First I need to apologize for my near month off updating the website. I have not been working on the boat as much as I could have but also and for the same reason as the less than adequate hours on the build, I have not updated the website because I got a lot of great books for Christmas and have not been able to put them down. In fact the first 3 days of the year were unseasonably cool and I blew them lying on the couch reading and watching the test match and then when I finally decided I had better extract the digit, it heated up to near 40 degrees for a week! Serves me right. And then once I got a little behind the amount needed to do to catch up just kept getting bigger and bigger which made it easier to keep putting it of. Until I just had to get it all done. So toady I spent an hour or 3 getting this page back up to date. Nine lives had its mast fitted in late December so she is pretty much finished on the outside, but she still has a lot of fit out to be done inside.
Anyway I have finished the port sump top with the same oversize lid I placed in the Starboard hull. This sump is much bigger than the starboard sump and I will also utilize it for the under waterline through hulls. should one of them leak, the best place for them to be is right next to a bilge pump that sends the water back overboard without it entering the dry areas of the hull. I only have one of through hull in the starboard hull, for the holding tank evacuations, and these are on the vanity unit in the ensuite which has a drain to the sump and out again, so if it leaks, it would still give me the opportunity to get the leakage out of the boat without it leaving a wet area. So in the port sump the big lid will be very handy for accessing all of the various bits not least being the sump pump which will be the most accessed for cleaning. In the starboard sump I made a piece of solid glass as an attachment point for the pump in the corner. I did not want to use the screws that are provided through the base of the pump for 2 reasons, first I dont want screw holes into the base as a potential leak point of moisture into the timber base and second if I ever change pumps for another brand of another shape (holes in different spots) I need to retap screws into bare timber (no back filled resin holes) which would almost certainly result in the base getting moisture in and rotting but also it would be very difficult to do in that very small space. My solution (which I did not photograph as I was making it) was to drill some holes in the vertical solid glass piece that was permanently and solidly attached hanging from the underside of the lid, through which I use cable ties to attach the sump pump. I have reusable cable ties and I am even able to undo and redo it all inside the sump through the opening. In the port hull I am doing the same only through one of the web ends I left in the sump and being deeper and larger I can reach this pump far easier. One of the things you must do when fitting all this stuff is see how hard it is to access through the various openings you have. If it is difficult on dry land it will be far worse on a pitching boat. Make it easy to maintain.
