Adding a Cranking Battery

The goal is pretty simple:  Have a dedicated cranking battery to ensure I can always start the engine if I leave a light on all night.  I don't plan on using this battery for anything but starting, so I will be going with the cheaper true starting battery.  I can also go with a slightly smaller battery since it doesn't have to be a group 27 or 8d to do its job. Despite having the option of going smaller (a group 24 would have been plenty!) I went with a dual purpose battery from West Marine.  It was on sale, and the price was too good to ignore.  Yes, I know that a dual purpose does neither job well, but I picked one that has way more cranking amps than needed, so it will do that job as well as needed.  It also has a little more reserve than a dedicated cranking battery if I need to combine it to keep a light on or something.  At some point you just need to get things done and not get hung up on the details and selection process.  I can always change it out down the road. I selected the port cockpit locker for this battery because the battery compartment next to the engine is full of my house bank on the starboard side.  By placing the cranking battery on the opposite side I add a little balance to the boat (although not as much as I'd like - the house bank is VERY heavy). There's no access to the back side of this bulkhead since it's the ice box.  So, my only option was to use lag screws.  I put in four of them, and they are pretty solid.  I'm not too worried about it.  This is a pretty ugly piece of wood, but I had it kicking around, and it will never show.  At some point I'll go back and glass it into the bulkhead, but I want to run with it for a while to make sure the placement and configuration of the tray is something I want to be permanent.  Knowing me, there will be future tweaks.  In the mean time I will probably give a few coats of Epoxy this fall or next spring just to keep it waterproof. And here is the tray installed onto its cleat.  There is just enough room on the upper side (picture left) to route the bilge pump hoses out of the engine compartment and through the underside of this battery tray.  That will somewhat secure them before they make the journey upwards to their loops before going aft to the through- hulls. The first design flaw I discovered is that the footman loops should have been level with the bottom of the battery box, and not mounted up on the fiddle.  It turns out that they work OK despite, but at some point I'll cut out that area and get them where they need to be. The second thing I discovered is that the nylon webbing that comes with the West Marine (and probably many others since this box looks like every brand I've seen) is almost impossible to release.  It took me about 5 minutes with a flat blade screwdriver to get the teeth out of the webbing.  I'm hoping I had it mounted wrong, because that was the kind of fun I don't need to repeat.  I'll probably substitute webbing from a hardware store at some point to improve the functionality. The cables rout through a notch in the locker divider a few inches above the tray.  Getting them through was easy, and very close to the rest of the wiring harness, which is good for minimizing wire lengths and gauges.

Pedestal Refit

Gotta replace those frayed meathooks on the steering system, and re-tension it.  I have about 1" of play on either side which is not only dangerous, but very annoying.  This page will detail the installation of an Edson chain and cable replacement kit, as well as lubrication of the system. Overall an easy job except for adjusting tension at the steering quadrant - that was a tigh quarters nightmare, but once done it didn't need another look for years.

Hull Blister Repair

Introduction

The blisters were obvious as soon as the boat came out of the water.  They were everywhere, although definitely most pronounced at the stern.

When I was in the process of purchasing the boat I asked about the presence of bottom blisters, and was told that the boat has been barrier coated a few years ago.  I assumed that meant that the job had been done right and would no longer be an issue.  Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case.

While I'm certain that some of the blisters are more recent, the majority turned out to not be gelcoat blisters.  They were in fact failed repairs of blisters.  Whatever was used to fill them the first time around had two problems.  First, the goop never set up properly.  It was as if the resin to hardener ratio wasn't mixed properly, or perhaps some kind of a caulking compound was used rather than a structural epoxy based filler.  Second, the goop never adhered to the hull.  I'm guessing surface prep had something to do with this.  Regardless of the failure's root cause, the symptom is tons of blister fillings lifting away from the hull.

The good news is that my hull isn't really compromised, it's just very ugly.  The bad news is, the repair is a pain in the neck.  The solution is to attach a 3/4" counter sink bit to a drill and grind out each hole.  As the pictures clearly show, this was no small feat.  When the main holes were opened up, there were a few spots that needed some fine tuning.  I used a dremel with a high speed cutter bit to clean up these few holes.

My initial research indicated that I would need to strip the bottom paint, and then apply a barrier coating to whatever I used to fill the holes.  This was really unappealing to me.  It would mean some very messy time behind a sander, or caustic stripping gel.  As I've come to say though, "it is what it is."  And I was resolved to move ahead.

Six10 As a Blister Filler

Right about the time I was researching which stripping gel to use I received a copy of Epoxy Works Magazine in the mail.  In it was an article that could not have been more timely.  The article describes a fast method for repairing blisters using West Six10 adhesive.  The unique element of this process is that the Six10 adhesive has an integral barrier coat which eliminates the need to strip the existing bottom paint or apply a separate barrier coat.  Not only would this be a tremendous time savings, but also a cost reduction.

The first problem I ran into was that it was nearly impossible to smooth out the Six/10 without slightly indenting the epoxy in the blister holes.  This meant that after a long session with the caulking gun I needed to sand, then go back and do it again.  After some time I did pick up a technique for slightly over-filling the holes for a one-pass fill.  Unfortunately, I lost a lot of time re-coating my first attempt.

The second problem I ran into was that despite the theory of this technique not introducing air bubbles, I ended up with many of them.  The third, and most substantial problem I ran into is that Six/10 is very tough to sand.  As a result, there were many places where the surrounding fiberglass was sanded below the repair area due to it being lower-density.  Now, this is really minor stuff you need to feel with a hand, or sight carefully in proper light to observe, but it happened.  Subsequent work I did using 3M Premium Marine Filler did not have this problem, and was MUCH easier to work with.  I would think that Interfill would be roughly the same as the 3m filler, and wouldn't hesitate to use either of them.  Lesson learned:  Six/10 is not a good choice for large-scale blister repair but it will work if you don't have anything else on hand.  Once the work is done, it's a very solid repair.

After what seemed like a lifetime of sanding the hull, I decided that this whole technique had been in vain.  I had sanded through the barrier coat in so many places that I was going to need a new barrier coat.  So, I began the process of sanding off the existing coat consistently.  This went reasonably quickly with a 8" random orbit sander from Home Depot (Rigid) and a big pack of 60 grit discs.  The areas under the hull were absolute hell to work on holding that heavy sander straight overhead.  But, eventually I finished and all was well with the world.

Keel-Hull Joint

Before I could apply the new barrier coat I needed to repair and fair the keel-hull joint.  It had been very sloppily filled with 3M 4200 sealant many years ago and was losing adhesion in addition to looking awful.  I was able to use a utility knife to cut out the bulk of the 4200, then used a Dremel sanding drum to grind out the remainder of the crack.  Finally, I ground out about a 6" area to make room for fiberglass tape.

After filling the crack flush with my remaining half-tube of Six/Ten, I used increasing width strips of 10 oz. fiberglass cloth to fill the ground out depression with three layers.  That ought to be plenty of strength for this application.  Final preparation was to lightly grind the edges of the glass job to reduce the amount of fairing needed.  The photo blow shows the keel after all that work.

Barrier Coat

Having repaired and fared everything, it is now time to apply a new barrier coat with Interprotect 2000e.  The estimation chart suggested 4 gallons to do the boat based on a typical 30-foot sailboat.  Mine being only 27 and shoal-draft, I knew the estimate was conservative.  Each gallon covered approximately 1-1/4 of my hull, which leaves me at roughly 5 coats.  Perfect!

Head-on after barrier coating:

Faired keel after barrier coating.  Compare this to the before shots!

The entire hull after finishing the job.  I couldn't be happier with it.

All in all, an expensive but very rewarding job.  I guess it was actually an inexpensive job when compared to having it done...  Everything is relative.

Fairing Blocks

Next on the to-do list was replacing the fairing block for the depth transducer.  The boat was configured by a prior owner to use fairing blocks on both the speed and depth transducers.  I have no idea why they felt it important to put a fairing block on the speed transducer, but none the less, there it was.

Yes, it is an un-sealed, cracked, and somewhat rotting piece of wood.

I used a 1/2" GRP sheet I purchased from McMaster-Carr to cut out three donuts which are about 1/4" larger diameter than the mushroom end of the depth transducer.  I scuffed and bonded them together to make a cylinder.  I then employed the original fairing block as a template to cut the angle on the cyllinder.  Finally, the new block was bonded to the hull using thickened epoxy finished off in a nice fillet.  This is much better than the wood blocks as it's not only stronger, but also water tight.

The speed transducer will not have a fairing block.  It will ride parallel to the hull as it should.  I'll just need to apply a minimal lay up to alter the angle it meets the hull.  Shouldn't be too hard.

Through-hulls

The through hulls came next.  The original parts enjoyed a (delaminating, rotting) plywood mounting block bedded in 3m 5200 adhesive, and a small nut to hold them in followed by an in-line ball or (in most cases) gate valve.  Not cool.  In fact, most of the through-hulls could be hand-wiggled as soon as the nut was removed.  I guess 3m 5200 isn't really forever.  The particularly scary picture below shows the 30 year old plastic fittings which stood between floating and sinking.  Scary.  Very scary.

I replaced all through-hulls with Groco flange adapters and in-line ball valves.  This is a very future-proof and solid system.  The sheer weight of these things immediately conveys they are built to withstand a direct hit from a super-tanker.  The flange-adapters are bolted through counter-sunk holes in the hull, and have 1/2" thick GRP mounting plates bedded and filleted in thickened epoxy.  Solid as a rock.

Anti-Fowling Paint

It seems that everyone in my marina uses VC-17.  I mean it, it looks like a copper-bottom club.  So, rather than fight local wisdom went with the flow and put on two coats of what everyone else uses.

Again, hindsight is 20/20.  I feel like while this paint works, it is restrictive.  Someday I hope to take my boat up the St. Lawrence, and down the coast of the US.  This paint will be useless in salt water, and to remove it, the whole thing needs to be sanded off due to its Teflon content.  You can't just put a top coat on to cover it up because nothing sticks to Teflon.  That's a nasty, time consuming, or expensive job.  I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

In the mean time, I will say that VC has a wonderful dry-time that makes it very fast and easy to get a coat applied, and it's really easy to paint the pad patches once the boat is in the sling, and lanuch 15 minutes later.  The other benefit is that you can be out of the water for a long time without the paint losing its effectiveness.  Some anti-fowling are very sensitive to this.  So, I could have done a whole lot worse.

Deck Core Replacement

Rotten deck core was one of the two "big surprises" with which which my boat came equipped.  In hind sight, this should not have been a surprise.  However, I didn't spend much time worrying about it.  The price was right, and I knew I was taking a calculated risk purchasing this boat.  It turned out that both of the risks I wagered against bit me on the back side, but in the end it's not so bad.  The deck repair, while very time consuming and somewhat unpleasant was not all that expensive.

When I first bought the boat, the decks were filthy.  She had been sitting, mostly unused, in her slip for the better part of the summer.  I don't mind cleaning at all, so this didn't phase me.  The angle of the boat in the water caused much of the dirt to pool in the are of the rearmost stanchions.  With about an eighth of an inch of dirt, almost any crack can be made invisible.  So it was with the cracks in the deck at the two rear stanchions.  After a few aggressive deck cleaning sessions I finally uncovered enough of the grime to see what I was dealing with.

My suspicion is that leaks from the chain plates allowed water to enter the core and over time soften it up.  The decks on a CS27 are very heavily built, probably due to the deck-stepped mast.  So, there was never a time when I noticed a softness to them.  However, the compromised rigidity allowed the upper deck to flex enough at the stanchions that a crack formed.

I was hoping that the cracked area was solid laminate, and my strategy was to grind out the crack, then fill it with new laminate.  This little fantasy would have been fantastic had it come true.  Unfortunately, I ended up uncovering a nasty, soupy mess of rotten core that left me with no doubt about the need to do a full clean out.  Resolved to keep moving forward, I began the long march to removing my toe rails.  That's roughly 80 screws per side, all through bolted, many stuck.  If you don't have an impact wrench, don't attempt it.

 

Although it wasn't the right tool for the job, I used my angle grinder at 90 degrees to the deck as a sort of circular saw.  It worked quite well, and in short order I had the upper laminate removed to expose the core.  If I were to do this again I would probably select a small cordless circular saw with a laminate blade.  A large saw would be too much.

The next step was cleaning out the rotten core.  The vast majority of it came out with very little effort using a sharp 1.5" putty knife.  The pockets of not-so-rotten material which held their grip came out with a scraper end of a pry bar being lightly tapped by a mallet.  With all the large chunks removed, I used my 4" angle grinder with a 40 grit disk to clean up the bottom fiberglass laminate.  Although messy, this was easy and relatively quick.

The final step was to grind a bevel on the edges to allow a good adhesion for the new top laminate.  Given the position of the jib track depression, and the edge of the deck I really didn't have a lot of freedom to design a bevel.  It is what it is.  I ended up with about 1.5 inches all around.  Hopefully that will work.

The new core is simply end-grain balsa.  My local West Marine didn't stock this kind of building material, so I had to go with an Internet chandler.  I selected Jamestown Distributors because they seem to have just about everything related to hard-core boat building.  A few days later (these guys ship fast!) I had the mat.  I used some poster board to make templates of the cut out areas on each side by cutting approximately 1 foot sections, trimming with scissors, and taping the sections together.

With the templates in hand, I used a jig-saw to cut the balsa into the rough templates.  Use a sharp blade.  Back at the boat, I used a Dremel tool with two different bits to perform the final fitting and trimming.  A #144 high speed cutter was used to clean out any remaining debris from the edges of the decking, and a #407 sanding drum was used for shaping the balsa.

I installed the new core in approximately 12" sections.  It would have been more efficient to keep it long and install all at once, but I recognize and respect the boundaries of my skill and really wanted to avoid having epoxy kick before I was ready.  One foot seems to be a nice safe amount that corresponded nicely to the amount of epoxy I'd been mixing.

I used West 105 resin with West Colloidal Silica mixed somewhere between ketchup and Vaseline in thickness.  I wanted it thin enough to be able to squirt out excess, but thick enough that it would be hard as a rock and stay tucked into the areas I placed it in.  This viscocity also served well at filling in the slightly uneven lower laminate for a good bond.  In all the project required about 1 32oz bottle and a bit of a second one.  If I had been a little more efficient I think I could have done it with just one.

As you can see in the picture to the left there is a short section, approximately 6" long where the balsa ends and the hole remains unfilled.  This is the area where the rear stanchion bolts through the deck.  My plan is to fill this area with a laminate rather than balsa to ensure the deck is not compressible in this area as well as to ensure the balsa is well sealed from the bolt holes.  I don't want to deal with this again!

There were a few places where the balsa was skewed, or didn't lie perfectly flat despite the pressure I installed it with.  For a short time I was kicking myself about it, and debated pulling it out and re-trimming.  That's when I had a quick dose of reality.  These decks were solid as a rock when they had pudding-consistency balsa in them.  This boat was built to last with very heavy lay ups.  Having installed brand new epoxy-saturated core will be 100x stronger than it was even if it is imperfect.  Don't sweat it.  Just do a good job and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The balsa core went in very easily.  I kept a Dremel tool on hand with a drum sander attachment that let me form on-the-fly.  All balsa was bedded firmly in epoxy thickened (mayonnaise/ketchup consistency) with colloidal silica, which is just about as structurally rigid as it gets for creating a joint between the existing fiberglass and the new core.  I didn't really need to weight it down because the epoxy created a bit of a vacuum in the pressed core.  I couldn't get it out if I wanted to, and it always dried very flat.  In retrospect, it probably would have been the right thing to do.  I would suggest using waxed paper to cover the repair area, then placing trash bags filled with sand/dirt on top, or possibly a plate that was weighted by cinder blocks.

Once in place, I did a pretty straight-forward fiberglass lamination.  Because the wood surface was marginally imperfect, I wanted to use a thickened epoxy for gap filling.  I again went with colloidal silica for its strength despite the sanding hell it would create.  I placed progressively larger width sheets of 10 oz. glass cloth into the repair area until I was within about 1/16" of the height of the gelcoat which remained on either side of the repair area.  It got a bit messy on the edges where the cloth curled, but it only takes a kiss with the grinder to clean it up.  It took about 6 layers of 10 oz. cloth to fill in the gap.  Two layers is pretty darn rigid, so I have absolutely no concerns about the strength of this repair.

I spent a little time dressing the edges of the patches, and then cleaned everything up with a little acetone.  

The final step was fairing the repair.  I used epoxy thickened with 407 low-density filler.  It's annoying to mix, but it goes on very nicely and isn't too brutal to sand.  I had intended to use 3M Premium Marine Filler, but after buying two packages of I discovered a warning indicating that it was not to be used over epoxy coatings.  What a inconvenient restriction!  That's ok, I was able to put it to use elsewhere.  The fairing took longer than I'd expected, but with patience it came out pretty nice.

The final step, I'm sorry to say, is outsourcing.  I'm had a professional apply gel coat to the area I repaired, and do a best-effort match on the non-skid.  My original plan was to paint the decks, but I decided against it for two reasons.  The show-stopper was the cost.  It's prohibitively expensive to have the decks painted with AwlGrip.  On a practical note, I also think I will be modifying some of the deck hardware, and it's easier to patch gelcoat than it is to patch paint.  So, Gelcoat it is with a much friendlier price tag.

The job came out incredible.  The decks look like new.  Well, they ought to; They ARE new! 

With the deck finished, I was able to re-install the toe rails, but not before I had put two coats of aluminum primer on them, and four coats of flat black spray paint.  Two season later the rails still look new, so don't laugh at using Krylon rather than Interlux.

The deck to hull joint had been cleaned out with solvent and scraping (lots of scraping!) and then re-bedded with 3m 4200.  The toe rails were also bedded in 4200, although all other deck fittings are bedded in butyl tape.

I did a minor tweak on the chain plates by filling them out with thickened epoxy to reduce the gap the butyl needs to fill, and then re-bedding them in a pretty typical manner.

All in all this was a very successful project and one that not only preserves the boats value, but improves her sea-worthiness, and my confidence in her.

Cockpit Locker Core Replacement

As if doing the decks wasn't enough fun, I discovered significant stress cracking on the bottom of the cockpit locker doors, and a very unnerving springy feeling when walking over them.  Springy meaning, it felt like you might go through into the locker itself.  So, they came home with me for some surgery.

Port Replacement

During those brief few weeks of my honeymoon with Ravat I realized that each time it rained a bit was making it into the interior.  A few of the cushions had water damage, and there was mildew sign over much of the interior.  Not a disgusting mess, but it was clear that the inside of this boat was a bit wet.  It didn't take long to realize that the windows, or "ports" were to blame for some of the ingress.

In addition to leaking, the thin acrylic was scratched, fogged, and badly crazed.  It was like looking out through a pillow case, not a window.  Without having any idea of the quest to follow, I added yet another item to my exponentially growing to-do spreadsheet.

My first goal was to simply stop the major leaks.  I could see that the sealant under the heavily-oxidized aluminum frames had long since dried up and given up its post.  This seemed like  a pretty simple task, and as such it was promoted to the top of the to-do entries.  Now, at this point in the story I have been a sailor for a few weeks.  I knew very little about anything, let alone the mysterious world of boat goops.  So, I did what any new guy would do, and went down to West Marine to ask for advice.  .

In all fairness, the advice I was given worked somewhat well.  The salesperson sent me along with a tube of Boat Life Life Seal silicone / polyurethane sealant.  I removed the frames, cleaned everything up as best I knew how at the time, and gooped them back in place.  I made a bit of a mess in the process, and unfortunately hadn't been aware of how good an idea it is to lay down tape before using goop.  Ahh, leassons learned indeed.

The fresh seal job eliminated about 90% of the water ingress that ports were responsible for, but after closer inspection I could see that the sealant and gasket which sealed the acrylic to the aluminum was in very bad shape.  It was hopelessly cracked.  I now knew that to really solve the problem I'd need to replace the acrylic and give it a fresh sealant as well.  That would have to wait though, as I had a few more weeks of sailing to go.

Eventually, the season ended and Ravat was hauled out.  Once I had a tarp in place I was able to un-waterproof her, and that eventually included the ports.  One day while waiting for a round of epoxy laminate do kick I decided to unscrew all of the frames and bring them to a local glass shop for replacement.  This was one job I though I could "out source" and save a little time.  What a mistake that turned out to be.





Placeholder for port replacement project...

3/8" Acrylic - machining, polishing

#10 x 1" fasteners

Dow Corning 795 vs. Sika - sika requires additional primer.

Mounting

Re-Tabbing Settees and Bulkheads

Port fore cabin locker


Starboard main cabin bulkhead (battery compartment)...

Bow Hatch Replacement

Like most boats of this age, the bow hatch is crazed, foggy, and has a less than ideal gasket.  The butyl sealant has begun to fail, and what's worse (although not unusual) is the lack of sealing off the exposed deck core.  Oh yes, and the supports are missing, so it only stays up when I prop a board in it.  In this project I will replace the original hatch with a new one and properly seal off the decking.

New Lewmar Hatch

Of course, the original hatch had square corners, but the new one had rounded corners.  I cut balsa to the new shape and epoxied it into place, then applied new upper inner and outer skins, and finally coated with new gelcoat.  

New Transducer Fairing Blocks

The original transducer fairing block was unsealed wood, and very rotten.  It was not seaworthy my any stretch of imagination.  In this project I create a new fairing block out of fiberglass sheet material and mount it on the hull.

The block was epoxied into place, filleted, and then barrier coated with the rest of the hull.

Fuel Tank Installation

It's amazing to me how many "gotchas" come up in a typical project.  Even when I'm confident, I still get knocked on my butt.  Case in point is the installation of my new fuel tank.  I had only a few weeks ago removed, cleaned, and reinstalled my original tank.  I was feeling pretty confident that the new one would go without a hitch since my experience was so fresh.  Nope.

The old tank ended up being a nightmare to remove.  I had to remove cockpit locker dividers, the new starter battery on the port side, and wrestle it through the new bilge pump hoses which I haven't fully secured yet.  Not only that, but for some reason it seemed that the filler hose had grown by about a half inch as I couldn't get it out without pulling the deck fill.  Ugh.  Re-bedding a butyl seam on that filler is no fun at all.

The mistake I made in selecting a new tank was only paying attention to the tank's overall dimensions, and not the fittings themselves.  As it turns out, one of the fuel pick-ups exists right where the tank mounts to the cockpit sole, requiring that I cut a notch to allow it clearance.  You gotta be kidding me!  

Of course, this meant that the mounting bolt for the strap also had less then ideal support below, so I needed to move the strap.  Is this an ideal situation?  Nope.  But given how short our sailing season are, it wasn't worth losing 2-3 weeks to have a custom tank made.  When this tank gets close to wearing out I'll go custom.  For now though, I'll go sailing.

The good news is that this tank (RDS Manufacturing) is solid as a rock, and it's ever-so-slightly smaller dimensions are a much better fit with the new larger seacocks for the cockpit drains.  I still need to do some fine tuning to the strap tension, but I'm very pleased with the tank itself.

Were I to do this over again I would purchase a custom tank from RDS based on the stock model I selected, and simply have the extra fitting left out.  I'd also have the vent fitting set up as a rear-facing elbow, but that's not as big a deal.

I still need to get the engine controls hooked back up, and clean up the mess I made during installation.  Then I can reinstall the starter battery and locker dividers.  This will be nice as the battery and dividers are taking up a TON of cabin space right now.  Not to mention that it will be nice to have the boat usable again.  With the dividers back in place I may be able to start storing some things in them, which will free up even MORE cabin space.  Sounds nice to me!

And for the grand finale, here's the tank installed in all its shiny glory:

Fighting to Launch

I'm trying hard to get Ravat in the water.  This morning The Yard was working on grinding and barrier coating the bottom of my keel since its in the sling, and this chunk fell off.  Nice.

I think the stress which caused this crack came from my under-sized cradle which was bowing significantly from the weight of my boat.  So, they are fixing it, along with the other items on the to-do list.  Seems like just when I think the ghosts of the prior owner are excersized, something like this comes out.

In all honesty, there's not many examples in history of someone filling the Black Box the way I've been doing it for the past two years.  I have fixed more problems at the expense of my short sailing seasons than most sane people would tackle.  Is it possible that the Black Box carries deficits between owners?  I hope not since there's no way to get a balance statement.

At this point we are scheduled to be in the water on Thursday, but there's a lot of things that could happen between now and then, so we're still looking at a possibility of some time on Friday as well.  Before that happens, I need to get some things done...

• Install galley sink drain through-hull and seacock.
• Install hoses on all seacocks.
• Put transient dock lines in place for handling during launch.
• Put permanent dock lines in my slip.
• Bring life jackets, fenders, and boat hook out.
• Pick up hand-help VHF to suffice until I can finish wiring the new one in the cabin.
• Hook up the new electronic bilge pump hose to its shiny new through hull, and secure it along its length.
• Put boom in the cabin for installation later this week.

I'm most concerned about the timing on the through hull install as I'll need to barrier coat the faired bolt holes when done, and that means epoxy drying for its required period.  Those required periods rarely align with my free time when I'm in a time crunch.

Never a dull moment, but the light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter.  She's out of the cradle and into the sling.  That's a one way street to the slip as far as I'm concerned.