On Board Project: Knife Rack & Utensil Holders

Wednesday 20 August 2014 ~ Echo Bay, Sucia

We spent the night listening to the dinghies bang against the hull. Hmm. They were all ready to host aboard last night. Should have done it then. But the night was so clear and calm when we went to bed. 

Too soon the 6:00 alarm to catch the tide went off. J. and L. looked things over. According to the hand held anemometer the wind was gusting 22 knots or so. It was time to make some choices. Talking things over, we decided to raise the dinghies and then see what happens. 

The dinghy raising went smoothly, but somehow in the midst of things, L. really torqued her back. That made the decision: we stay for the day (maybe two). At the moment we thought it was muscle related (pulled muscle?) but decided to take things easy. L. spent most of the day in bed on her back or side. She felt a bit better by evening, enough to come out into the cockpit. This also could have been because she was tired of looking at the walls and wanted to see what J. had accomplished. "Certainly he's done something with all the noise he's made."

During the day, J. decided that this would be a good time to accomplish a project, perhaps two, that have been on the list. Project number one was creating a knife rack in the counter top ala Pardeys. In their book, The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew they mention how Larry created a knife track in the counter top near a bulkhead, give directions, and Lin raves about it. So J. thought it was worth a try, although he needed to come up with a different location. Once decided upon, out came the hand drill, coping saw, knifes, tape-measure and dowels. The idea is to mark where each knife will go along a straight line. Holes are drilled to fit the dowels. Next cut along the line (J. had to cut two saw blade widths to get the knife blades to fit), then dowel for the spacers.  Here is the end result. Behind the sink protects the blades from fingers yet keeps the knifes handy. So far, this works wonderful.

Another project entailed creating holes and locations for two utensil containers. Originally we were going to use to containers from a restaurant supply store with built in lips at the top. However, when we last stopped by, the retailer had changed them. They no longer had lips. So, when seeing these at Ikea (in two different depths) we bought them. J. figured he could add Turks heads or even screw them into the counter top. 

This project created some creativity as J. doesn't have a hole saw greater than 1 3/4 inches. The first hole was drilled with smaller bits around the outside of the diameter, then he used a coping saw to cut it out, then filed it down. Wow. This was a solution, both loud (mainly from the filing) and time consuming. Hmm. It grew too late to move onto the next hole, but at least this hole fits either container very snugly. 

[These photos show how J. found the placement for each container. By taking photos, it also allowed L. to participate while flat on her back.]

As he sat down for dinner, he felt very satisfied in what he had accomplished. "It felt great using hand tools and knocking of a project while at anchor. How's your back?"

While J. and L. were sitting in the cockpit the water took on an unusual color and pattern. We're not sure the picture really does this justice, but you can see the difference in tide patterns (look at the difference in waves). What doesn't show too well is the huge difference in color and clarity of blue. If we had left this morning we would never have seen this. Too cool.