Turning the corner, we hope.

It’s been a long couple of months since we started taking apart King’s Pride. So far, not too many surprises. One job we hadn’t planned on will be stripping, sanding, and painting the mast. At least it’s in a warm, big shop, and we have some local experts willing to lend us a hand – we don’t teach painting. The other good thing is that we shrink-wrapped the boat and installed an electric heater.

The heater is a King that is bolted in place so it won’t tip over and is much safer. We also ran a 10/3 wire directly out of the boat (through the head overboard sea-cock) and over to the storage building. We still have two sail tracks to remove, lot’s more bolts, and then we can start to properly use thickened epoxy on all the deck penetrations and start re-installing the deck hardware. We also are running a commercial, heavy duty dehumidifier, it’s going to be warm and dry in there for the crew, and the boat will be happy as well.

Still working on the engine. We have researched and looked at many similar boats and most of them have the engine in under the cockpit floor. We considered many different options like a V-drive, sail-drive, or other to free up some space in the galley. Nothing works out because the refrigerator/freezer box is in the way. In order to remove that, we essentially start rebuilding a good amount of the interior, which is not part of our curriculum. Currently we are planning on installing a Yanmar 4Jh with a down angle gear box, which will give us the most room for the sink that is mounted on top of it. One of the benefits of this design is that engine access for service will be great!

It will be quiet at school for December – we ran labs for 10 weeks this Fall, but are doing remote for the review and online finals. The staff will be ordering parts, makine decisions, and getting ahead of the students. We’ll resume work in January!