It feels like a lot of what we’re doing to Calypso is taking her to a yard-style finish. We shifted the main bunk from an offset, remove-a-part-to-access-the-head, v-berth to a pull out pilot berth in the main salon. We removed the old sit-down chart table and instead installed a stand up one, with the refrigerator beneath it. And we’ve moved the propane storage from the cabin top to next to the mast.

Part of this exercise involves crafting a propane box from scratch.

A few things to keep in mind:

• We wanted to increase our propane tank capacity and went from 10 lb tanks to 20 lbs.

• The box needed to look reasonable, to our way of thinking

• We didn’t want to add maintenance to our list

• The box needed to be strong enough to be stood on (since it’s by the mast)

Jeremy talked to a fellow BCC owner, Eric Pomber of Thistle, about the boxes Eric built, and got photos and general plans from him. Like us, Eric went with 20 lb horizontal aluminum tanks; it was so helpful to see that work size-wise.

After a lot of thinking, Jeremy decided to build the boxes out of 3/4” King StarBoard, a high density polyethelyne (read - heavy duty dense-as-heck plastic) specially formulated to (supposedly) withstand UV. The sides are bolted together using aluminum angle as the joints. Eventually, we’ll build canvas covers for the boxes. As an FYI - we’re heading to Maine with only one box constructed. So yeah, we’re only taking one big tank plus our 6 lb BBQ one. The second one will be built and installed in the fall.

The regulator and solonoid are on the starboard side. When we run out of gas in one tank, we’ll have to take the empty tank out, move the full one from the port side to the starboard side and hook it up, and then find a place to refill the now-empty tank. Of course, all that is hypothetical at the moment as we only have one tank and box installed.

Here are some photos. Click on any one of them to read the details!

We’re pretty happy with the whole thing. It looks reasonable, holds a 20 lb tank, should be relatively maintenance-free, and is very strong. Bonus is that it fits the space perfectly, something that an off-the-shelf “locker” would not have.

Now. What’s for dinner?