Achilles 24
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Achilles 24 |
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Cabin refit Winter, Spring and Summer 2003/4.
Part 1
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The Achilles cabin is built around a moulded grp liner which includes spaces for the sink and cooker and support for the cushions in the quarter berths and the double berth forward, all with stowage space beneath. The moulding also provides extra stiffening and rigidity to the hull and support for the bulkhead beneath the mast step. After close to 30 years use Zethar's cabin was in need
of a tidy up. The picture below shows the partly stripped cabin after
she was lifted out at the end of the 2003 season.
The original plywood saloon headlining was sagging and the vinyl was showing quite a few scars. To me it was an unattractive tobacco-stain-yellow colour, so it had to go. The cabin decor was finished with the internal grp sporting black gel coat which must have seemed like a good idea at the time of building but did nothing to enhance what is a smallish space. It was going to have to be white. The wooden cooker and sink locker doors and the veneered ply bunk boards along the quarter berths were all showing their age so their time was up too. The small bulkheads at the aft edges of the sink and cooker spaces were removed and without them the cabin seemed bigger, so they were not replaced. Last but not least the windows needed to be renewed as the perspex had been cut incorrectly making the fixing screws too close to its edge and the bottom of the window holes in the coachroof sides. Also the screws used had been too long and had pierced the vinyl around the windows. When I had looked at Zethar before buying her I can remember sitting in the cabin thinking naively 'It won't take much to put this right'. Hmmm......
I replaced the head, skin fittings and seacocks in the winter of 2001/2. The head is a Jabsco with a compact bowl which fits neatly into its space on a glassed in plywood floor. The old skin fittings were siezed solid and could not be undone so were removed by grinding off the outboard flanges. The original seacocks were condemned and replaced with new and the seacock for the sink has also been replaced.
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