raising the stick

OK, let's dispense with it right up front. The process of inserting a keel stepped mast through the mast partners and down into the lubricated mast step inside the boat is rife with opportunities for puerile comments and bawdry double entendres. "Are you sure it will fit?" "Don't think about it too much, Jason!" "Don't worry, it happens to all guys." C'mon, people. Both my mom and Christy's mom read this blog so let's take the high road here, OK? (penis! hehehe)

We brought the boat back to Canal Boatyard to step the mast last Wednesday and finally be done with boat yard work. They had to use their monster crane because the stick was too big (what?) for their regular crane. They hooked up the mast to the crane and lifted it up and over the mast partners on deck. These guys are really good at what they do and had it ready to drop into the mast step in no time. The rest of the time, we spent trying to get the wiring out of the mast. After what felt like hours of battling with the mast wiring, Christy finally got all the wiring run correctly so we could drop the mast the rest of the way down.


"Dear Santa, if you can get this in our boat without punching a hole in the bottom of the boat, I promise I'll never put Tabasco in Dad's Preparation H again!"


The yard guys hook up the mast to the crane.












Of course, we tied off the shrouds and furlers too high so Kim had to climb up the mast while it was hanging off the crane to untie it.


CHRISTY: "How's it going down there?"

JASON: [unending stream of blistering swear words]


Once we got the mast stepped, it was time to run around and attach all the stays and shrouds to make sure the mast stayed vertical.




CHRISTY: "Are the spreaders supposed to point down at a 45 degree angle?"

JASON: [unending stream of blistering swear words]




Since we'd already put the yard way off schedule by taking too long to step the mast, we decided to dock the boat over on their seawall and then deal with the spreaders.


I'm looking at the 45' space on the wall that I'm supposed to dock in directly between two boats that are way more expensive than ours. Me? Nervous?


She's a sailboat again!

Once we got docked on the seawall, we tied a messenger line to a halyard and clipped it on to each outer shroud and hauled up on it to straighten out the spreaders and that worked pretty well. We have some last minute straightening to do but we need to send someone up the mast anyways.


We just caused our first traffic jam opening the Ballard Bridge!


Fisher and Christy working the locks.

Once again, this only got done because of the help of friends. A huge bucket of thanks go out to Ben, Gina, and Kim. Fisher, true to his MO, showed up just in time for us to be done and head out for beers - the bastard. But we gave him a pass because he's still probably done more work on our boat than I have.

Gina did a brilliant job photographing the whole process for us. Ben posted the pics on flickr but flickr has that patented guaranteed-to-aggravate Random Sort algorithm that drives me crazy so I re-posted the pics on our Smugmug account here in an order that satiates my OCD.

47° 39' 33.62"N 122° 22' 14.04"W

mastless in seattle

We splashed her on Friday sans mast and she's currently sitting on F-dock in a sublet slip at Shilshole. Patiently (nooo, not really) waiting for a slip assignment from marinacrats at the office.

We're working furiously (nooo, not really) on the mast to get it prepped and ready to step. Our goal is to get her rigged and ready for an end of week re-naming party and a Labor Day maiden cruise.

Here she is sitting outside of Canal Boatyard in Salmon Bay, happily back in water.

47°40'43.37"N 122°24'25.65"W

This is “ “, this is “ “, this is “ “, over.

The ceremony was small, inter-denominational and of course followed by copious amounts of champagne and other drinks. No, we didn’t get married – we de-named the boat!

We’ve spent the last week getting the boat ready for the water, but also getting the name off of EVERYTHING. We got the last slops of paint on the boat while our boat friends (in their nicest attire) stood by and watched. As with all of our boat projects, painting ran longer than expected, but compared to some of our other projects, it really wasn’t too bad.

We broke out 2 bottles of champagne for the de-naming ceremony. I read the non-denominational prayer to Neptune, god of the sea while Jason shook up one of the bottles and proceeded to spray it everywhere, including on the both of us (yes, on purpose – he’s so romantic). We passed the 2nd bottle of champagne around the group in a small circle on the dock – no glasses required – this is a high class group. I thought we were going to drink the entire 2nd bottle, since tradition calls for only one bottle to go to Neptune. I was wrong. After the bottle made one round, Jason poured the rest into the water – again to appease Neptune. If I had known that were going to happen, I would have taken a bigger sip on the first go round. That Neptune better be happy.

So, the boat is now un-named. We’ll do the renaming ceremony next week when the new letters come in – and will do a bigger party (as official Sailors, we need to uphold the stereotype of drinking). But next time, I’ll know to take a bigger sip of champagne!

Here’s the denaming prayer that I read – my favorite is the last line (John Vigors Interdenominational Boat Denaming Ceremony):
In the name of all who have sailed aboard this ship in the past and in the name of all who will sail aboard her in the future, We invoke the ancient gods of the wind and sea to favor us with their blessing.

Mighty Neptune, King of all that moves in or on the waves; Mighty Aeolus, guardian of the winds and all that blow before them; We offer you our thanks for the protection you have afforded this vessel in the past . We voice gratitude that she has always found shelter from tempest and storm and enjoyed safe passage to port.

Now we submit this supplication that the name whereby this vessel has hitherto been known [old name here] be struck and removed from your records. Further, we ask that when she is again presented for blessing with another name, she shall be recognized and accorded once again the self same privileges which she previously enjoyed.

In return, we rededicate this vessel to your domain in full knowledge that she shall be subject as always to the immutable laws of the gods of the sea and the wind.

In consequence whereof, and in good faith, we seal this pact with libations offered according to the hallowed ritual of the sea.


The ceremony - and champagne


Uh, yeah, that's champagne on my head - added to the paint that was already there


Drunken sailor

47°40'37.25"N 122°24'38.06"W

boat friends

Having boat friends is humbling. Fisher, Ben and Gina gave up what was an incredible weekend and a handful of weeknights to put in time doing dirty, tiring, hot scutwork on our boat. Saying "thanks" never seems to cut it but I'll say it anyways.

Thanks.











Work is progressing. But like everyone tells us, boat maintenance items have a funny way of presenting themselves. We ran across a few unplanned issues that took over the weekend. Still haven't gotten the bottom painted, try as we might. But the sunsets have been incredible so who can complain about that???





We found a void in the fiberglass on the bottom of the keel about 1 inch by 3 inches. From what we can tell, a rock must have hit the void on the delivery up from Mexico and broke it open. Thankfully, Fisher had just spent a bunch of time repairing a few blisters on his boat so he walked us through the repair. We exposed the fiberglass and ground out the void to a shallow indention. We painted a thin layer of West System epoxy and followed that with epoxy filler thickened with colloidal silica. We sanded that down this morning and will follow it up with a barrier coat and then a layer of ablative bottom paint.









We removed the prop and polished it. We're waiting to see if we need to replace one of the gears inside the MaxProp before we re-install.





Christy and Ben repaired the damage to the gelcoat on the starboard topsides.





We also did all sorts of work on de-naming the boat. Tradition says the old name cannot be found anywhere on the boat. Well as it turns out, the previous owner was a bit zealous about applying the name of his boat. On everything. Propane tanks. Jerry cans. Anchors. Base of the mast. Dinghy seats.







Speaking of thanks, Ben took all of these pictures. The guy does some incredible stuff with basically a point and shoot camera. Thanks Ben!! I re-hosted his pics on our smugmug gallery here but if you'd like to see them in the original Flickr format, go here.

47° 39' 33.62"N 122° 22' 14.04"W

life on the hard

We hauled her off the truck Monday morning. She's currently sitting on jack stands looking out over the Fremont Cut and the Ballard Bridge.

We haven't gotten any work done because we've been too busy inviting friends over to come look at her and "oh by the way, let's have a drink!". Real work starts tonight. We need to get her de-named by the weekend and have our de-naming ceremony so we can do the real work of re-naming her. We have seacocks to lube (hehehe), a hull to wash, gear to offload into our garage until we get a little more organized, bottom paint to buy and put on, and a football field long punchlist of mast maintenance. Our friend Ben has offered to come over and help with the prep work which kicks a metric ton of ass. We've got alot to get done, ugh.

Up until this point, it's always felt like someone else's boat. But as I stood in the galley mixing pain killers* for Ben, Gina and Christy it hit me. This is our boat. Our. Boat.

Awesome.

We stayed on board last night just 'cuz. It was the first time we've slept in the forward stateroom and I don't mind tellin' ya: it's outright comfy.





*pain killers = rum + any tropical fruit juice = yum

47° 39' 33.62"N 122° 22' 14.04"W