Odds & ends, this & that...

Lots of different projects coming up soon to get the boat ready for rigging.

This is the masthead fitting my son made for me. There are attachment points for the standing rigging and the main and jib halliards.

The base of the mast is where the boom attaches with a contraption called a boom gooseneck. My son Matthew made this piece for me to my specifications, well I specified incorrectly and told him the mast had a radius of it's diameter. Anyway he made it like I told him so instead of a 3.5" radius on the mount plate, there is a 7" radius. Instead of having him redo it due to my mistake, I just added a pad and contoured it for the correct radius. It is being glued onto the mast now and then I will varnish the rest of the mast.

Boom & Gaff. The ends of all these spars will be painted.

I added this little shelf to mount the centerboard cam cleat.

Centerboard getting its fiberglass sheathing.

And the same for the rudder.

What a difference a little paint makes....

Well I finally got to sanding and finishing up the cockpit for some paint.

Still a little paint work to do here though!

I am also working on the mast and the gaff. the sail is pretty much done except I have to put in the grommets for lacing the sail to it's spars. I will be getting the rigging together before long though I still have the centerboard and rudder to sheath in fiberglass and epoxy. I'm hoping to splash this girl in about a month!!!

How to make it go...

Big brown stopped by the other day and brought me a box of sail parts. All I gotta do is stitch them together. Sure would be nice to have a big sail loft with a sewing pit in the middle.

Well I started sewing mine on a 4x8 ft table on the patio. I did the jib and it was about as big as I wanted to do there.

Then I started sewing on the main, doing as much work as I could on separate panels before trying to stitch them together. after I got all the little patches and reinforcements sewn on, I started sewing together the small panels into sections still small enough to handle. Then finally I moved the sewing machine into the living room and stitched these panels together on the floor were they have nowhere to fall. Hard on the knees but got the job done. There are still a couple of things that need to be done in the middle but it was where a patch fell on a seam so I couldn't do that until the panels were together. Now I have to sew on the corner patches, reef re-enforcements and treat the edge of the sail all around. It was actually kinda fun sewing this thing together.