rudder, hardware and mast...

Have been working on a couple of things at once:

Rudder is shaped, glassed, beefed up around the gudgeon location and painted (first coat)

I have also been installing the Ronstan hardware. Here is some of the cockpit bling. I went w/ one access port and 2 speakers (thanks Chad for that idea).

Finally, I got the mast stood up fully rigged w/ the standing rigging. It looks like all of the rigging came out right. Time will tell as I tune everything, but at this point, it looks pretty good. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera handy so pics will come later....

I am still short one boom.....need to work on that soon!!

Bow sprits and beer caps......

I got the bow sprit sorted (mostly) tonight.

And counted bottle caps. Progress continues......

Plugging along

HUGE day Saturday this past weekend as John Perrault came by and spent the ENTIRE day (in sweltering heat) helping me build and rig the mast. We got all the standing rigging sorted and 4 of six shrouds installed. We had it up more than once but as both of us were scurrying around lifting, balancing, sweating, measuring, sweating, lowering, cutting, raising the mast (and sweating) there wasn't much leisure time for photography.

Here's a picture of the mast laying down next to the house:

I also built the trailer:

And CAREFULLY lifted the boat up in the air (scary):

And placed the trailer under the boat:

I got a HUGE amount done this weekend. Thanks again to John, I would be no where near this far if not for him.

Oh yeah, and today was the boys first day of school: