Downeaster Yachts.com

We have been living aboard for a year now. It has highlighted some of the drastic downfalls of boats and storage. The Downeaster 38 has a huge amount of storage space, however it isn’t particularly of a shape or size to make efficient use of. We are gradually rebuilding all the storage compartments etc into better shapes to hold particular goods both efficiently and securely. One such project that I just finished day before yesterday was tea and spice racks.

I like to drink hot teas and being me go a bit overboard on the acquisition and storage of lots of different loose leaf teas. I have about 40 plastic containers with O ring seals with tea’s in them. At the house it was no big deal, I had a cupboard that they all neatly stacked in. On the boat there is no cupboard the right size and being that it moves they would fall over anyways and end up in a big jumble. In real life I found that a big jumble just due to the shape and size of the storage areas available was how things stayed.

I also like to cook and tend to have about a dozen spices, oils and other condiments that I use on a daily to weekly basis, with another 20 or so that I use weekly to monthly. Again, can we say jumble. I could never find what I wanted.

This state of affairs both in the teas and the spices tended to leave me a bit grumpy and irritated at having daily usability issues. If something is bad enough that it is affecting my outlook on life then it needs to be fixed. What to do though? I really didn’t like the cabinets as a solution as small stuff gets hidden […]

David Gill of Tondelayo sent in some pictures of his current projects. I have to say they look nice. Below are a short description by him and pictures of each project.  If you have questions I’m sure you could get him to talking about it on the forums 🙂

Hi Scott,

I thought I’d send you an email with a few photos rather than trying to upload them into the forum. These shots show how to make a “steam box” to steam bend timber. It’s really easy. All you need is a heat source eg gas burner, a pot joined to some Stormwater pipe and away you go. Note that I used standard PVC pipe which loses it’s integrity above 60 degrees Celsius and it still worked however I believe it’s possible to get better quality pipe that will handle the steams elevated temp. Also, make sure you have a hole at each end to allow the release of the pressure that builds up. The trick is to get your timber finished to the desired profile before bending. I was working with hardwood and trying to bend it along it’s width which is probably the hardest possible technique but I still got results. (I went through a few prototypes prior to succeeding.) Happy to discuss further if anyone’s interested. Here’s some shots of Tondy’s floor. It took a lot of elbow grease to sand it back to bare timber before applying 1 coat of a mould inhibitor then  3 coats of Feast Watson Floor Clear Polyurethane. The good thing about this product is that if I want to tidy it up in a few years it just needs a clean and a light sand then you just put a fresh coat straight on. A word for the wise, If […]