A well-ventilated engine room…

This *was* the salon sole.

There's a very nice old Ford Lehman diesel beneath this lovely teak parquet. At the bottom of the photo you can see a small access hatch. And while the engine room is, in fact, quite roomy, to work on the engine involves much climbing around on hands and knees. Work would be much easier with greater access. On many other boats there is often a larger engine room hatch, and it seems our boat was built with one as well – only it was covered over when the cabin was fitted out. From below you can see a portion of the actual hatch edge. I've marked the dimensions from above with tape.

And with a bit of persuasion and the removal of much of the pretty teak, we now have what I would term excellent access to all areas of the engine room.

And as for all that teak, it will be returned, refinished and re-installed around an ultimately redesigned hatch so when all is said and done we can access the engine without having to dis-assemble half the cabin.

And this is just one of several reasons I rarely go online, answer emails or do much else online over the weekends.  Next post… BEARINGS!!!