The boat shop is busy again now that (a) Griffin is officially a NorCol Golden Bear, (b) Colin closed on the duplex in Virginia and (c) Jeanne’s folk’s San Jose house is ready for rent (that last one took us a solid 5 day push to get done!)

Here’s how the mast foot finished up. The perpendicular centered web of aluminum that Keith asked for was installed before building the new end cap.

While the bonding putty dried, we went back to re-attaching the 175 Tides mainsail track clips.

This was done on Carter Time – an unfortunate reality warp wherein the husband asks the wife to come over and help put these screws in …”it’ll take us about an hour”. Three hours later, plus a trip to Fastenal for more screws because someone painted the heads of the originals, making them useless, and the wife is returned home. Carter time sometimes applies to mountain biking but seems primarily to be an acute problem around the boats. Has anyone else been cursed with this affliction ?

After the new web, the cap was bonded and carbon-wrapped. The nylon-insert backing nuts holding the SS cup got red Loctite are now entombed, but we don’t expect they’ll ever need to be touched.

After a few more hours of installing hardware (gooseneck, sail track, etc) the rebuilt mast was complete. At 225 lbs we needed a new way to get it atop the trailer. Hmmm- look how the beam extends about 36″ out the eave of the neighbor’s roof…

Late Saturday afternoon the shops neighborhood was deserted so we grabbed the ladder and bolted the chain hoist to that beam. With the mast on rollers Jeanne and I pushed it up against that building, lifted it 8′ in the air with the hoist and then drove the trailer in very close to the building. One local guy took pity and came over to help us steer / push the mast in to place atop the float and the whole thing was pretty smooth (but always stressful to lift these big expensive parts way up high!). No photos were taken – we had our hands full. Here the mast clears the pickup cab by 2 feet and overhangs the float end by about 4′

So here at the end of August “the big parts” are all on trailers, stored and ready for launch – floats, mast, beams and daggerboard. The main hull needs a week of final glassing bits and fairing, and all of its exterior paint. The interior is 95% prepped for final paint, which will be sprayed this week. After paint is done both inside and out, we’ll do wiring then plumbing and finally install all the deck hardware. It’ll be a very busy September in the shop.