Little Dicki

This is our Dickinson kerosene heater, and over the past winter we became so addicted to her lively company that we gave her a nickname. Little Dicki is able to heat our cabin quite comfortably, and overhead where all the heat all rises I've recorded temperatures of 75 to 80 degrees F! It's more around 65 to 70 F where we hang out, but we'd like to get a fan installed to circulate all that hot air around better. It is a delight to curl up in the evening with a good book and watch the fire.

Winter interior projects included the replacement of Little Dicki's interior chimney (the old one was rusted), and the addition of a new Charley Noble on deck. (The old one was much taller and had been tripped over by us and strangled by the jib sheets far too often. The new one is very pretty so hopefully we won't abuse it so much.)

V berth insulation project

The installation of the new insulation in the v berth was finished a few weeks ago. Here I'm re-attaching the slats. The blue tape marks the sequence, and this is a trick I would never have thought up by myself.

Here is the finished project. The insulation is white, which gives it a different look than the original insulation. Our only other color choice was black and I thought that would be too dark.

The insulation is a closed cell Volara foam with an adhesive backing.

Before I adhered the new insulation, we replaced the whisker tangs; access to the tang bolts was made easy with the absence of insulation and wooden slats. (The bolts go through the hull and are accessed in the v berth.)

If you look closely at the photo you can see rust stains. That is from the old tang, which is why we wanted them replaced. These tangs secure the whisker stays which lead up and attach to the front of the bow sprit.

Here's one other finished project that has been on the list for months. These are the anchor rode locker doors, and the latches are new. Before, there was no means to keep the doors shut, and since the heavy anchor chain is stored behind these doors, we needed to be able to secure them.

Before I could install the latches though, I had to sand the doorway openings larger so the doors could actually close. The installation of the new samson posts (which are located between these doors (you can see the 2 bolts)) had caused some shifting in all the woodwork here, causing things to no longer fit as before.