Original Bronze Portlights ~

Like many other projects on this boat the previous owner had already started this one.... fortunately he hadn't gotten very far with it. 

When I first bought the boat it had some sort of plastic covering the portlight holes, looked to be maybe cheap shower panel or some other home depot type material. Certainly not marine grade! I'm not sure how long it was there before I found the boat, and the first time it touched it, it cracked and broke. Obviously ultra violet rays had been eating away at it for some time. Luckily it lasted through our trip home before I scraped it off for good.

The original bronze portlights were stowed below in a cardboard box when I found the boat. Sweet! I thought...   they have already been restored and just need to be installed.  Simple, right ?

First I wanted to paint the cabin top portion of the deck prior to installing the portlights to give them a super clean line when finished.  This was easier said than done. I ran into a few snags while prepping the cabin top for paint that delayed the portlight installation a little.  I'll get into that later.

For now I'd like to focus on the bronze portlights.

All six holes were originally cut at the factory, as far as I know. And all six holes seemed to be odd shapes. Not perfectly shaped like you would think from a factory install, however this was the seventies...

So I made rings of wood to fit around the lip or flange of the portlight to give the proper size and shape hole to install into.

 Frame rings cut from luan plywood to reshape the portlight holes.




Next I glued them into place and began reshaping the cabin top wall from the inside.

Here you can see the hole taking shape.



This is the portlight being dry fit with clamps.

Notice the wood ring between the portlight and cabin top wall.


Since the portlight spigot size is only about 7/8" and the cabin top wall thickness varied between 7/8" and 1", I basically had to flush mount them. This means there would be nothing sticking out of the cabin top side deck wall except the outer trim ring of bronze.

Here you can see the portlight being held in place by butyl bedding material.


This was my first time working with this stuff. It was difficult at first until applying a little heat, then the stuff gets real stretchy! The interesting thing is that it makes great gasket material and can flex with movement of things like a sailboat. 

Applying butyl bedding to portlight spigots and inner frames.

Time to drill some holes ~



All the original holes for the portlight hardware had been filled when I painted the cabin top. I also did some epoxy work on the interior side of the holes to seal everything up nicely.  After securing the portlights in place with butyl and clamps it was time to drill the new holes.

Close up of new bolt holes and butyl bedding material.



The next step was to simply bolt on the outer trim rings to finish off the project.  But what bolts to use?  I found some decent barrel nuts and some counter-sink bolts to fit it all together.  Wish I could sprang for the counter-sink barrel nuts, however they would have gone over budget for this project, so I settled for these.

Here you can see the new mounting hardware and the polished bronze outer trim ring.

After applying the butyl bedding compound along with the foam tape to the inside of the trim rings, they were ready to go on.

Butyl ~

All butyled up and ready to go!


This project was a loooong time coming! Super stoked to have these portlights installed! They fit great and I'm really glad that we were able to use them in the restoration. In such an extremely consuming project such as a boat of this size its important to use and reuse anything we can. Hopefully we'll get another 30+ years out of these old original bronze portlights!

Here is the final look after install.

 Polished bronze against new Awlgrip always looks great!



Here she is after the first water test with the hose on deck.

Sealed up tight ~



 Shining bright at night!!

Looking fresh during the day!

 This project brings our sweet boat so much closer to being livable. These portlights are not only a huge cosmetic upgrade, their a big step in making her a comfortable live aboard boat inside and out.  Plus we can finally keep the rain out and let the breeze in. ~