The shop neighbors just laughed and shook their heads as they closed up their businesses Friday afternoon for the holiday weekend… The boatbuilder had said this mess would disappear by the time they reopened!

 
Most of the tools were home already before that photo, but as usual we were trying to “multitask”; still building parts until the last possible moment. We were packing to the tune of the vacuum pump as this table full of cabinet doors and companionway boards came to life. 

No fireworks this year as the Fourth gave us new doors and a disgraceful amount of landfill waste

We will live ‘greenly’ on Ravenswing, but the construction left a debris trail that was a bit unnerving at the dumps this morning. It was pretty weird handling every scrap with all their memories of missteps, fixes and clever accomplishments over the years. But also a HUGE relief when the landlord snapped this photo with the keys in her hand and the Carters no longer the Piner Industrial Center boatbuilders!

Big thanks to Michael the woodworker for all the tool loaning and advice over the years. To Mark for wrenches and the forklift in a pinch. To David for painting advice and labor leads. To Marcus for Giants fanaticism and damn funny humor. The Piner guys get a McCovey Cove day Aug20 on the boat; we’ll be the ones on your TV with the huge World Series Champs flag that Marcus got from the steps of City Hall celebration in 2014.

Hey Griff, pool-cover Nevin traded his new portable air compressor for our old huge one, so I didn’t have to move the BigPig out of the shop and we have a nice beefy 2hp compressor in the garage now :)

We could not have finished the boat these past five years without this place. A note to current or contemplating builders: it’s easy to underestimate the costs of a rented or borrowed shop in a build budget. Mostly because IT IS going to take longer than any of us plan, and that rent check has to keep being written. For us, the extra 12 months rent devoured our electronics savings account, so Ravenswing launched without the Tesla-like lithium batteries, light weight 600 watt solar array or desired Furuno comms/nav goodies. But overall, choosing a workspace one mile from home was the best thing we did for this whole project. The proximity made getting to the boat work an easy thing, so more got done any given week. Do what you can to avoid commuting to your hobby job! Finally, go big. 48×24′ was really too small for this boat. If ever again, the shop would have to be large enough for the tri or cat to stay in its fully assembled wide condition. 

So now the boat to-do list gets tackled  from the dock. First up is solving motor cavitation (severe power loss due to poor water flow or air bubble entrapment). The protection leg in front of the motor is too long. Not sure how much, but it sits 3″ below the waterline and cutting 6″ is the common sense move. Pre-cut here:

Half a foot later

Then we took the offcut to Charlie’s table saw and salvaged the bottom cap, clean-up sanded the cap and the motor mount, and prepped a batch of peanut butter thick epoxy/cabosil paste. Loaded the kayak to continue the 6pm surgical reconstruction…

And plastered that cap up where it (hopefully) belongs

That seam will get cleaned up and covered with a bit of fiberglass next week after this current business trip. If I’m lucky, our boat dock host will have tackled some lazy Jack improvements this weekend :)

We’ll get her sailing for real very soon.