For my son, master of word-play…

Ravenswing’s daggerboard is almost ready to paint. We’re being rather methodical and not-rushed about the fairing work. (Because the mast is still months away).

To finish shaping the board, we needed to add back the 1″ wide knife-edge taper to the trailing side. It was done in solid fiberglass on one side, a bit of thick putty in the middle, and another glass strip for the other side.

Then as the Aussies say, we coated the whole board in fairing bog. That’s epoxy mixed with the red micro balloons, mixed up like a very runny peanut butter and spread on as evenly as possible.

Also note the 4mm thick wood strips added to both sides of the portion of the board that stays in the trunk while underway. This finishes the ‘solve’ to the board having been too loose in the trunk case while sailing. (Geoff, I didn’t use plastic because this wood was sitting right in the garage and was easier to rip to the exact thickness needed)

Here’s the fairing bog after the first session with the long-board sanding paper. This nasty task brought back bad memories of the long-boarding purgatory from hull fairing a few years ago. Builders, are your arms burning yet, just reading this?

The dark spots are the too-low points, ie the sanding board isn’t hitting there to turn the red bog to the dull pink. We sanded further, looking for that fair-surface balance. You don’t want to go too far, though, and destroy the intended overall shape. getting better with a second fill and sand pass, but you can see we went too thin with the bog for a long section about 4″ in from the trailing edge.

There was another pass done after this photo, and by the weekend we should be able to show you the finished fairing work.

Update on the little 4hp Johnson: took the carb apart a second time and cleaned even deeper, but it still ran funky. Punt. It’s with Outboard Bill in Sausalito. I authorized two hours of search and rescue…

So when your wife gets you a shiny new pickup and you scrape together some dough to get it lifted up and accessorized, you DON’T expect the 4×4 shop to call with “well Mr. Carter, we had an incident on Saturday…”they got the suspension upgrade done and winch bumper mounted, then backed it into a partially rolled shop door. Geez. At the body shop now.

More reasons the daggerboard is taking too long: excellent rolling distractions. Who wouldn’t want to try out a genuine 60’s dune buggy on the Plumas County dirt track?!and while we’re in the north Sierra, hit some excellent single track on the new Hightower LT. holy cow, this bike is a bad ass! If any of you Ravenswing fans want to do some mountain biking when we’re not sailing, just holler. They’re lined up in the garage :)

Thanks Mom for road tripping to the Sierras with your kid. That was fun.

Ok, we’ll get a bunch of boat painting chores done this upcoming supposedly hot weekend. Literally watching paint dry!