With Team Dad & Son reunited, the (hopefully) final sprint to the finish has officially begun.

On Saturday we met early with the A-sprit inventor who promptly measured the bow and drilled the mounting holes for the sprit. It felt kind of like piercing the boat's nose. As the piercings passed through the cored part of the hull, we dug out the core and added a seal of MarineTex to keep water from ever making it to the core. The core came out completely dry, thankfully - no water intrusion issues in the hull itself.



A fiberglass ferrule fits through the holes, and a smaller tube slides into it to form a hinge. The sprit frame then bolts to the inner tube. We should have the whole thing assembled and rigged in a few days and I'll post some more pictures as this part of the project progresses.

Mounting the new battery charger was the next project. Actually - I don't think I told you guys about that. My shiny new Blue Seas P12 battery charger failed after a couple weeks of operation. I got on the phone with the customer support department who walked me through checking a few of the more common failure modes before agreeing that the unit was defective and shipping me a new one. So I switched all my wiring over to it and got it mounted, and it's working flawlessly.

Next we removed the temporary board from the missing 4th window and bolted the new one in place. It feels really good to have all four windows in:



Excess MarineTex went to fairing some of the deck holes in preparation for Kiwigrip operations, which begin next weekend. To that end, I also mixed up a batch of thickened epoxy to replace the rotten core on the port side of the traveler:



I'm very much looking forward to the Kiwigrip - the deck will look so nice afterwards! I'm planning on having my GoPro on and filming the gripping operations for a timelapse.

We pulled the starboard stanchion bases out in preparation for re-bedding, as well as some nearby pad-eyes. The backing plates were in mostly horrible condition - thin acrylic plates that were warped or in some cases completely cracked.

As night fell we headed inside and worked on mounting the Raritan electric toilet controls. I used a teak light switch plate from West Marine to avoid drilling a large hole in the formica around my head sink, and we caulked behind it as a precaution in case splashing in the sink causes water to drip down over the plate. I think it looks pretty good:



I've got some work to do to tidy up the toilet electronics before crossing that project completely off my list.

Sunday morning we crossed the Golden Gate as the sun came up and landed in the West Marine parking lot by 9am. After a quick run to the hardware store and across the Richmond bridge to another West Marine (needed two pad eyes and each store only had one) we finished our tour of bridges by crossing the Bay Bridge back into San Francisco and got to work by noon.

Most of the work Sunday was spent re-bedding the stanchion bases, including manufacturing new backing plates from 1/4" G10. The new plates are at least thrice as sturdy as the old ones. Plate cutting operations:



And the result:


This is one stanchion that's not going anywhere:


Placing the base with sealant applied:


And here's my dad being a master of detail work with the sealant:


One base in particular was most painful, as it was mounted behind the electrical box we built into a cabin cupboard. To access it, I had to remove one Raymarine box and pull the board out just enough to reach behind. My arm is red with scratches and cuts from wedging it between the boards to tighten nuts, but all the bases are firmly in place. The port side only has three bases to re-bed, thanks to the lack of a lifeline gate.

This week Dad is focusing on sanding and fairing the deck in preparation for Kiwigrip. I'm going to be working on getting the new traveler mounted and rigged. Hopefully by Saturday we'll be taping the deck and mixing us some non-skid!