Everything is cooking along. I was hoping to have the deck on this week, but things got in the way. So, to fill time we built up more of the random parts that we needed to make but were not high profile. Stuff like the wooden plates that go on the outboard mounts. The window blanks, the trailering package bits. The mast crutch, keel block. All of it takes time and it all needs to be complete.

Tom routing out companionway doors and windows.

Stack of Dart windows, ready to install. Well, as soon as the deck is attached to the hull.

Geoff, as a Betts employee, working on the new extra light weight carbon Dart sprit.

Back at Jim Betts’ place. Geoff does not like getting his picture taken when he’s engineering stuff. “What if I do something wrong?”

“So? You’ll screw it all up and It’ll make a better story.”

“No! Get outta’ here with that damn camera!”

See what I have to put up with?

Meanwhile back at Left Coast..

The deck is being fitted to the hull. At the time of this writing its all aligned and everything is trimmed to fit. Next week we’ll be gluing and glassing it in place. Then we can get in and finish up the wiring.

So we need to do the wood, the wiring, the rails and striping.

Steve’s putting the wood together right now. I have the stuff for the striping on the way..

Striping artwork. The graphics company we were using vanished. So, we need to put a new artwork package together. This is going to be tough. The software we designed it with dissolved with the death of the old shop computer.

Oh well, I’ll figure it out.

Rails are now all set up for running double lifelines from the factory. See? Two loops instead of one. The rails all have middle holes in them as well.

We’re taking a page out of Mark Palermo’s book here. Want to go fast? You need the lower lifeline to hike with.

Ok, now they come with lower lifelines.

Shiny new outboard. Just picked this up this afternoon. I told the salesman over and over. Leave it in the box, its getting shipped to Hawaii. I go to get it, the box is all torn up. I roll my eyes.

Luckily the mechanic is a buddy of mine so I was able to short circuit the process and grab the engine before it was filled with fluids and ran in. “Dry” engines are so much easier to store.

Todd, don’t forget to put the oil in this thing before you run it!!

So, next week we attach the deck and, hopefully finish up the hull. This may not get completed, there’s going to be a lot of little things we’re not remembering. Also, anything that’s going to become an issue is going to start surfacing as all this comes together.

Week after next? There is a reasonable chance we will be picking up the lead from the foundry. This means assembling the keel. We should have everything we need for that.

Move the boat to Jim Betts’ to get the bottom paint. Somewhere along here the trailer gets completed. We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Assemble the mast, need to do that too..

A few weeks still I guess.