We spent the weekend whale watching and taken a tour of Halifax harbor in the ketch Mar II. On Monday we started back to work…..
Amy continued to grind/paint the hull and ended up finishing the entire first coat. She worked hard and the boat looks great. A major step and we are now considering coming back up at Thanksgiving so that Amy can put another coat on.
Ryan, my dad and I continued to work on the rudder and worm gear steering. When Ryan finished the welding on the rudder, Amy painted it and we put it on. After that we attached the Edson worm gear drive and put extra bolts in the collar that mounts to the rudder post. An then finally the wheel itself. 3 turns each way will put the rudder hard over. Another major task complete.
Ryan and I then proceeded to weld on the hatch combing for the engine room hatch. Ryan welded, I grinded and the hatch cover slips over nicely. After than we re-enforced some of the stern railing and welded in a few wire through hulls near the forward shrouds.
Mom continued her sewing this week and took some measurements for future hatch covers while Dad mounted the wooded binnacle piece onto the compass binnacle. Thanks guys, you all were a huge help.
In all we got a lot done, some major tasks got completed and we are all exhausted. Thursday, after work, Amy and I started driving back to Texas. 2.5 days later we were in Austin. Mission complete.
In has been a great week working on the boat. However, we have been working very hard. After unloading all the woodwork, Amy charged ahead on painting the primer coat on the hull. This involved grinding every square inch with the angle grinder and the quickly following up with the 4″ paint roller. Amy was a machine, rarely stopping, rarely taking breaks, and she nearly finished the hull in the first week. Needless to say, she was quite sore at the end of everyday.
My parents showed up on Wednesday and both mom and pop put in a lot of hours. Mom spend her time sewing in the back of my trunk. It was good as She had a view few of Halifax from the tailgate of my truck. Dad ran around working everything he could.
Steve (the carpenter) and I (he did most of it) worked on fitting the wheelhouse and engine rooms hatches on the boat. It was hard. Steve ended up making templates for each side and then using a router to cut to fit. The hatches look really nice and I got come good comments on them.
I also assisted Ryan in a few welding tasks. Ryan was not happy with a few of the internal welds so we went back and re-stitched them. We were very careful to put fire watch around Ryan so we would not catch the insulation on fire.
Ryan and I also pulled the rudder and rudder post off the boat. They were not quite finished from last year and Ryan and I wanted to re-do some of it. It was really hard to get off, we end up using a come-along to pull it out. Dad and I made new mounting brackets from left over 3/4″ plate, and polished up the post so it would turn better in the tube.
Since there are so many photos from this trip, I’m not going to post all of them this week, but rather post a few for each of the coming weeks since I don’t have much to do when I get home.
We left Thursday after work and made it to Arkansas the first night. After that, it was 2 long uneventful days driving to Maine, except for New York that is. Google had routed us through New York which we thought would be alright since it was on an elevated expressway. Well, the elevated expressway was at ground level, with tunnels, right through the Bronx. Stop and go for miles, punctuated by toll booths just to slow things down, and we got rear ended lightly by a Jag from Florida. What the hell….
From Maine it was another light day to Halifax. So, the wood work is finally at the boat…..
I should mention that the drive through Maine, through New Brunswick, with a stop in St. John was absolutely gorgeous.
Packing the truck and modeling the interior were the major tasks that I wanted to accomplish this week. And with help from Amy, the truck is nicely packed and ready for our trip. Amy also started making curtains for the small boat (practice for the large boat), and they are coming out nice. We also decided it was time to make (remake) the work benches in the shed. The two 4′x8′ tables I had made originally were just to large so we took them apart to make a smaller ‘L’ shaped table. We did not finish, but made a nice mess of the shed for when we get back.
I modeled the entire galley and then discovered that four pieces that I was working the interior with (head, wet locker, galley, and dinner table) were off of the center lines by ~4 inches. Had to go back and fix all the separate models before I could put them back together correctly. Turned out then that there was not enough room for the door to the head, so I moved it around to face the galley. Think it still works nicely.
