| A Custom designed Teak Cabinet |
I needed a good place to put a VHF marine radio and an AM/FM entertainment radio. I know, this sounds so petty, but if you spend a lot of time on your boa  t,
it's the little things that bother you. Catalac 8M's don't have
a cockpit instrument design which would accommodate the radios. Even
if it did, who would want to leave their electronics exposed to the
Florida sun? The Nav station on the boat is too small to be useful,
and it's in the port hull which isn't exactly convenient to the cockpit.
Anyone who owns a Catamaran uses the saloon table for route planning.
Eventually, I realized that there just wasn't a good place to put them
and that what I really needed was a cabinet for my radios. Then again,
cabinet placement was |
| going to be 90% of the challenge. I tried real hard to come up with
a solution which would mount the cabinet on the inside of the rear bulkhead.
I could then reach over and grab the marine radio microphone from the
cockpit. After 3 months and several mockups, I gave up. It would just
be too inconvenient to actually use, not to mention bumping into it
when using the port side saloon to hull stairs. So, realizing this new
cabinet had to go in the saloon brought about another set of challenges.
If I mounted the cabinet on the forward bulkhead, how was I going to
use the marine radio from the helm or listen to FM stations without
crawling over the saloon table? After months of analyzing the problem,
the solution which presented itself was in selecting the right radios.
I chose the Standard Horizon GX1500 Quest-X VHF marine radio
because it's a quality radio and it had an input for a hard wired remote
station. This remote station is a remote microphone connector on the
end of a 25 ft cable which connected into the radio. They call it the
RAM+ speaker microphone, model CMP25. A hole is drilled in the cockpit
to mount the microphone connector. This is much more than just a remote
microphone. |
| All radio and DSC functions can be accessed at this remote location
as well as having a microphone/speaker. This radio also adopted the
new DSC standard and has twin VHF receivers. One for normal VHF traffic
and a digital receiver for the DSC channels. When I was doing my shopping,
I discovered that the twin receivers were only implemented in better
radios at that time. Today I think all marine radios have them. With
1/2 the problem solved, I turned my attention to the entertainment portion
of the challenge. This was solved with an automotive AM/FM/CD/MP3 radio
with auxiliary input and remote control. I selected a Phase Linear
UMP301. Although intended for autos, I figured it would work just
fine for Catalpa. I picked this up for next to nothing at Circuit City.
($70). The MP3 compatibility is great as you can burn music 'data CD's'
on a computer which play for hours and hours. As for building the cabinet?
A good question. Has anyone priced out cabinet grade solid teak wood
lately? Fortunately I just happened to have just enough teak laying
around to build a small cabinet. So why is there a photo of dinghy davits on the cabinet page? It's here to show you where that teak came from. I removed these davits you see in the photo when we bought Catalpa. I just wasn't pleased with the way they were mounted (that's another project tale).  With
the davits off the boat, I was left with those two long boards you see
stuck into the base of the davits and extending up and out of the photo.
These boards were rough cut 2 x 3's about 5 Ft long, which had been
left in the elements for a long while. They were drying out in my garage
for 3 years as I'm one of those people who hesitates before discarding
anything. One day, out of curiosity, I took one these boards and sanded
it a bit to see if I could tell what kind of wood it was. I figured
they'd use some kind of oak. I was stunned to find they were solid teak.
This was not going to go to waste. So, I after determining where the
cabinet would be mounted, I sat down and drew up cabinet plans one day
and confirmed, if I was careful, that there was enough wood in one of
these boards to complete a small cabinet. In the design, I recessed
the top about an inch, which allows the top of the radio to double as
a shelf.The first step is always the hardest. I picked what looked like the best board and cut it to size on my table saw. I then resawed the short 2" x 3" x 12" sections into planks using my band saw. In no time at all I had enough 1/2 inch thick teak planks to make a very nice small cabinet, The next step was using the planer to even out the resawed boards and then I used my gluing table to assemble these narrow 3" wide planks into very nice teak panels. My two radios are designed for dashboard type mounting and of course my front panel is solid. A considerable amount of time on this project was spent on drawing the cutouts on the front panel and using a skill saw to cut them out. Teak is a hard wood and this was no easy feat. When this was done, all I needed was a handful of wood dowels and some glue. The result was an assembled small cabinet. The last step was applying the finish. OK, I'll admit it, I'm a back yard cabinet maker as well as a sailor. This project gave me the opportunity to combine two of my hobbies. |
| The result, speaks for itself. |
There's a reason it's a little bit red as it has to do with the
type of tree the wood was harvested from. Still, it blends in fairly
well with the newly refinished bulkhead it's hanging on. Overall, I'm
pretty happy with the way it turned out. You'll notice an opening in
the cabinet below the radios. This is strictly storage space for CD's
and cables. I thought I'd need a door here to keep things in place,
but so far we've only been out on flat water and it hasn't been necessary.
 The last step in the project was running a 25 FT control wire to the remote helm station. Actually, this didn't take long at all as catamaran construction lends itself to easy wiring. I did have to drill a hole for the connector but this was a small price to pay for having a VHF remote station at the helm. Incidentally, this remote connection isn't an either/or proposition. The VHF radio can be used from either the saloon table or the cockpit. I'm really happy with this, it works well and the cockpit connector looks terrific. The AM/FM/CD/MP3 required an antenna terminated with the Automotive type connector. I thought about this for a while and ended up with a straight piece of tinned wire about 40 inches long which I tinned soldered on one end. This tinned end fit the center connection in the antenna socket and I just bundled this in the radio wiring which seems to work pretty well. The radio is run by remote control. It sounds great and is easy to use. The remote control is on the table in the photo below. I've put as many as 200 songs on one CD which pretty much covers an afternoon of sailing. When at the dock, I've connected the auxiliary input to the output of my laptop and watch TV and movies using the amplifier of the radio. It all works pretty well, although I do have one issue with this radio. I only have 2 of the 4 audio channels connected to speakers, and full volume is loud but not over powering. I'm considering adding two additional speakers and a subwoofer. I haven't done it yet because of my DC power budget. These boom / boom radios sound great but do it at the expense of your batteries. Right now I'm using 13 watts RMS X 2, so roughly 2 amps. My solar panel handles this without any problem. However, if I double the output power to 52 watts, this is about what my 75 watt panel outputs on a normal sunny day. Running the fridge would put me in a negative power situation. At any rate, I'm still thinking about it. Of course, what's a new marine radio without a new antenna and coax? Just follow that link. To date I've completed 20 boat projects and have had time to write about 3 or 4 of them. I'll try to do better next year. |
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| Now, the real question is... I have one teak board remaining.....any one have a suggestion? |
