Soles and such

Oh, we've had a great and busy few weeks. Let's see. ... we framed up the cabin sole. The sole will go in soon. There will be a 2 foot row of access hatches up through the center to allow for maintenance and bilge access. I took a couple of (not serious) tumbles on the very steep side of the vessel but it didn't hold me up. My arm got a bruise and my pride took a little beating but with a little good humor both seem to have recuperated pretty well.

Next we raised the sides of the main cabin. So below we will have about 7 feet of head room. Yeah for anyone tall who comes sailing with us- they won't bang their head. Ha.
Last week we started to sand and varnish the underside and side of the douglas fir deck beams. And one day we got a visit from Gary Stowell from Sherwin Williams paint and he blessed us with white paint for the interior and varnish to help finish the beams. If you ever need paints and supplies , Gary and his team in Dartmouth are great to work with and knowledgeable to boot.  We have 2 coats of varnish on so far and hope to get the third coat on next week sometime.

On Friday we got a call from Willie at Hubtown Crane wondering  if we wanted the  engines set in. Yes! So we spent the afternoon working with him to get each engine down through the hole in the roof of the shop  and then set on the engine beds in the bilge of the boat.  There were a couple of tricky  places but they are in there and we have spent the last couple of days tweaking the engine beds before they go for galvanizing.

We drilled pilot holes for the shafts (propeller)through the hull 4 years ago and amazingly everything lined up very well. We are extremely pleased with the fit.
While the beds are out of the vessel being galvanized we will enlarge the pilot holes to the full 2 3/8" to accept the shafts and stern tubes. It's all very exciting to see it coming together.
On top of all that we have had a few visitors here and there. We're always happy to share the building of this vessel with those who are interested.