The Sonoran Desert has had a cold February and early March. Mainly the temps drop a lot at night. But this evening was different, an invitation to work outside. After dinner I pulled out a spare Suzuki water pump kit, a headlamp and toolbox. Spent 8-11pm pulling the lower unit off the main engine for a water pump and gear oil change. Found a bit of pump housing damage so it took a little longer than normal. The boatyard rat hunting felines Dulce and Pantera were quite amused by a human with funny headlight during their busy hours.

I had spent the afternoon rigging the engine with electricity, gas, throttle and transmission cables, plus general cleaning up. This install came out really well. This photo was before the water pump night job.

Something is wrong with my WordPress app here, as I can’t upload more photos for you. So imagine…

Marvin on catamaran GenM graciously offered his paint spray equipment for my orange bits. Bowsprit, rudder cassette and 8’ long steering stick looked amazing this afternoon. Tomorrow I’ll brush on the orange accent stripes at bow and stern.

The daggerboard was supposed to be a simple drop in job Thursday. The yard guys lifted it to the deck via forklift, but when we slid it into the trunk it was too wide. Or rather the trunk was too narrow because my added shims were too thick. And I had added too much on the forward bumper section (the part that doesn’t go down into the water). I figured there might be a bit of trimming, but it ended up being a two day job, including about three hours where it was completely stuck. It’s amazing how a 7’ tall, 100 lb, 3” wide barn-door like thing can wedge itself in so badly we needed the crane to free it. After that I used our ladder up on deck as a derrick with block and tackle to fine tune the fit. I think I finally have this thing set up so it won’t bang in the trunk during sloppy cross seas. I also had some end-of-run orange paint and decided to paint the board. That’s for the unthinkable: the boat has flipped and we’ve put an orange and black emergency flag, formally known as daggerboard, into the air.

The under-beam braces got finalized Wednesday. It was terribly windy with sand blowing. Pretty awful conditions. So I kept eye and ear covers on all afternoon and cut away then end-polished all those big 3/4” thick bolts so it’s all tidy. Removed a few pounds of unnecessary washers and bolt thread offcuts, so that felt great.

Lots of little detail work has come together this week and we’re nearing the end of what’s turning out to be a solid two months project (spread over five calendar months). Last push for this round is to step the mast Monday morning. Sail track is repaired and boom looks great. I’m eager to hoist the main again and get proper measurements to the sailmaker so we can figure out what went wrong in the 2018 recut (made the sail match the longer new mast), and test out a spinnaker that’s available here from a friend’s performance catamaran.

I’ve been shooting more video footage and will get YouTube going once I get home.

… and be warned, this boat blog is in jeopardy of high jacking by a ball of canine cuteness very soon. Do you like chocolate?