A new water tank
Fika's new freshwater tank is lined, plumbed in, and nearly ready. A cheap webcam turned out to be the most useful tool for the coating job.
Journal
What we did, what broke, and what we learned. Every post is pinned to the place it happened.
A wood stove on a sailboat
Fika now has a Dickinson Newport solid fuel stove that can burn anything from driftwood to coal. Cutting a hole in the deck for the chimney taught us something about how she was built.
Starting on the aft head
The aft head is getting a full remodel. First step was stripping and repainting the sole.
New radios, and what the manual doesn't say
A B&G VHF with AIS, two wireless handsets, and a few things worth knowing before you rely on them.
Cleaning two 150 gallon fuel tanks on a mooring
Fika's aluminum fuel tanks were gunked up and had no way in. So I made access hatches, cleaned the tanks out with a pressure washer fed by gravity, and gave them three coats of a fuel-grade epoxy lining.
A fuel polishing system
A rebuilt engine deserves clean fuel. We built a fuel polishing system into the engine room that can filter diesel from any source and send it anywhere aboard.
Trading induction for propane
An all-electric galley looked great on paper. A Thanksgiving dinner aboard a friend's boat changed our minds, and now Fika cooks with a Force 10 propane stove and oven.
Rebuilding the Perkins on a mooring
Seawater hydrolocked Fika's Perkins 4.236. Several months later it's rebuilt and running, all of it done aboard on the mooring, with the main boom as our crane.
The journey to readiness
A year and a half of refit work on Fika, from the lithium bank and all-electric galley to rebuilding the bottom of the boat.
