Big week for Henry’s little boat. We finished painting the bottom and learned a lot in the process. Mostly, we need to spend more time prepping the bottom before we paint. Still, it looks really good. We finished fitting out the rudder and tiller, looks pretty sharp with the pindles and gudgeons we got from Optiparts.com. We also made the daggerboard. Just need to seal both the rudder and daggerboard now. We also test rigged the boat with some line we bought from Home Depot. Will by real line later, but it was good to figure out the lengths of line we’ll need.

I got my ticket to Halifax for May this week. Hopefully will be able to work on the companionway hatch logs and test fit a new style dorade box.

The 3 odyessy battries arrived this week. Don’t exactly know where we are going to put them yet. There are a few options, over the diesel tanks, in the aft cabin… we shall see. We also ordered the drive shaft seal from Tides Marine. http://www.tidesmarine.com/shaft-seals.html. Parts are getting ordered which makes me feel great about the progress.

On Henry’s tender, Amy started painting the bottom while I made the blade for the rudder. I made it a little bigger than a standard Optimist rudder figuring I could cut it down later. Also, it appears that I should have put a thicker coat of epoxy on the outside, many blemishs are visible under the paint. Next time.

My late grandfather gave me a gold Kugerrand a long time ago, and I had all but forgotten about it until my father’s 70th birthday party (happy birthday dad!) when my mom asked me about it. She told me to put it toward the propeller. Brian contacted Michigan Wheel and we placed an order for a bronze, 3 bladed, fixed, 20″ x 15″ prop. Should be here in a few weeks, and the best part is,…. the coin covered the whole thing. Yah!

Amy and I put a lot of hours on Henry’s tender this week. Trying to wrap it up so we can get back on the big boat. We did a lot of sanding and filling, put the oarlocks in, bolted an eye through the bottom for the hiking out straps and glassed the bottom. Seemed like we spent half the weekend running back and forth to Home Depot and West Marine. When we ran out of epoxy I had just about had enough, but Amy was for finishing so with one more trip we finished off the bottom. It looks great. Thanks Amy.

A friend, Doug who has done some boat work with YachtSmiths sent me some pictures of a RedPath Model he has been working on. I think it looks awesome. Thanks for sending them Doug!