Hello all,

Thought someone might be interested in our dorade box project. Pics are on our blog, bluemoonsails.blogspot.com, courtesy of my wife, Pat. Basically, we installed two dorades, one in the forward cabin and one in the main cabin. The vessel came with one in the head compartment, I assume original equipment. The reason we did this was to keep down the mildew. Our previous vessel, a Caliber 33, had two factory installed boxes in the main cabin, and we had virtually no mildew. On Blue Moon, not so. The headliner mildews pretty badly, and its a gross job cleaning it up. We are hopeful this helps alleviate the problem.

I picked up two pretty badly beat up wood dorade boxes in a consignment shop. The tops were shot, so I machined new ones out of starboard…edges rounded, and rabbitted to fit into the box, then screwed every two inches or so with countersunk screws. I sealed the top to the box with Lifecaulk, plenty removable for maintenance. I cut 4 inch holes in the deck, and installed 4 inch Sched 40 PVC pipe in the holes. Before installing the pipe, I roughed it thoroughly, then wrapped in one layer of fiberglass cloth and West System epoxy. This may not have been necessary, but I wanted a solid and waterproof bond between the pipe and the boat. I routed the core around the perimeter of the hole before installing the pipe, and filled with thickened epoxy. Again, may not have been necessary, but I like to overbuild. The pipe went in, and I injected epoxy in between the pipe and deck best I could, then built a fillet of thickened epoxy around the upper edge. Pat took care of the varnish work.

Installation of the boxes was straightforward. I ground the paint off of the deck around the contact points of the box, and glued and sealed the box to the deck with 4200. I also installed stainless steel L brackets to the box, and machine screwed them to the deck. All penetrations of the deck were overdrilled to the bottom skin, filled with thickened epoxy, then redrilled to the screw size.

Of course we had to cut the headliner, easy enough, and are awaiting 4 inch trim rings to finish the interior side. The project turned out pretty nice and I am hopeful I don’t trip over these things at every opportunity. We placed the one in the main cabin fairly close to the centerline, under the boom, not normally an area that I traverse.

Pics of this and other projects are on Pat’s blog, including painting the deck and hull, new cockpit enclosure, the solent stay install, new prop, and others. We have also extended the stern ladder outwards, to make boarding easier, and divided the anchor locker for two rodes, plus a number of minor things to make living a bit easier.

We hope to depart Ft Walton (NW Florida) in a week or so, and make our way towards Boot Key harbor, then to the Abacos, Eleuthra, and Andros over the next four months or so. Hopefully we’ll see some of you out there, or at least get to talk to you over the SSB.

David and Pat