Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is launch day!  This morning I trailered BELLE over to the boatyard, put the mast up (no problem for one person to do), and got her ready to launch on tomorrow's afternoon tide.  High tide  is about 6:30PM, but there should be enough water in the inlet where the launch will take place by 4:30PM or so.  Here are a couple of final "dry land" photos of the boat:

A coat of bottom paint ("Shark White") and a bunch of rigging details taken care of for launch.

With the mainsail laced to the mast (no mast hoops), I decided to leave the end of the boom down for the night and securely bundle the sail to the spars.  It's quite blustery today, with more wind expected overnight, so I thought it would be safer to do it that way.  Plus I don't have the topping lift in place yet...soon! 

I realize I've been remiss in reporting on the various final details of rigging, bottom paint, etc. I'll make up for it,  there will be photos, etc., of various aspects of the final work on the boat to come soon.  Stay tuned!

In the meantime, though, I'm hoping to have some nice photos of launch day here within a few days.  Wish me luck!

Sails, trailer, and another move

I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post.  With a new job, I haven't got a lot done of BELLE recently, but there's been at least some progress:

I picked up a Load Rite trailer from the nice folks at B&D Marine this morning and loaded up BELLE for the short trip back to the house.  For the last month she's been luxuriating in a fine storage shed at the boatyard, but from now on she'll have to sleep rough under a tarp in my back yard.  I was pleased to note that the ol' Subaru (197K miles, going strong, knock on metal) seemed to have no problem towing BELLE, even up a fairly steep hill between the shop and the house.  The 2x4 sticking out of the window is destined to be the ridge pole of the boat cover. 

Here she is parked back at the ranch.  Home at last!  I'll be able to raise the mast and do final rigging right here in the yard.  The weather is supposed to be very nice the next few days, I'm going to try to take advantage and get a lot done. At some point I'll roll the boat into the driveway, lay down a tarp, and do the bottom paint too.

The other thing I got done is driving down to Bohndell Sails in Rockport to pick up the sails.  Here's a photo of the sailbag in the boat, just for fun.   I'll be rigging them on the spars shortly.  Last weekend I spread them out on the lawn to take a quick look, and I must say they look very good. This is the second set of sails I've ordered from them, about 10 years ago I also ordered sails for my Joel White  Pooduck Skiff from Bohndell.  They seemed to hold up well and sail well, so I went back to them for BELLE.  (They don't seem to have a web site, but their address/phone/email is available through Google.)

The warm weather we've been having this year (the "new normal"?) has got me thinking about getting out on the water about a month sooner than usual.    Just a bit more work, and I'll be there.  I'll post photos of the rigging process, so stay tuned.

Bye for now.