the materials you use.
2. I cleaned all the sanding residue off the hull, v-berth ceiling, bilges etc etc
3. With a gallon of KILZ primer......I primed EVERYTHING...including the bilges...one coat did fine
4. With two quarts each of white and grey alkyd enamel paint from home depot I was able to paint the bilges, the hull the v-berth, and the ceiling to leave a nice gloss and clean finish.

Nav Station/Head

1. These were relatively simple... to install...the hardest part was the million coats of poly I applied.
2. As you can see in the pictures...these really just consist of front panels and tops that attach between the rear v-berth bulkhead and the rear cabin bulkhead. In this case I actually reused the old panels because they were quality mahogany.
3. A few sandings, followed by a deep red mahogany stain and then the poly brought the panels back to life. I attached them with stainless steel screws.
4. A few pieces of the old joiner strips had to be replaced and were made out of the same 1x1 1/2 strips I used in the v-berth
5. I haven't reinstalled the head or seacocks yet...but will have a section on them when I do.

NEXT STEPS

My next project for the winter that will concern the cabin will be to create an electronics console above the nav/storage area that will be custom built around my electronics. .......Keep you posted.

Ok...So it's now April 19, 2004....once again sorry for the delay in updating the site, but here is what I've been up to.

I've been jumping (literally) between a zillion projects on the boat so that the next "project" can build off of the previous one!

NAV STATION

As for the cabin, with the painting done and the mahogany panels etc installed by next project was to start building the nav station area. I chose to use luan board that was stained with the red mahogany finish. I simply cut a bottom panel a front panel with a notched out section for a cubby hole and a inside wall for the cubby. This leaves me with plenty of room for my radio, gps etc and room to keep loose odds and ends. This is not quite done yet since I'm running the wiring from everywhere in the boat to this section, then I will finish it up. I didn't want to finish it and have to take it apart every time I ran a wire.  

HEAD

The head is finally installed!!! This was fun but required a lot of jumping in and out of the boat to get the seacock and thru hulls installed correctly and snugly. I had to purchase a new 1 1/2 seacock/thru hull since the original was a tapered valve type that had seen better days. The new one is a chrome ball valve. This was a relatively simple installation other than the jumping around and the fact that of all the measurements I took to make sure the handle would have clearance and the backing block would fit etc..I didn't think to make sure there would be enough clearance to spin on the curved tail piece onto the seacock. I had to chisel a bit of the bulkhead away to allow it to spin! Nothing a bit of paint and puddy won't fix!

The rest of the head installation was easy, the intake seacock which came with the boat is marleon and in great shape and was installed with no problem. All the hoses have been replaced the intake is reinforced hose and the output is odor proof and reinforced. The head its self is is bolted onto a 3/4" plywood platform which is then bolted onto fiber glassed stringers to provide a secure seating.

PROJECT PICTURES