It's been a busy week.
During the sunny, warm weather we've been working with the tarp off. Nice to have good bright light for final fairing. Also, it's just good to be working in the sunshine.
The sun really brings out the color in the silverbali coamings.
Oh, I'll bet you say that to all the tropical hardwoods...
The silverbali sole is coming along nicely. It's looking like we milled up exactly the amount of stock that we needed.
Phew.
Jeff has gotten the top of the rudder post fit on the aft deck. It looks pretty great.
Robin, Leo, and Joel have spent a lot of time sanding to get the lower half of the hull fair.
We use battens and long sanding boards to make sure that we're getting a fair curve as we go. By laying a batten across the area that you're working, you can see flats, dips and lumps in the hull and know where to concentrate your effort. As you get closer to just right, the paint becomes your friend. You can see the high and low areas by what comes off as you sand.
This makes a lot of dust.
Another reason why it's nice to have the tarp off... better ventilation.
And why do we do all this fairing? Because when you put the paint on, it looks really really nice.
The topside paint has a high gloss and it really shines. Our topsides paint is made by Fine Paints of Europe, and our bottom paint is an Interlux product called Baltoplate.
We roll and tip everything.
You can see the result of all that fairing.
The painter came out the other day to do Cherokee's transom lettering.
Yes, he worked out the lettering by hand, not by computer. And yep, he paints it by hand as well.
Steady, steady.
Simple and elegant.
As long as we're on the topic of painting, we've painted and varnished the cove stripe as well.
It looks pretty rough in this photo because the masking tape is still on. Once it came off, the stripe came out crisp and sharp.
We've cut slots in the deck for the mainsheet bridle.
Just below these slots are the pulleys for the bridle.
The pulley is the black wheel just extending from the underside of teh bronze housing. Naturally, we don't just leave these slots looking like this. No no. They get nice bronze plates with an open box welded to the underside. These keep the deck canvas down and protect the cut ends of the planking from water infiltration.
Jeff continues to work on the rudder. Here, he's tuning up one of the bronze gudgeons that hold the rudder to the sternpost.
And here's the rudder and rudder post, ready for assembly.
And, voila! it fits!
There are tons of small parts that need to be worked on. Robin did some tuning up on one of the backstay fittings,
He's also been working out the final fitting of the transition piece that goes between the rudder and the underside of the horn timber
It's still early in the fitting process, but you can see how this piece will continue the shape of the hull into the rudder.
Karl has been working out the final fitting of the mast step.
He's hard at work, I promise. We have a strict "no sleeping on the boat" policy.
The deck now has 2 coats of paint on it, so we lay down cloths whenever we have to put things on it.
The last thing you want is a ding or grime on your nice new deck.
And, at long last, today was the day when we took down the staging
and prepared the boat for moving over by the dock.
It was a grey day, just spitting bits of rain during most of it.
The guys with the lift truck came by in the early afternoon to move us the 300 or so yards over to the dock.
We needed to move the boat in order to step the mast. There are power lines all around the parking lot where we've been working, and we wouldn't have been able to move the boat to the launching area with the mast up. So, one final move was in order.
The truck is open in the center, so it can straddle the keel as it backs up under the boat.
The hydraulic pads lift up and cradle the boat, just like the poppets did. Oak cross beams support the keel.
After that, it's a short move out of the parking lot and down to the dock. Of course, it wouldn't be proper to get by without one last tight fit.
You won't see the top of this mast from this close up again any time soon...
We weren't able step the mast today, but we were able to do an initial fitting to work out the lengths of the stays and shrouds.
Up we go.
And higher
Locating it through the mast partner (the reinforced area beneath the deck) and onto the step.
And more or less in place.
Good enough for getting the lengths set for the rigging. Once Steve got that data, the mast was lowered back onto it's cradles. After that, Steve swaged on the fittings at the end of each steel cable that will attach the rigging to the boat. In case you don't know what swaging is, it's the process of using very high pressure to form a metal fitting onto a steel cable. Here's some guys swaging a HUGE steel cable to give you an idea of both swaging and splicing.
So, for the next two days we'll keep working on the final preparations for Saturday's launch. We can really feel it coming together now...