Refinishing the Interior Wood Work

The interior rehab of my 6.9 is slowly taking shape. I try to do something each year to improve the looks of this old piece of classic plastic from the 1980s.  Recently I took some of the wood trim off of the interior of the boat and have been reconditioning those pieces.  The wood was only given a light stain when it was installed almost 30 years ago.

S2 did not use a lot of wood on their production boats.  The pieces that I have been working on include the stairs, bulkheads, lifting keel trim and bunk trim.  These all seem to be made out of teak or teak veneer. 

The process is pretty simple and almost anyone can do it. Simply take the pieces off. Most are held on by a few screws. The bulkheads are fixed so they had to be refinished in place.

I used a vibrating detail sander with 120-180 grit sand paper.  I also used a vacuum attachment to keep the sanding dust to a minimum.

The teak stairs were the first pieces that I tackled.  The stairs are held onto the companionway by 8 screws.


The stairs treads are each held together by 3 screws on each side. Remove these to break down the stairs into the pieces so they can be easily sanded.

Sand them down to remove any stains and water damage.  Wipe the pieces down with some mineral spirits.  I used a tack cloth to remove all dust prior to varnishing the pieces.  I applied 3 coats of varnish with a light sanding between coats.

You can use any type of varnish. I used a satin finish poly urethane from my local building supply store.

I also removed two trim pieces from the aft bunks and the bulk head piece from the lifting keel.



I added some non skid tape made by 3M to the treads of the stairs

Here are the bunk trim pieces back in place

Here are the stairs reassembled and back on the boat. As you can see it turned out very nice 

The lifting keel trip piece back in place



Starboard bulkhead refinished



New LED fixture



Head bulkhead before refinishing

 


All bulkheads refinished with new lighting

Head bulkhead refinished with new LED light fixture

 

Mark

LED Interior Lighting Replacement

My S2 6.9 sailboat was built in 1985 so all the lighting fixtures both inside and out had regular incandescent light bulbs.  We all know that these old light bulbs are very inefficient and are a better source of heat than light.

The recent development of LED bulbs in every shape and size has made it an easy choice to replace all.  The power saving benefits of LEDs is reason enough to rid your boat of those old power guzzling bulbs. I replaced my navigation running lights with LEDs last year documented in a previous post.

My boat came with a minimal number of lighting fixtures inside the boat. The existing lights were
some tacky plastic wood grain light fixtures.  Each of these had a 10 watt bulb which meant a total of 40 watts if I had all four of them on at once.  This was a draw of over 3.5 amps from my precious 12 volts battery.

I looked around for some new LED fixtures and found some nice interior spot lights on Amazon.com with a polished stainless finish.  I purchased four of these to update the look of the interior and improve the lighting.

The strange thing was if I wanted to buy them with an LED bulb they were twice the price ($19.99) of the same fixture with a halogen bulb. 

I ended up buying the halogen fixture with a G4 base for $9.99 and replaced the existing bulb with an LED G4 bulb for $3.00 buck a piece. 


The LED replacement is the same M16 size with the G4 two pronged base.


The old halogen bulb that came with the fixture were rated at 20 Watts. These were replaced with the 3.5 Watt LED bulb shown on the left.

LED bulbs are more efficient and have a longer life than the halogens or incandescent bulbs.

Most LEDs are rated at 100,000 hours of use. I don't think I will live long enough to see these burn out.


The LED on the left draws 3.5 Watts or .3 amps while the halogen bulb takes 20 Watts or 1.7 amps. Now that is a significant savings.

LED bulbs will run cooler also while putting out the same amount of light. These LEDs are rated at 185 lumen's so they put out a similar amount of light as the halogens.

LED bulbs are made for almost any type of fixture these days. If you like your existing fixture you can just change out the bulbs to a more energy efficient alternative.

Here is the final assembly with the new bulb in place.  Simply pull out the old bulb and snap in the new one, a perfect fit.

So don't pay more for your fixtures than you have to.  If the halogen type is cheaper buy that and simply replace the bulb.

Now I can light up my boat for a whole lot less energy drain on my battery.  Make the move go with LEDs!




I recently ran across some LED light strips for sale at my local big box lumber store.  I picked them up and found the perfect spot for them on boar my S2 6.9 sailboat. They had a 115volt to 12 volt power supply which I did not have to use.  I wired them directly to the boats 12 volt power system with a spare dc power adapter that I had.

The strips plug into a junction box which fit behind the keel bulkhead board. The unit also has an infrared receiver that picks up the signal from the remote. I mounted this at the bottom of the keel board and drilled a small hole between the two bottom screws and installed it there.  I ran the power wires up from the bottom and back to the DC fuse panel. I connected them to the Interior lights switch.

Three of the strips were plugged into each other and mounted with the provided clips on the port side of the keel board. The other two were mounted on the starboard side. Each strip needs about 3 Watts of power so 15 watts in all for the five strips.  The red color selection is best for night vision.

Box of 5 - 3 Watt multicolored LED strips with remote control

I mounted 3 of the strips on the port side of the keel bulkhead board - Red selection shown here.

Same strip shown with green lights

Infrared Remote control for the light strips

I mounted the other 2 light strips on the starboard side of the keep bulkhead

~~~ Sail On ~~~ /)
Mark

12 Volt DC Outlet

Most boats in the US have 12 volt electrical systems. The wondrous 12 volt systems power everything from lights, refrigeration, instruments, radios, stereos, blenders(Margaritas) and chart plotters.

To power all these devices cruisers have resorted to more complicated systems including diesel generators, wind chargers and solar panels. My boat is mainly sailed on a lake so I do not spend many nights at anchor.  This makes my 12 volt needs much less than if I were living on it full time.

My boat is pretty basic in it's electrical system.  The S2 6.9 came wired from the factory for running lights and a few interior light, that was it.  Since I purchased the boat I added a deep cycle marine battery and wired in some Raymarine ST40 instruments for speed and depth. I covered that installation in this post. I had a spare fused switch on my panel listed a accessories so I used that to power my instruments.

I have been using my iPhone and iPad on the boat for navigation, entertainment and weather.  The addition of a Bluetooth speaker makes it easy to listen to music and movies while on the boat.  To charge my iPhone and iPad I thought it would be handy to add a 12 volt power outlet.  I thought about  
adding it near the switch panel on the starboard side but this was too far from the cockpit.

I often use my iPhone and iPad in the cockpit so it made sense to mount an outlet inside the boat but near the companion way. That way the charging cord would reach into the cockpit from there.

I had already mounted a power terminal strip behind the companion way stairs to power the Raymarine instruments.  I use this same circuit to power my DC outlet.

I drilled a hole and mounted it inside on the starboard side near the main DC power switch.  I installed a conventional power outlet. That way if I wanted to a power a search light or small inverter I would have that option.









I could have installed a USB outlet shown at the left. Blue Seas makes these for handy USB connections. If I installed one of these I would have been unable to plug any other devices into the outlet.  I bought a USB power insert with USB plugins. I use this when I want to charge or power my iPhone or iPad.  That way I don't have to install 2 outlets. I can use it as a regular power outlet and with the insert charge any of my 5V USB devices.

Check out all the Blue Seas DC Outlets

~~~ Sail On ~~~ /)
Mark

Summer Sailing Video

A little video I put together from some of the sailing I did last summer. I tried to capture the subtle sound and images aboard the boat.

Mark