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The New Console
The pilothouse and console is the heart of the ship, and after discussing things with Tad we had to agree that the console in good old IE was perhaps a bit on the rustic side:
The 1970-era depth sounder was toast, the big bronze throttle hadn't worked in decades, and the old mechanical wheel had to go to make room for the new hydraulic system. Scott mocks up some ideas:
And before you can say "Use the Sawzall, Luke, use the Sawzall" the old console is gone and the crew has a mockup in place:
This is beginning to look like it should! Now a few months go by while we have a short break to rebuild the entire structure of the pilothouse, but once that little task is completed the console is once again the recipient of dollars and talent, with amazing results:
Still more work to do, but what a transformation! Note the fantastic wheel. This was an eBay find, which Scott's Dad Buster cleaned up beautifully. A custom bushing helped it mate perfectly with the pump for the new hydraulic steering system.
Of course, the new console would look out of place with the shoddy old table and settee that was installed, and anyhow that was torn out when we rebuilt the pilothouse. So, time for a nice new settee and table. And while we were at it, wouldn't it be nice to raise the floor six inches so we could see out the windows, and make one side of the settee 30 inches wide and 80 inches ling so we could use it as a day berth? In the twinkling of an eye (well, actually 4 months) we go from this:
To this:
To this:
It's a bleeding miracle. Now all we need is the table, some cushions, and oh yeah, some glass in the windows.
As of September 19th, we do in fact have glass in the windows, and much more too. The console is now complete, along with the side desks:
The woodworking around the settee is complete, and there are spectacular mahogany window frames installed:
Come December and lo, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a beautiful set of blue cushions. Not only that, but the new ceiling of yellow cedar and mahogany is also in place:
Finally, Dieter installed a new, slightly larger DC panel. But it has a clever twist: We used a Blue Seas AC lockout slide, and wired a backup supply from the genset battery. This means that even if we lose primary power, we can switch the pilothouse to backup power, thus preserving radios, GPS and navigation lights.
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