1999 310DA Sea Ray Updates: April 2009

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Underwater Lights

I added underwater lighting to my trim tabs. The neet thing about this is when the trim tabs are in the up position, the lights are up and out of the water. That way you can change a light bulb if necessary without waiting to pull the boat out of the water. It also helps to minimize any corrosion of the lighting system parts.

When I first designed and installed this in spring of 2008, I had the brackets made and mounted straight "up and down". The light pointed straight back until the tabs went down. There was a little problem as the trim tab travel is not that much and did not allow the light to actually make it all the way down into and underneath the water. They were about half way in the water depending on the about of fuel remaining in the fuel tanks.

So this year, I took them all the way off, bent the brackets a little, re-painted them, and put it all back together again. Now, when the trim tabs are down, the lights are all the way underwater.

Works perfect!

This first picture is the first completed installation in 2008.

Click on the pictures for a larger view.

Starboard side, during installation.

Starboard side, Trim Tab up.

Starboard side, Trim Tab down.

Port side, during installation.

Port side again.

Here is the 2009 redo, the brackets are bent down a little bit and both trim tabs are in the "up" position.

Here, the starboard trim tab is "down" and the port tab is "up".

Here's one with the boat in the water and the trim tabs are in the "up" position.

Last year, 2008, I started with one light a "white" color and the other one with a "blue" color. This was so we could decide which color we liked. Well the white one definitely was brighter and attracted more little fishies underwater.
But we decided and went with the blue ones this year. They just look prettier and have more ambiance to us.

I wired them up to the helm dash panel and put in a new switch to turn the lights on. The new switch went into an accessory blank space. I also put in separate in-line fuses, 1 for each side.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Galley - New Refrigerator and Grab Bar.

This first picture is the "OLD" refrigerator, grab bar, TV and the way it used to look for comparison. Notice the space above the old refrigerator and the old - longer - grab bar. The new refrigerator was bigger and mostly higher, so the grab bar had to be changed. I put the old grab bar outside in the cockpit and put a new, smaller one inside here.

The new refrigerator fits right up to the underside of the countertop. A basically, perfect fit!

The new refrigerator is about 3 cu. ft. where as the old one was less than 2 cu. ft. A "BIG" difference when it comes to refrigerator storage on a boat. We actually got an extra shelf inside the refrigerator. That relates to extra beer storage! And of course leftovers. This does come with a price. New dual voltage (12 and 120 volt) refrigerators are not cheep. But we had no choice, the old "Norcold" refrigerator crapped out on us. The new one is an Isotherm, Model "Cruise 85". We are liking it.

The new, smaller grab bar.

Galley - Paper Towel and Hand Towel Holders

Believe it or not, there was no place to put towels or paper towels that made any sense.

So I added these.

Galley - Shelf Under Sink

This first picture is just to show you where this area is located. The new shelf is under the sink and behind the round "White Tambour Door". This area does not have a flat bottom as is takes on the contour of the boat hull. So it makes it difficult to store anything practical in there and the stuff ends up all over top of one another. By putting the top shelf in there, it at least takes some of the top layer off of everything and gives a better place for storage.