You were probably wondering why it’s taking so long to reshape that daggerboard. Truth is, we split just after the last blog post. A great vacation trip to UT and CO. Once back home and the trailer cleaned up for the next adventure, we got out the shaping tools. Mom, the red stuff is the fairing compound applied directly to the foam core, getting the understructure shape just right before the final outer skin of fiberglass is applied.

Keith should be happy with this new foil shape. We’ve gone from a 12:1 aspect ratio to about 9:1. And remember there’s still a final 1″ knife trailing edge to add back once we get more epoxy on hand.

Next up was wrapping the whole board again with 17oz double bias glass. you’d think we’d be old hands at this by now. Got all materials prepped in advance and decided to wet out the glass on a table in the shed. Well, the combo of a fast epoxy hardener and the big cloth being folded many times to fit the tiny table led to heat build up. As I draped the wet cloth over the board the epoxy started kicking off. There was some frantic pressing in place, then realization that some had to be cut away and (thankfully there was enough) new glass cloth added. And of course, because the project is quite large, our normal “stretchalon” vac bag wasn’t quite large enough. I used 4mil basic plastic taped into a bag but that stuff just doesn’t handle as well. Only saw this on the pump and today we found some air pocket lumps on the board that mean a bit of grinding and reglassing.

Ugh, guess we’re not to be called pro yet.

Seattle Geoff stopped by today as he’s curious about current examples of upwind foils (he’s building a high performance 37′ cat now) and I was embarrassed he saw my vac bagging flub. He was kind about it :)

It’s been a few months since we finished the portabote seats and transom makeover. Today it finally got wet, using the Petaluma River launch ramp that is two miles from the house. Carlos, that thing still leaks – I need to lift it up, get some dye in the water and search for the hole in one of those seams.

The 4hp Johnson hadn’t been run in three years, including the fact that our 2016 oak tree fall had sideswiped it. Couldn’t get it started the other day so we put on the bravery pants, watched some YouTube and tore into the carb.

I cleaned out nasty old varnished gas and bad particles. But there’s still something affecting the main jet (?) because today it wouldn’t rev up beyond about 1/2 throttle. If any of you know what I should try next, please holler. This is an early 90’s OMC 2 cyl, 4hp. It’s VERY clean, acquired by a nice old man who only used it in Donner Lake.

We “ordered” the new mast six months ago now. The anxiety level about the time delay is high. Spoke to the builder on Thursday and he’s finished the ones ahead of us. Now they are doing some maintenance on the 144-head braiding machine and reloading it with the right weight carbon filament for us. It will also be used to make a boom for a J-Class boat. That’s pretty incredible sounding and somehow ironic that our main mast is the same construction as another boat’s boom! The builder won’t bother giving me a target finish date at this point – we just need to stay on top of the progress.

Alright, you’ve read this far, so maybe you’ll be mildly interested in the Carters’ western road trip. It can’t always be 100% about sailing after all. Here’s the trusty co-pilot in her pickup truck

Once into Nevada we jumped on to America’s Loneliest Highway (US 50)

Went underground in Great Basin NP at Lehman Caves

Then had the young’uns with us in Moab for their spring break. Jeanne rented us two of these

It was Jeep Safari Week in Moab

We spent a Saturday afternoon on the CO river

Met up with our Sierra Buttes Trails Stewardship team for awesome mountain biking

Jeanne found her hiking legs again and we promised each other to do more of it! Doesn’t she look great?

After Moab the SBTS team went to a conference in Telluride, which was nice but at 10,000′ on a cold morning I somehow pushed the new truck into a throttle sensor fault mode, which devolved into this on I-70 a coupe days laterthat was late on a Friday, so Grand Junction Chrysler handed us a loaner car for the weekend and we explored the beautiful area

Got more riding in at Fruita’s “lunch loops”

And the truck turned out to be a 30 minute fix on Monday for some electronics minor recall thing. A few extra days in the American West and we found various decorations to make the new trailer more homey. It’s just missing a nice framed portrait of Ravenswing in there! Maybe once the new mast is stepped…