This was the first time this year that was above the minumum epoxy temperature range so I changed gears and installed my house battery shelves, cleaned up my fuel tank installation, and put a little more fairing filler on a couple of spots on the cabin liner.
It started getting late before I tabbed in the shelves and I think I learned my lesson about pushing the weather window so I need to go back tomorrow and add tabbing to the battery shelves.
It was important to get these shelves in before I could move further with the 'under-cockpit' or galley areas. Now I can think about painting under the cockpit. I only showed the starboard side but I have an identical shelf on the port side. This will allow up to 4 group 27 batteries. I don't know if I will ever use that many but it is much easier to put in the shelves now rather than in a few years when I realize I don't have enough house battery capacity. I can envision parking the boat for a while and not running the engine much so the extra capacity will come in handy. Twice that would be even better but this is a Triton, not a real big-and-beamy cruising boat, and I think this is a good compromise. James Baldwin (2 times circumnavigator on a Triton with no engine) uses 4 T105 batteries totaling 440 amp hours. If it works for him I can only hope it will work for me.
Note: the two sides of the hull are NOT identical and the shelves are not mirror images of each other. This isn't the first time I have run across instances of assymetry. It is what gives the boat character.
I also bought stainless steel threaded rod and cut it to length which will be used to clamp the batteries down when I get that far (probably not until next spring)
McMaster and Carr is great. I ordered more sandpaper yesterday morning and it arrived around noon today. In order to finish the sanding I need to remove the winter cover framework. I am not sure if I will do it tomorrow or wait until the forecasted rainy weekend passes. It is supposed to be REALLY warm tomorrow so I will probably succomb to the temptation to see the whole boat and remove the cover completely.
Ah, life is good again now that I can work on the boat..
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