Portholes Are In Cap'n

Here is Blayde diligently die grinding away on one of the 11 portholes for the boat. Our goal was just to remove the heavy corrosion, as keeping them polished would be a full time job we do not have time for right now.

This shows in more detail the bronze corrosion that needed to be removed before installation. Blayde has learned when to have an easy hand with the power tools, and is very good at this type of work.

Here is Tamer cutting mounting plates out of plywood with Nathalie's handy dandy roto zip tool. And there is Nathalie in the background beginning work on the skylight for the cargo hold.

When the portholes were installed originally, they were not done correctly. This led to a huge amount of corrosion on the outside of the hull, and the interior mounting surface. Also, a lot of the screws either broke off, or had to be cut when we took them out.

Soooo....
Tamer bought this stuff called 'starboard' that comes in sheets and is 5/8" thick. He then cut them out as shown above and drilled holes for the mounting screws to go through.

This is the plate that mounts on the exterior of the boat.

Valin, screwing the plates on, while Tamer is inside holding everything together. He was pretty nervous the first time working on the ladder, but it didn't take long for him to overcome. He did a fantastic job!

As you can see, the screw go in through the outside, into the starboard, then the plywood and finish in the port hole. When we removed them in January, there was no starboard, or plywood mounting surface for the interior walls to attach to.

These are the 3 on the port side of the Focsul, and there are 2 on the starboard side. The cargo hold has 1 on each side, the galley has 1 over the stove, and the aft cabin has 3 installed.
One more thing sealed up on the boat!!