New Portlights - April 2010

This was by far the most challenging and rewarding upgrade so far! Spray had the six original 30 year old brown plastic opening portlights. These portlights had cracked frames that leaked, were missing some of the tightening knobs, mismatched hardware, and the windows were less than clear. After considerable research on upgrade alternatives, we ordered a set of six new 4x14" polished stainless steel portlights and teak wood trim rings from New Found Metals in Washington.

I got some very detailed installation instructions from the FOGgers web site and figured that I could install all six portlights in a weekend. Boy was I wrong about how much time it would take! The first portlight took me an entire weekend. I don't have much experience with power tools and cringe at the thought of cutting and drilling holes in my boat. Consequently, I had a long learning curve dealing with the laminate trimmer with bearing guided flush cut router bit, jig saw, mutli-purpose tool, counter sink bit, etc. And of course, everyone on our very active dock had conflicting advice on the best way to do the installation. I made a few mistakes and learned in the process. Thanks to some help from Michael, the master traditional sailboat guru, I was able to repair some of my mistakes and previous damage from the factory! Also, with Dave's assistance, we were able to complete the second two portlights in one day! The end result was beautiful and well worth the effort. Now I just need to get the courage to tackle the three on the starboard side ;-(

Note that we had the worn down wood "eyebrows" above the windows and portlights removed and replaced with blue stripes. Although we liked the warm look of the teak eyebrows, they were too worn down to refinish and we thought the blue stripes would provide a cleaner look and reduce the brightwork maintenance.