Look! It's a BOWSPRIT!

Rounding third and heading towards home, project #2 (the rig) is tantalizingly close to being done.

UPS delivered the last pieces of our rigging at about 3 pm. (Side note. I love small town America. The driver drives right up to our boat and hands over the package with a smile.) And by 4, we’d installed the bowsprit!

Here’s Jeremy, working on measuring the forestay length.

Jeremy had made the whisker stays (measuring and cutting the wire, installing the turnbuckle on one end and the fork and toggle on the other) last week when we dry-fit the sprit, but he had run out of Sta-Lok cones to do the bobstay or the forestay. So the whiskers took about 10 minutes to install after the sprit was in place. Then he had to measure the forestay, cut the wire, and install the new turnbuckle, all before being able to secure that forestay on the end of the bowsprit.

Cutting the forestay to the right length while sitting on the side deck.

Meanwhile, I was working on the bobstay. In the time it took Jeremy to do all the other stuff, I’d managed to measure the wire and fit one cone in. What took me about an hour would have taken him about 5 minutes. Oh well. It’s now 5 minutes he does not have to spend!

It was too hot to bear working even one minute longer. The installation of the bobstay will have to wait until tomorrow.

Of course we’ve added a project to the original 4. Since we’re not heading directly to another yard to haul for bottom blasting but instead are putting that off until the fall, we do have to do a bottom job. Yesterday I wet sanded the starboard side and today just cleared out all the stuff we have stored under the port side. Tomorrow or Wednesday I’ll wet sand the port side. This weekend I’ll apply a couple of coats of basic bottom paint and we should be good for the season in Maine.

Jeremy’s been working like a fiend on the engine/electrical project as well. Now we’re just waiting on the arrival of some o-rings for the heat exchanger, and then he’ll be able to put that all back together and maybe even do a test fire.

Where is that wire going again?

There are a lot of “all of a suddens” just about to happen. I can’t wait!