Its been a week and I’m still a little stunned. We finally got this machine launched. Lets see, what last bits needed attention?

Getting ready for the final assembly of the keel. The white bar is the fiberglass main spar. The black bar in the white bar is lead shot in resin. The back side of the main spar is loaded with lead shot as well. The top third of the keel is mostly core the bottom two thirds is going to be lead shot & epoxy resin.

Plexus going on the main spar.

Upper skin being aligned and excess plexis being cleaned off. Next we put the other keel mold half on here to hold everything in position and clamped it all together.

Stitching the front of the keel fin.

Epoxy being poured in.

Keel being set into its holding tray on the trailer. The plan is to test fit the boat to the keel before the final gel coating of the keel. Just in case there’s changes that need to be made.

Lucky for us it was good enough.  Pull it back out and lets gel coat this thing.

This is tuesday night before the planned launch wednesday. We the keel finished and in wed AM to have enough time to finish up the final rigging for an afternoon launch.

That night things were looking kinda’ tight.

You see, Mike C, who’s been with the project from day one, was heading to Hawaii Thursday. He needed to be there for the launch, its only fair.

This is the next day wednesday. YOu can see by the clock its 10 to 11. They are still monkeying with gelcoat. This is the point where I pulled the plug on the keel. You are finished, put it back in the boat. We are out of time!

During this keel thing I’d been helping Guy put together his super slick outboard mount. Among other things, like run around like a chicken with my head cut off.

These for gudgens..

Look like this..

And the outboard has a little plate on it that slides into them and lock with pins.

Kinda’ hard to see, ‘cause the mount is white like the boat.

Then there was the mast cradle for towing. All this had to be designed and built.

I designed this and inch too high..

This ended up four inches too low.. Hey, we were tired!

Assembling the rear mount. Then it needed to be reinforced. Then we broke it anyway and it had to be fixed..

Then the companionway hatch had to be finished up. Guy was on that as well.

And I think it turned out really cool!

FInally, about an hour late. The boat was on the trailer ready to have the rig test fitted prior to launch. I wanted to test fit it here because I figured, something would go wrong, and all the tools & spares live here.

Ready to raise the mast..

My plan was to launch the boat from the trailer at the local launch ramp. I was getting a lot of flak about that. FInally, when we arrived at the ramp, even the local fishermen were giving me flak. “Son, your crazy! Weather’s no good and that thing’s going to launch your truck.”

So we took it over to Skyline marina and had Atalo launch it with the travel lift.

As the sun went down the keel went into the water.

Look, it floats!

And it sails! Boy does it sail! The lightest breeze and it just scoots!

Taking the kiddies out.

Well that’s about it. There’s minor tweaks to be done. There’s the interior to be installed, electronics.. But the big mountain has been conquered. We built a boat. And it works!

So there!