AND THEN THERE WERE THREE!!!!

Yes, I’m shouting. We ticked a project off the list!

About a week ago, Jeremy’s response to “when are you going in the water” started involving an actual date. Okay, still a flexible date - but one with the name of a month attached to it. “By the end of the month,” he told friends we had dinner with. “We’ll be out of the yard by the end of June.”

All of a sudden, that “rolling 2 weeks” might actually be a real 2 weeks.

WHOOOOOOOOOOO!

I’m still a paper and pen kind of person.

The essential 4 projects have not changed much, except for some fleshing-out of minutia. We’ve started a second “critical” list, too, this one of projects that can be done in the water but need to be done before we make any appreciable tracks north. Even a 30 mile jaunt up the Bay would not be advisable without the cabinet doors in place, for example, or without the propane tanks secured to the deck.

Every morning we’re up with the sun, drinking coffee in the cockpit and discussing - endlessly - the DO list. With a launch date firmly in mind, each moment is choreographed and coordinated. Last night, while the 20-minute paint pot timer was ticking down (2 part paints need to sit for a while after you mix them and before you apply them), we installed the mushroom for the old engine intake thru hull. Why waste those 20 minutes?

The “thru hull” project has hovered on the edge of done for a while. We’d epoxied all the pucks in place and then decided to punch a new hole in the hull, for better engine cooling access. (The old one will be used for the watermaker, so it’s not a useless hole.) How long can it take to epoxy one puck and 4200 2 mushrooms?

Like many projects where the heavy middle goes pretty fast, the very end took FOREVER. Not once we actually started the final bits - the puck install was a 20 minute job; each mushroom about half that - but getting STARTED on the final bits. What IS it about starting and finishing!!

But. But but but. At about noon today (Friday), the last bit of oozed-out 4200 was cleaned up from around the new engine intake thru hull. Jeremy unfolded himself from his boat yoga position over the engine.

And the thru hull project was complete.

Ahhhhhhhh.