Heads and (Hose-) Tails

My last post back in September dealt with mainly deck-oriented jobs, do-able in the warm(er) “summer” weather. As intimated in my introduction then, the last couple of months have seen me change jobs, again, in the continued search for a new niche where I can work comfortably and enjoyably for a few years. The second half of September and first half of October saw me complete my last few weeks of term-time voyages on Gordonstoun’s Ocean Spirit of Moray, which fortunately passed reasonably uneventfully, with some nice crews of students and not-too-horrific weather. There were a couple of short periods of leave in between these last stints, during which I had to complete my 5-yearly revalidation of my seagoing STCW basic safety courses, but which also allowed me to continue work on the boat and start thinking about the winter’s work – more on this in due course. In mid-October I started my new job with Serco in Kyle of Lochalsh, with my first stint being a slightly shorter-than-normal 4 weeks, followed by 3 weeks’ leave. I have just joined for my second stint, which will be the normal 6 weeks, and will of course extend over the Christmas period. I am actually employed on two different vessels here, doing three weeks on each as the relief to the regular masters. One vessel is SD Warden, a 48-metre support vessel with (very) basic dynamic positioning and an ROV to play with, and the other is the 24-metre SD Kyle of Lochalsh, which was built as a tug, but we don’t really do any towage in her. Warden’s main specialities are maintenance of the equipment that sits on the seabed of the BUTEC range in the Inner Sound (hence the ROV), as well as the recovery of test weapons from the water. Kyle of Lochalsh (KoL) does things like boat transfers with visiting submarines, and deployment and recovery of towed sonar arrays, as well as ancillary support tasks around the range. I am hoping there will be enough of a variety of tasking to keep things interesting, and in the meantime I can get home most weekends (and Christmas and New Year), and am getting paid a lot more than I have ever been paid before for a not-too-onerous routine. So far it has been going OK – I’m still on a learning curve but it seems to be busy enough to keep me interested. I am hoping to be able to stay involved in Sail Training by doing short relief stints here and there, as well as doing some stuff on VIC32 in the season.

Anyway, back to the real job, and updating you on my progress with Serchthrift. In amongst the list of tasks I added to the end of the last post, I mentioned making a start on the heads compartment, including installation of the fore-and-aft partition. This winter I will be concentrating on getting as much done to the accommodation as possible, and where better to hit next than the smallest and technically one of the most complex parts of the boat (after the engine compartment and cockpit locker area) – the heads. There is a lot packed into this small space, some complex joinery as well as the heads and associated systems, which in this day and age includes a sewage holding tank, so in many ways it is a good compartment to start with. It also has the advantage of being not a part of the boat which one sees straight away, and therefore is more forgiving of potentially dodgy joinery and aesthetic inconsistencies whilst I get my eye in and try to establish some standard methodologies and visual themes for the rest of the accommodation.

Back in September therefore, once the partition was in, I looked at the holding tank lid (this is a very small tank built into the forward end of the keel, conveniently directly below the heads compartment sole). There was already a steel lid on this tank, albeit bare and rust-coated when I bought the hull. I had already treated and painted the lid, and fitted a gasket to it, with the vague notion that it could be used as a holding tank. It is quite small but adequate for those times when you absolutely cannot pump poo over the side, especially if there is only me on board! There is a very limited gap between the tank top and the sole beams / bottom edge of the partition, so I had to plan carefully how to get the required fittings in place. I opted to buy a ready-made tank-top fitting with nipples for inlet and outlet hoses, so purchased a large hole saw, and at great length used it to cut the right-sized hole in the steel tank lid to fit this plastic fitting. This then I had to orientate correctly to allow all the hose elbows to fit in the available headroom, and I had to manufacture two pick-up pipes to extend to the bottom of the tank, as well as locating the inlet fitting, vent fitting, and a tank gauge sensor. I breathed a big sigh of relief when this was all done, bolted on place and the fittings ready for their hoses.

The next step was to build a plinth for the throne, which, as pictured in the last post, would be nestled in the forward part of the compartment, facing aft. I don’t understand why the majority of boat toilets face inboard, therefore being difficult to use on either tack – I’ll never forget being thrown off the throne on Meander by a particularly big wave mid-Atlantic, and being pitched forward (inboard), bursting through the door (busting the lock en route) and across into the galley with my trousers round my ankles and the job being far from complete. Needless to say when I redesigned her heads compartment, I turned the throne around so it faced forward (in her case), with a solid bulkhead either side. Anyway, this plinth is required for two reasons: 1) because boat loos are built for midgets, and I prefer not to crouch (however much better it is for the “flow”), and 2) because the hull shape in that position is becoming quite vee’d, and the loo needed a slightly bigger flat area to sit on than what was available at sole level. So I built a box about 10cm above the sole level, making sure it was good and sturdy, and also epoxied for extra moisture resistance. Just in the nick of time I remembered to bore a hole in the corner for the seawater inlet hose to pass through on its way from the seacock to the loo.

Once the plinth was complete, the next step was to fill in the gap between the level sole and the lining planks I had already fitted. This would be a section of sloped sole, which would need to be load-bearing, but also quite complex in shape, being ever-so-slightly curved, notched to fit the plinth, and also with a rolling bevel on the bottom edges to meet the level sole and plinth. I didn’t trust hardboard to be stiff enough to make a good template for this complex shape, so I used some stiffer lengths of timber and some lolly sticks to get a good stiff template. After taking some brave pills I then marked up and cut a piece of 18mm ply, bevelled the bottom edge roughly with the circular saw and then offered it up – and it fitted! I tidied up and rolled the bevel with a plane, and then (which I have to do with every piece of wood I fit, but particularly when it is going to be inaccessible) painted it after epoxying the edges to seal them. Once painted, this was glued and screwed into place in order to ensure a sturdy and waterproof base.

These bits I did over a succession of short periods at home, as well as tackling another small but significant project – installing some 12V lighting! Up until recently, the main cabin had been properly lit with a big 240V LED striplight, but I had had to work in the smaller compartments by the light of my rechargeable LED worklights, which are OK and quite bright, but inevitably leave a lot of shadows. I decided that having run some cabling through the conduits which I had fitted before the hull was insulated, I could start fitting some of the 12V lighting according to my final lighting plan. First I fitted a number of small junction boxes on the deckhead, which will eventually be hidden by a false deckhead lining, at the points where lighting would branch off the “mains” running either side of the coachroof. My best discovery in the world of electrics recently were Wago connectors, which are little connector blocks which allow connection of two or multiple cables (depending on how many ports the block has) – so far, so conventional – clamping the wire ends with a little lever, so they are very easy to use and completely reuseable. Then, having purchased some lights – a couple of bulkhead lights for the “working” spaces in the fo’c’sle and cockpit locker, a couple of striplights (one for heads; one, eventually, for the galley) and a dome light I already had (all LED) – I was able to wire in the heads, forecabin / bosun’s store and the cockpit locker / technical space, all supplied for the time being from a 12V transformer which plugs into my 240V supply. This has made a huge difference to working in these spaces, and I’m not sure why I didn’t do it a while ago!

This pretty much brings us up to my most recent 3-week leave period, and really getting cracking on the fitting out of the heads compartment. I had to place yet another hose order and order a couple of other items I needed, including a suitable washbasin, before getting too far along, but whilst waiting for those to arrive, I started on the initial framework for the vanity locker (for some reason I hate the word “unit” when referring to hand-built, custom furniture vs shop-bought chipboard crap). This required some careful measuring and judicious work with a set-square to ensure that the bottom member of the frame was exactly square to the fwd and aft bulkheads, as well as aligned so that the vertical surfaces were truly vertical to avoid mishaps with the remainder of the framework – all of course finished with another of those rolling bevels to match the slope of the soleboard! Once this was aligned and cut to size and shape, it was relative childsplay to affix the vertical members and build the rest of the frame around them. Slightly annoyingly I had decided that there wasn’t quite enough shoulder room for sitting on the throne if the counter was continuous for its entire length, so you can see in the photos that I created a cut-out which makes a nice arm rest for the user whilst contemplating the meaning of life, and leaves a goodly space for the broad-of-shoulder whilst seated. It’s also a natural alcove for the bog-roll holder to nestle in.

Frame built, the next step was cutting the plywood locker front – as usual templated in hardboard first, and locker openings determined before final cutting. It was at this point that I made the definite decision to build in a very shallow locker on the aft bulkhead as well, in order to hide the Y-valves and pump which form part of the system to divert to / pump out the holding tank. These would be quite unsightly if left exposed, particularly with the network of hoses snaking around them, so it seemed the right thing to do. Therefore once the outboard locker front was cut and dry fitted, I templated and cut this locker front too, having built the framework first. I say dry fitted, but even in the final assembly there has been no glue used to assemble either the framework or the locker fronts, so if it is ever necessary to strip back to the hull, this furniture can be dismantled with minimum effort and fuss. The only concession to neatness is that I have plugged or filled the screwholes, but this is not too much effort to undo.

Having made sure all the components were painted with several coats of suitable paint (grey locker paint inside the lockers, white undercoat & topcoat on the outside) the lockers were then assembled. This was a somewhat gradual process as in between coats of paint I had to establish where the shelving in the lockers was going, and fit the cleats for these to sit upon, as well as the shelves themselves, then apply the requisite number of coats of paint to these too. Then, once painting was complete, I had to run the plumbing before installing shelves finally and fitting the counter top. This latter item I had cut from one of my slabs of reclaimed laboratory worktop – having found a piece which was exactly the right size to provide both the main counter top and the two smaller pieces I needed. It was also reasonably clean of schoolboy carvings and graffiti; in fact I left the original top surface varnished as was, flipped the piece over and sanded the old underside to make the top. This worked quite well, leaving only a few old screwholes to be filled using plugs cut from the same slab of timber. Having dry fitted all the pieces together to ensure neat joints, I could then screw the top down and plugged the screwholes in the same way.

In the meantime, I completed the final bits of plumbing in the aft locker and to the holding tank, and fitted hardwood frames to the locker doorways. Then came the exciting prospect of building my first locker doors. Having come across a couple of youtube videos describing some good cheats for making the joints for these doors, I was a little more confident than I had been that I could in fact make a half decent job of it… Unfortunately I lacked some of the important tools for doing this, but made good with what I had; I cut the tenons on the door rails (horizontal bits) using my table saw and the sliding table saw sled – these turned out to be slightly off-true because the sled itself is worn and wobbles slightly in the tracks. I managed to tidy these with a chisel though, and then used my biscuit joint router bit to cut a 4mm slot on the inside edges of the rails and stiles (vertical bits). The tenons in the rails fit into these slots at the top and bottom of the stiles, whilst the middle panel (12mm ply cut out from the locker fronts to make the locker door apertures) was cut to size and rebated all round the leave a 4mm tongue which fits into the slot in the frame work. All of this was glued together and left clamped on a flat surface overnight, then trimmed and sanded the next day. The doors both turned out OK – some inaccuracies crept in during the somewhat haphazard cutting and routering processes, so one door ended up about a quarter inch or so too narrow for its hole, but when the hinges are fitted it should not be too noticeable.

All this jiggery-joinery and plumbing took up most of the three-week period but the compartment is about 80% complete now, with just some minor joinery details to finish, some minor plumbing and finish coats on all surfaces – hopefully you can see from the pictures now how good it looks, and get a general idea of how the rest of the accommodation might turn out.