External Chain Plates: The Conversion is Complete

In the beginning our chainplates were the standard plate-through-deck affair, bolting to fins that were fiberglassed to the inside of the hull.  But the previous owner had snapped the mast in two at the spreaders while on passage to Puerto Rico when the upper shroud terminal let loose, I'm sure over-stressing at least one or more of the chainplates and their deck junctures, and causing the remaining rigging to be sub-par as you can see below:

A section of zinced chain held the now-shorter upper shroud taught enough to pull the now-rewelded-but-crooked mast into an almost straight line, though resulting in wildly uneven wire tensions.  Three different fittings on three stays, leading to three leaky slots in the deck.  We had plans for fixing and replacing what we could, and replacing the mast itself, but that obviously turned into a full re-rig from the chainplates up.  I wanted to go with external strap chainplates for simplicity, inspectasbility, and to stopp the leaking.  Bonus: the old chainplate fins get cut out of the lockers.  It started when I got a good deal on some oversized 3/8" x 2" aluminum-bronze plate over a year ago.  It has similar tensile strength to stainless, but for good faith in the bronze, I upsized from the 1 1/2" x 1/4", the rig's minimum stainless steel chainplate dimensions.  The bronze ended up not bending well and needed to be cut and welded to the necessary angles at the deck.  This made me and my engineering consultant-friend a bit nervous, but when he saw the size and quality of the finished product he agreed that it would be sufficient.  The space shuttle and the moon lander were welded after all.

We've shown you some progress in the past few months of cutting out the old fins, and more recently glassing over the area with multiple layers of biax/mat cloth and epoxy.  The new chainplates are arranged differently due to the rig.  The new mast is a double spreader rig with only one set of lower stays instead of our old single spreader rig with dual lower stays.  We have chosen to opt for the new mast's single lower shroud assembly, so the the old front and rear chainplate areas have only been smoothed into the wall, while the center plate location has been beefed up with three additional layers of biax/mat fiberglass to function as a backing plate (yes, fiberglass is an excellent backing plate when sufficiently thick) for both the upper and lower stays, side by side.

We started with the port side since it was against the dock.  When we finally got to drill through and measure the hull thickness last week, it ended up at 1 1/16" thick.  Minus our added glass, that means the solid glass hull thickness at the deck joint is about 3/4 to 7/8"!  We probably didn't even need the added glass, but it is nice to know it is there.  Then we finally got to finish the cabinet and bolt our plates through.  Final touches will be cedar shelves and wrapping that ugly hose in some white duct tape.

A finished cabinet on the boat!  Pay no attention to the underdeck immediately in front of the cabinet, we have decided to just sand it out and cover our underdecks and cabin roof in insulation and vinyl headliner.  This really gets me excited.  Last time we were living aboard, we noticed the heat radiating from our cabin roof and decks at the end of every day, and Lee Macgregor our salty sailor from Tales of a Salty Sailor, commented on how hot our cabin was, almost insisting that we put up insulation.  Here-say tales from other sailors in the area claim about 5 degrees cooler cabins on sunny days after insulating.  I see this as a refining touch for life aboard, plus it means less sanding and painting.

We re-launched Sparrow, our already-aging homebuilt dinghy, to assist with the installation of the starboard side and transom chainplates.  The straightness of drilled holes and the amount of things-not-dropped-overboard greatly improve when you have your work surface right in front and facing you instead of below and backwards.

We call this area the "saftey locker" since it contained all the flares, harnesses, EPRIB, and a spare fire extinguisher when we bought the boat.  Honestly, I'm not sure if it is the best location for those things in the future unless we can keep the door's swing area clear.  At any rate, in addition to the extra glass, this side also got a new waterfill and Sarah's loving touch with epoxy filler.  We thought this compartment would inevitably turn out a disaster, but she couldn't leave it alone, and it ended up a masterpiece...  a masterpiece of an inaccessible closet...

The aft chainplates were a bit more complex than the sides.  First, the angle of the transom meant that the bend in the plates absolutely had to be flush on the deck for good structural sense.  This is true of any chainplate, but there is quite a bit of forgiveness when a plate is only bent to 5 degrees, these ended up at 60 degrees, so anything below the plate's bend will be in bending force if it isn't properly supported with a good fulcrum at the bend.

The transom is about 7/16" thick and comes up past the deck in a flange, then the rear section of toe rail is notched to accept that flange.  I had to cut both the toerail and the flange in order to get the bend where it needed to be.  You can see the transom flange and toerail cross-section in the first picture below where I cut the big sections out for the chainplate.  It is an odd arrangement that results in the toerail appearing 3" high from the side, and about 1 1/2" tall from the back.  It also increases the apparent size of the transom.  The chainplates ended up looking a little lower on the transom than I would have liked, but structural integrity beat aesthetic every time.

The second issue with the heavily sloping transom was the top bolt hole of the chainplate was so close to the bend that it basically went right into the deck.  There was no way to get a nut on the back.  Well, I had just recently learned that fiberglass taps and holds bolts nearly as well as steel, so I solved this problem by underdrilling the top hole and tapping the fiberglass transom.

We also added the requisite three layers of biax/mat inside the lazarette for backing pads on the lower two bolts.

And it didn't end up looking too bad.  We plan to add wooden bridge covers over the top of the big notches we had to cut. That way the wood line across the back won't be broken. It will end up kind of looking like an intentional drain slot that also functions as chainplate clearance...  not too aesthetically pleasing, but at least it will look intentional.  The curve of the transom and the crown of the deck make the plate tangs slant slightly inward on the transom.   It makes a nice frame for the name.

The old teak bow plank (bow block?  big wooden termination block for the toerails?) was 3 inches tall and angled outward. The new bow plank is vertical like the new toerails and only 1 1/2 inches tall.  The old stem fitting is no longer even close to the new shape of the nose of the boat, nevermind it was also cracked and failing.  So we had a new one locally made in stainless steel.  Since we didn't want to redrill new holes in the nose of the boat, we had the plate made up to fit.  Between the errors of a cardboard template matching a boat's nose and a hydraulic bending machine making stainless plate match a cardboard template, the stem fitting ended up needing a slight shim to fit just right.  I whipped one up out of some spare teak and glued it in place using a big ignot of lead that I also happen to have sitting around.  Also, the nose of the boat was looking relatively thin at "only" 5/8" thick, so we beefed it up with five layers of biax cloth. Getting into that anchor locker is no fun. You have to be really careful not to cut your head open on all those ceiling screws, which incidentally represent the number of times somebody has had to crawl in there with a wrench, usually me.  With the stem fitting bolted on we could reattach the original pulpit.  The absence of the pulpit was the only the only thing keeping us from putting on lifelines.

Now the only thing keeping us from running lifelines is the time it takes to splice the dyneema ropes  onto thimbles.  I stumbled across a half-off deal on gray dyneema on ebay! I was already thinking about doing them in dyneema because it's cheaper than wire to begin with.  Plus, you splice the rope onto cheap thimbles yourself. Wire lifelines require expensive swaged fittings, paid labor to do the swages, and turnbuckles.  We're watching brummel splice videos on youtube and looking for our splicing fids...

... or something like that.

Beach Fail, Epoxy and Paint

This is the beach two Sundays ago.  It was supposed to rain. It had rained Friday and Saturday, but it did not rain on Sunday, and we were invited out to the beach.  It was warm and windy, but the water was perfect.  There were a lot of slow rolling waves to bob with. But they were not too strong. I thought. Until one knocked my left arm straight out of its socket. I screamed. AJ came running from farther out in the water.  He helped me back to shore where it was immediately evident to all the spectators that my arm was no longer in my shoulder.  AJ helped me hobble to the car, so we could go to the ER.  When we got there AJ helped me into shorts in the parking lot, I really didn't want to go in in a bikini. But there was no hope in the shirt department. My left arm was pinned unwaveringly against my side with a right handed death grip.

The most painful part was the car ride. You don't realize how many forces are applied to you in how many directions until every micro movement becomes excruciating. I kept yelling "Slow down slower! slowdown slower!" as AJ approached red lights or bumpy intersections.  It was the granny-est ambulance ride he could pull off in a bouncy old work truck. But I let out a few more involuntary screams than I'd like to admit any time we turned. At the ER I waited a record low time of one hour before being seen.  I was put on an IV with pain meds, then a couple hours later they came to fix my arm.

I was honestly surprised the ER staff was so concerned that I not feel anything. I figured they'd just pin me down, yank on my arm and do it. But they fed me a cocktail of pain drug, Valium and something to make me forget.  I remember them sending AJ away, then tying a rope around my arm, and then looking over to AJ and saying,  "When are they going to fix my arm?"  To which the nurse piped up, "We already fixed it. You don't remember? You were awake through the whole thing." So there you have it, down but apparently not out. The forget-me drugs worked.

Why they have to make you forget I don't understand. They didn't ask if they could give me those drugs. They just informed me as they were doing it.  I would have liked to remember so that I could feel how it needs to move to go back in. So I can handle it myself in the future. Oh well.

I kept my arm in an isolation sling for 6 days, at which point I had regained about 40% shoulder mobility.  On the 7th day I couldn't take any more resting and got back to work, because there's so much to do and summer is coming!

We got a little subfloor work done. From grimy to shiny.

AJ made a new support for the floor beam out of starboard. Finally, finally, finally we have floors between the cabin and V berth again! It's a big step, and the steep floor beneath is not forgiving on the ankles.

There was one last little bulkhead to deal with. Under the port side dinette settee were a few dividers and a massively oversize starter battery box fiberglassed in. After chiseling out the box, the bulkhead behind it was a mess, so AJ cut it back and fitted a new piece  We glued it in like everything else, with strips of biax w/ mat fiberglass cloth and epoxy.  Then we took turns sanding to smooth out the rough edges on both new bulkheads. Then I painted it in grey Pettit EZ-Bilge. 

Months ago we cut out the old chainplate fins before being distracted with the deteriorated interior/living conditions. Well, we finally finished glassing over the last 4 chain plate fins and are almost ready to install the chain plates!

We mixed a batch of epoxy HEAVILY thickened with chopped strand glass, cotton flock, and cabosil.

And patched over the entire area with more biax w/ mat fiberglass cloth.  Three layers (~3/16-1/4") thick was added in a large area to the center fins making the hull ~1" thick here (drilling soon to confirm).  This additional glass will function as backing plates for the location of the new bronze external strap chainplates.

AJ has to narrow (grind) the tops of the bronze chain plates a bit to fit the toggles.
The chain plates and toggles are sitting on top of 300 feet of 1/4" 1x19 316 stainless rigging wire. Which we got a while back for a steal at $.90 a foot! Sometimes it's good to know people.

Our current project list is as follows: Install chain plates, fabricate stem fitting, finish cabin mast support, order rigging fittings, (if the ER bill does not find us first) then raise the mast!  All the meanwhile finishing the scrubbing and painting of the inside.  We're in for another rainy few days, but there's always something you can do with closed windows and hatches... if you dig deep, and wear a respirator. 

The Other Naughty Bulkheads

This week we repaired the last two problematic bulkheads. In the pic below you can see the triangular missing shape from the back bulkhead in the closet through the hole of the missing bulkhead (which is now replaced with fiberglass board).  AJ cut out the portion of the plywood bulkhead that had rotted.  

To prep the area for a new plywood piece, we sanded back the paint where fiberglass tape would be laid, down to wood or gel coat,  then cleaned it with acetone.  Pics are not of final prep ;)  I bet even my non boater friends know this drill now, but I just can't think of anything else to say about it. This was glued to that, that was bolted to this...and so on and so forth until I'm boring myself to death. And probably you too, faithful readers.  My life amounts to little more than nuts and bolts and glues and screws right now. Unlike AJ, these things fail to illicit the poet within me.

We decided to use fiberglass tape this time with lovely selvage edges, instead of cutting strips out of our biax, which leaves sharp shards sticking out everywhere that you have to fight to smush down, then cuts you after it cures.  Yay tape!



We laid two layers of tape over every seam.  The two triangular sections of the V berth you can see in a pic above were slathered with thickened epoxy and chop strand glass before the new plywood piece was wedged in.

The other problematic bulkhead was the plywood bottom of the non structural bulkhead that separates the galley from the cabin.  This one was removed via punching.  Pow pow! And it fell to pieces. The old fiberglass tape along it's edges had to be chiseled off then sanded down.

New plywood panel dry fit:

The veneer on the top of the bulkhead isn't doing so hot...but it's veneer on fiberglass so no problemo! 

Same story, and voila, another fixed bulkhead.

We've also been working on the chain plate fin areas.  Removing the fins left a gouge. The area was ground, sanded, and scrubbed clean. We filled and smoothed the gouge with thickened epoxy with chop strand fiberglass. Then covered it with fiberglass cloth. 2 down, 4 to go.  2 of them will serve as the location for our new chain plates, and receive 2 layers of heavy biax fiberglass. The chainplates can be installed after that, then the mast support, then the mast!

After all of this glass work, we'll get to do tons more sanding! of fiberglass! Ahhhh!
Then we can cover it all up with paint and forget it ever happened. Try to forget, try very hard.

Next up, a sneak peak!

Full report coming soon.

Dirty Prep Work

It's hard to write about a month like this last one. It doesn't feel like we've made much progress. But that's because we're back in the reward-less deconstruction phase. Everything is connected to everything else, so you can't just do one project start to finish and see the progress.  It's all prep work. Dirty dirty prep work. For instance, to install the toe rails the deck/hull joint needed to be cleaned and prepped on the inside.  That joint is often behind cabinetry, in inaccessible moldy corners, or in the case of the V-berth, behind 2x4s.  So prepping this area lead to cleaning the cabinets, stripping the remainder of the wiring, cutting out the chain plate fins, and lots of scrubbing, sanding and scraping.

Here's the worst cabinet of them all. You can't reach the back without laying on your back and squeezing your head and shoulders inside and working a couple inches above your face. The moldy paint chips rain down.

We removed the vent on the delaminating wall.  It's unnecessary. And we need to fix the wall.

AJ cut out the old chain plate fins. There were 6.  When the cutting began the cabin filled with billowing sparkling glittering dust.  But unfortunately repeating "I do not believe in fairies" 3 times did not make it go away.  The new chain plates will be external.

We removed the port side cabinets to ease access to the deck/hull joint for cleaning and toe rail installation. We were hesitant at first, but upon closer inspection found they were one solid piece held in place only by a lip rail on the bottom. So they came out easily without having to come apart.

We replaced the delaminated plywood seat panels with PVC.  

There was still wiring in the way, running all over the place, held up with corroded metal wire clips.  So many wire clips... We went ahead and pulled all the light fixtures. We will be using led strip lighting, not these 1960's power suckers. And I think it might be time to update the cassette tape player.  We get to wire the boat from scratch.

In the V berth there was a 2x4 along the deck/hull seam to hide the toe rail bolts.  The old bolts were cut off at the deck, and knocked through to the inside everywhere except for in the V berth where they remained embedded.  The 2x4 was glued on and came off with a chisel. 

It's not hard to tell which bolts leaked.

We pulled the old bolts out and filled the holes with thickened epoxy. After scrubbing the black portions of the fiberglass until the water ran... less black.

And we finally installed the gates to finished the stanchion job!  The gates needed a pad for the second leg.  AJ made starboard pads with the proper angle to sit flat on the deck. 

We are ready to move to real projects and fixing things!  We are currently working on the bulk heads and mast support. And the cabin is almost clean enough for sanding and painting.  

The Point of No Return

The next step in the process of making our boat leak free was stripping the decks of all hardware so they can be sanded, patched, and painted.   Most of the hardware leaked, and the deck is covered in hundreds of tiny holes that seep moisture.  The holes are from the screws that used to hold down teak deck planking.  We are having the decks and cabin AWLGrip-ed in the same Oyster White as the sides of the boat. After much deliberating we chose it because it's a two part polyester urethane top coat, with a two part epoxy primer.  It will provide a hard, watertight seal.  It's tricky and should be applied by professionals.  The decks will be sanded, prepped and AWLGrip-ed by Danny's Boat Restoration, who already did our topsides and boot stripe.  Danny does excellent work at a very reasonable price.  Plus he's been very accommodating, and he employs incredibly fast workers.  I don't know how they do it.  They must be impervious to the Florida sun.  After this, the boat will be continuous AWLgrip from waterline to waterline.

The little holes in the deck are the black dots.  There are exactly one million of them.  We have been sanding off the raised anti-skid grid because there are precisely one billion tiny chips of paint in the indention.  Do not question my counting skills.

AJ and Darrin removed hardware from the bow.  AJ had the shittiest job, suspending himself inside the sweltering anchor locker with a series of wrenches, holding the backing nuts.  Our friend Sailboat Trash had the next shittiest job, using crappy Chinese Harbor Freight tools to remove age-brittle screws and bolts from of their 40+ year hiding places while baking in the hostile Florida sun.  Thanks to Sailboat Trash's unexpected arrival in town, I got the least shitty job: standing in the sun taking pictures, listening to inventive and expertly crafted obscenities, and fetching tools and water.  Everything was stripped bow to stern, winches, cleats, stanchions, genoa track, everything.

The chain plates were also removed.  The last remaining original plate was not replaced with the others on the last refit because (quote) "it was inside a pretty teak box" ...  I do not care about pretty teak boxes as much as I care about the livelihood of my rig, and its owner. It's pictured from the inside in the bottom left.

The one in the bottom right was only a year old when it came out, but it was somehow composed of mostly rust and a spiderweb of cracks.  That one was in the closet.

Nearly bare decks.  Damn that cleat. It won't budge.

The engine room and cockpit lockers are now also stripped bare.  All separation panels, wires, turning blocks, and superfluous fiberglass pieces are now gone after hours of grinding, chiseling  and suffering clouds of fiberglass dust in a suffocating airless pit.  There really are few things worse than dust that's made of glass.  Millions and millions of microscopic glass splinters all over your body.  Danny is also going to epoxy barrier coat (Interlux 2000E) this room and the bilge.  We are making new panels out of mahogany ply wrapped in fiberglass that will be glassed into the boat to separate the engine room and cockpit lockers.

And now we come to the project that gave this post it's title.  The toe rails.  We have been in a state of analysis paralysis about them for two months.  The paralysis came from figuring out how best to strip them, salvage them, re-caulk them, re-fasten them, re-plug them, and refinish them.  But they are 43 years old, cracked and pitted, and leaking through many of the bolts.  They have been salvaged a few too many times already.  We were hoping to be able to save them one more time and replace them some other time in a more pleasing locale.  But seeing as we are stripping everything else from the decks to "fully" seal the boat from leakage and stop current deck rot from getting any worse, we decided- with a sigh of resignation - they had to be done now with everything else.  Trying to save them would take more time and effort than removing them and just replacing them with new wood.  We'd have to razor blade the old caulk out, add new, pull all the plugs and bolts, and add new, strip the paint, and add new...  When you give up on saving something and instead commit to merciless destruction, the job can get done fast.  In our case, fast enough that is is actually cheaper to replace rather than salvage and reuse the wood due to days on the hard saved.

Making that first cut is the hardest because once you do, there's no going back.  Our plan was to use a metal blade on the recip-saw to cut both wood and bolts at the same time and then just drive the headless bolts through the deck into the boat.  No need to bother removing a couple hundred remotely-located nuts from the underside.  Yet only inches into the first cut on the rail, the first bronze bolt burnt the teeth right off the first blade we used.  It was the blade that came with the saw so that was expected, but we were not sure how many blades would end up burning by the end.  We tried an abrasive blade made for cutting iron that worked pretty well, but was slow going.  Then switched to Ace brand titanium tipped metal blades and were able to run it down the length of the toe rail with little hesitation at the bolts and used only one blade in the process.  I was amazed, and very relieved that we didn't REALLY screw ourselves into an impossible task.  

Sailboat Trash returned for another day of awful work.  Meaning the toe rails were off before noon. Thanks buddy.

After the recip-saw came the violent sledgehammering.

Underneath the toe rails was the same black tar-like substance we've found everywhere else under old wooden trim.  The 43 year old Chinese tar just isn't holding up anymore.  We are going to replace the toe rails with 1 1/2" Mahogany square.  Teak just isn't affordable.  Neither is going taller than 1 1/2 inches.  The toe rails were just over 3" tall, and there is really no need for them to be that large unless they are integrated bulwarks.  All they do is trap water on the decks.
We are going to carefully remove the bow portion and reuse it (we think), so we won't have to replace or alter the bow hardware.  The wood itself is in good shape but it leaks like a sieve into the anchor from underneath.  The stern portion is also going to remain all the way to the original bronze turning blocks.  Will it match? Experiments in color technique are underway now, but the bottom line is we don't know and we don't care as long as it won't leak or continue to rot the deck or bulkheads.

There she is, with only the teak that will remain.  The new toerails will swoop down to 1 1/2" after the bow portion before swooping back up at the stern.

The boat is now naked.  No windows, no hardware, no toerails.  When Danny is done with it, we will re-install the hardware, install the new bronze external chain plates, install new bronze opening portholes (yay!!!), and re-install the hatches.  Well, re-install one of them.  The first hatch came apart rather easily with no damage.  We weren't so lucky with the second one.   The second one had been rebuilt before and the screws were epoxied in, plus they were phillips head screws.  It wouldn't come apart without splitting damage to two of the sides.  So we were stuck, it couldn't be rebuilt, it couldn't be used as it was, replacing the two damaged sides with new teak is pricey, and having a new one built is not cheap either.  If we had a wood shop and the tools and the time: maybe, but we don't.  The problem with hatches is that there are no standardized sizes, you either have one custom made for your boat, or you customize the hole in your boat to fit an existing production hatch.  Ideally, if we could have whatever our hearts desired we'd choose a wooden butterfly hatch.  We asked our wood guy about building one, but he said no.  We asked another local carpenter about having a new hatch built and what that would cost, but he said he'd rather not try.  But - in a stroke of unimaginable luck - he did have a daughter who had salvaged a butterfly hatch of a sunken, then beached boat.   She wanted to sell it, and it was the perfect dimensions to fit our center hatch.  It's beautiful patina-ed bronze and teak and in incredibly good shape.

We celebrated the end of the toe rail dilemma with fresh sea food for lunch.   My first crab. I've had a crab cake before, but never a break-it-open-fresh-from-the-bay crab.  Nice to get a little taste of what dinner will look like one day when we are living on the boat in swim-able, fishable waters.  Gotta keep the dream alive. Mmmm. A bit obscene at first.  But...it's gonna be a good life.

The Week Before Haul Out

Thanks db, I'm posting from the iPhone with pictures. Though if it reads like a madlibs I'm sorry. I caught the autistic bilge pump and 20 alternatives for the word teak. But auto correct was so giddy I can't have kept pace. And after hours of tiny screen typing and HTML I'm tapped out and not gonna proofread.

AJ built a mock-up of the tiller head from wood scrap and took it to a machinist to be made of naval brass.

Here is the tiller head (uninstalled) fresh from the shop. Now the cockpit is open and roomy with no wheel and binnacle in the way. The tiller raises up vertically as well, allowing you to also steer standing.

I spent the week heat gunning and scraping the varnish off of the exterior wood. And sanding. like the dinghy, this boat is 70% sanding.

Stripped

Here are the current chain plates, they are the anchor points for the rigging wire. You can see where the one on the right is rusted. All 6, 3 on each side, leak. They are all inside a cabinet or locker on the inside of the boat. During the rainy season they are slimy and black, oily and wet, Rendering the storage compartments unusable, mildewy and smelly. (also in this pic - the brown painted lip on the edge of the deck is the toe rail. I'll be stripping it as well. The rectangle on deck half in the shot is the new 25 gallon fuel tank.)

The new chain plates will be external.

Here is where the mast sits on the cabin roof. It is supported only on the port side with a solid teak post that doubles as the bathroom wall. The cabin roof has collapsed slightly on the starboard side. When we remove the mast it will be decompressed.

Here is the base of the mast compression post/bathroom wall. It's supported by 2 rotting chunks of Cedar 2x4 blocks and a fiberglass crossbeam.

Here it is in the rainy season. The base of the mast compression post, and the keel bolts are perpetually in 2-3 inches of water. This area has no way to drain into the bilge, it just collects mystery water. The hose coming from the bathroom curving right drains water from the b room to the bilge. We are going to fiberglass the whole area and make it a shower sump with a little automatic bilge pump that pumps out the water to a thru hull in the bathroom, straight out to sea. The hose will get disconnected so the bathroom drains into the new pumped sump.

Here is the teak compression post from the inside of the bathroom.

On the hard we'll also be replacing the windows. They all leak. Here is one badly delaminated.

The window leaking also caused he hand rail to rot off.

Lastly we come to the cockpit hatch replacement. Here it is with the aluminum lip and teak removed.

 Aj is chiseling out the wood core to male room for the hatch lip to attach underneath.

Decided to wait to finish the installation until on the hard because of how dirty the next step is. Lots of grinding. Grinding the honeycomb off the deck surface alone creates huge clouds of white powder smoke. It's too big a mess for the dock.

Engine room/ cockpit hatch hole seen through holes in kitchen counter and wall. The engine gauges mount there facing outside with a clear panel over them.

We'll be saying goodbye to our heron. He's been fishing off our dinghy every night for 4 months. here's his latest catch.

There are some things we won't miss about him though.

That's one night of bird shit and fish guts. The bird crap strips the paint. AJ had cleaned off weeks worth the day before. Needless to say the dinghy will be getting some much needed love and attention too. And by love I mean sanding.

Tomorrow is the big day we tow down the river for a couple hours to haul out. Weather permitting. There's a severe lake wind advisory tomorrow. 20 mph easterly winds predicted. That would put us dead into the wind most of the way there so we'll see what happens tomorrow. Or today since it's after midnight.