Remove Table, access to long stbd floor piece

[Dan Corcoran]

I am writing to document how to lift the long stbd floor piece to obtain access to cabling. Not that difficult, be careful not to break screws.
1a. Remove a couple of screws, go buy replacements. After 20 years of abuse, they are fragile. There are two lengths, most are the same length with only 3 that are short, 1 located near the nav table, 2 on that triangle of wood trim forward.
1b. Check under the rear most leg of the table, there are five bolts through the floor and a metal mount. Each has a flat washer, lock washer, and a nut. If any are missing, go buy replacements.
2. Remove all the many screws from floor piece to be removed, this is the hard part. (It would make sense to do this a different day, and replace the screws with all new as a seperate project, rather than plan to remove all the screws the same day as all the steps below)
3. Remove corner triangle wood piece from floor, store
4. Remove bottom screws from trim under navigator table, pivot trim up and take to table.
5. Remove 10 horizontal screws from silver hardware into table
6. Lift and remove forward bow side of table
7. Lift entire table up, place inches away on port side floor
8. Remove two screws hidden under table.
9. Two people lift floor board, shift towards companionway, get around mast, place sideways next to table.
10. (optional) I used a dremel with a rotary tip to cut the wood that supports the bilge hatch under the table, so that in the future I need not remove the table.

These are the kind of projects you may want to do for the effort of removing the floor, plan accordingly to do more than 1
1. Run an additional battery wire from the battery compartment to the engine compartment so the alternator and starter no longer share a cable. You will have to snake new line through a short section of additional floor that is not removed, or remove that piece of floor also (buy more screws as in step 1a above for the rest of the floor.
2. Run a dedicated battery sense wire from the balmar MC-612/614. 16 gauge is appropriate. The charging profile software in the balmar works better, especially after bulk charge, with this additional wire which did not come on my US made 109. Which battery to connect with, or take a shortcut to connect to the battery switch only is a longer discussion. Depends on your arrangement. The following isn't advice, just example of what to consider. For example if you run the alternator output to your house battery fuse (don't have a fuse, you are not ABYC compliant) then also run the sense wire to the same location, that is an easy choice. If you allow the alternator output to be choosen to one battery or the other at the battery switch, then you can connect the sense wire at that location on the battery switch. Some precision is lost in the voltage drop in the wiring between the battery switch and the battery based on the amount of current flowing at each stage of the charging cycle. Put a fuse on your battery sense wire! The smallest fuse you have, e.g. 1A is fine.
3. Run a dedicated ground sense line to a power post in the engine compartment. I located mine as far forward as I could on the bottom of the stbd side of the engine compartment near (not under) the water/oil filter close to the removable steps, this makes troubleshooing easier with a volt ohm meter. Also 16 gauge wire.
4. I replaced the bilge wiring that runs under the floor to the nav table after finding corrosion working its way up the wiring in the bilge, past the crimp connector.
5. Run brushes through holes that carry water under the floor, looking to remove any caked up debris especially on the stbd side that gets caked up against the ground protection system wiring.
6. Have 1/16 inch rubber material available to replace any of the round deteriorated pads between the hull and the floor boards.
7. Want to repaint your bilge, it is a lot easier with the floor removed. I have not needed to do this, my impression is that also removing the port side floor is unnecessary with all the access you gain with the stbd floor removed.