Motor Mounts
The existing motor mounts that came on our Yammy looked to have been pretty badly abused, likely while the engine was out of the boat. I picked up these from e-Bay for about 35% of retail.
How to make Electricty
We will try to run our boat without a generator. To that end we considered our options. Careful use of the engines alternator to charge batteries, solar panels or wind generator. I happened to be in the right place and the right time and picked up two 130 Watt 12 volt solar panels for $1.35/watt. Look around, you'll see that's a pretty good darn deal!
Oil Changes
One of the jobs I disliked the most on our old boat was standing on my head in the bilge to change the oil, especially getting the oil filter off. Again, e-Bay to the rescue. This device will allow us to remove the used oil from the engine remotely as well as refill it. It'll mean a few modifications to our engineroom layout but at least I won't have to perform gymnastics to get the oil changed
FIRE!!!!
Some of you that know me know I like to cause the occasional fire mostly by accident. I have a great respect for 12 volt electrical systems and the power contained in large storage batteries. I considered a few approaches to engineroom fire extinguishers and found this automatic one on e-Bay. It'll stand guard and put out an engineroom fire automatically.
Heating the cabin
I plan to insulate the boat well. Likely blown in closed cell foam. This will allow us to extend our fall boating as well as making our heating and cooling requirements more reasonable. We looked at a few options and decided that a diesel fired forced air heater was a good choice at a reasonable price.
Just like baking a cake boats are made up of ingredients. Lots of ingredients! :-)
Boats are made up of hundreds (if not thousands) of bits & pieces. Some big, some small, some inexpensive and some horribly expensive. In order to make our boat building project as economical (if it's safe to use that word in the same sentence as "Boat") I began bargain shopping 3 or 4 years ago for some of those bits & pieces. When I started I looked at options for supplying the boatbuilding materials I'd need locally (at least in Canada). It seems there's 3 or 4 major wholesalers who supply (control) most of the chandlers in Canada. None seemed receptive to accepting a "home builder" as a customer preferring to drive me to their retailers.
Next stop, e-Bay! So as I said, 3 or 4 years ago I started acquiring lil' bits & bobs off of e-Bay. It started out small, hinges, hasps, drawer pulls etc. Then one day a deal popped up on e-Bay for some portlights from Minney's Yacht Surplus. Normally these things sell for a couple hundred bucks. Apparently they had a whole marine container load and were letting them go for $57 each. I bought 4. That was our biggest purchase to date and it started the ball rolling along!
I knew that things were only going to get more expensive as we go and it sort of steam rolled from there but I was frugal and fought for bargains where I could find them. I've got a complete photo inventory of what we've bought so far here....
http://s237.photobucket.com/albums/ff166/KnottyBuoyz/KBIII/Inventory/?start=all
I also keep track (roughly speaking) of what we've spent on the project so far here.....
http://www.editgrid.com/user/knottybuoyz/Spent_To_Date
Last fall (2009) Lori and I ventured to Rhode Island to pick up the engine for the boat project. It's not new but it's got low hours on it. It'll be absolutely perfect for our project and the price was right! It's a Yanmar 4JH-TE 55 HP turbocharged diesel engine with gearbox.I appologize for the crappy pic I'll try to get a better one soon. Purchasing this engine cost Lori her winter cruise in the Carribean but we both reasoned it out and decided it was too good a deal to turn down.
Just this past weekend we made the latest and largest purchase, the CnC cut plywood kit for the TW28. This deal fell into our laps from a fellow builder who had abandoned his project in lieu of another design. The offer he made us was just too good to let slip and this one cost Lori her fall Florida vacation. Just like the engine it was too good a deal to turn down. Along with the kit we got 18 extra sheets of 1/2" marine ply, the composite rudder, stern tube, exhaust tube and a beautiful piece of mahagony laminated for a king post. This is what the kit looks like all stacked up. That's near 4000 lbs of plywood folks! Thank you RJ.
Every boat needs a sturdy wheel to steer her by. I found this beauty on e-Bay and picked it up on auction for (IIRC) $155.00 Something this beautiful would normally sell for at least a couple of times that amount. I've never seen any exactly like this one. Apparently it came from an estate lot at auction in the UK that come from a chandler and this was one of many the supplier had. I think it's absolutely georgeous!So that's about it for Inventory, you can follow the link above to see a running tally of what's in store when we start to put this boat together. I just thought you'd like to know a little of how we got started and get some idea of where we need to go as this project comes together.
Our latest addition: Michigan Wheel Dyna-Jet 18D X 13P X 1-1/4" shaft propellor.
Update: June 2011, A few of the latest additions to the inventory
22 LB Polished Stainless Steel Danforth type anchor. This will be our backup/storm anchor.
Mostly underwater hardware. Stern bearing carrier, rudder bearings and the tiller arm.
Recent additions
I've decided to update the gauge package for the Yanmar Diesel.
This set includes the Tachometer, Water Temp, Oil Pressure, Hourmeter, Fuel Level x2, Volt Meter & Depth Sounder. I bought the matching rudder position indicator earlier.
Lewmar 140 TT2.2 Bow Thruster. :-) It's a big boat ya know?
