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There's light at the end of the tunnel...

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Good morning everyone….Capt & crew are hard at it ( and yes we do start work at o’dark thirty) as it’s counting down the hours to launching with a laundry list of items to check off before we go. The kids are still in bed trying to catch up on sleep and we’ll join them shortly. It’s been a long 3 days which all seem like a blur…it went something like this:

Thursday: hauled in the afternoon, pressure washed the bottom, set staging, started to reef out a few seams to be rechaulked, thru hulls taken apart and cleaned, prepped for coast guard inspection on Friday am.

Friday: inspection in the am (passed! It’s hard to see the boat get pounded on with the red mallet.) sanded boot stripe & grey topsides, sanded bottom where winter ice rubbed, Capt cut forearm with grinder (stitches?), shipwright and old Mary Day crew member Brad Ellsworth begins a long day of recaulking, seam compounded the grey topside and green boot stripe.

Saturday: painted the foot of grey topside (will do the rest when back in the water), painted the green boot stripe, replaced zincs, watched a rain cloud come thru and dump buckets of rain on us…just as we ended painting the green and was starting the red bottom. The kids had set up tents in the shipyard to play in which proceeded to fill with water so we all bailed from the shipyard and headed to Subway which was nice enough to not question our appearance or smell. We were all pretty wet and cold, covered with mud and paint dust. Not a pretty sight for a restuarant. Once feed and rewarmed and the rain stopped we were back at it, seam compounding, seam compounding and more seam compounding the bottom (the crew finished at 10pm by truck headlights).

Sunday: (Today) We’ll go over the seams again to make sure all was filled and start to paint the bottom. We’ll cut the waterline by hand and Capt will finish up with spraying the bottom. Thru hulls will be greased and rebuilt, staging taking apart, and with high hopes, the star painted on her bowsprit. We’ll give her a once over and hope to be ready to launch around noonish. Then the long ride back to Camden where we’ll hopefully run thru some drills with the crew. We hope to be back in Camden this evening with a good night’s rest ahead of us all.

Thanks for all your patience with us if you’ve tried to call or email. We’ll be back in full swing in the morning…

Who says there’s a just a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Have a good one.
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Unknown said…
All this in just a few days time! Wow! How many folks working on her at the same time? It almost seems like you would need 30 hard working people to get that much work done in 3 days. Out of the water Thursday afternoon and back by midday Sunday is amazing. You have convinced me now that I don't want a wooden boat I can't haul on shore whenever I want all by myself.
May 6, 2007 at 6:34 AM
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