I’m calling Friday ‘day one’ in Ft. Lauderdale. Our first full day “on the hard” which means the boat is up in a boat yard and NOT floating. The guys at ‘Stem to Stern’ finished stripping everything off of the hull today taking it down to raw fiberglass. Now the hull can weep away and we’ll keep her clean so that can continue. While they were doing that Sue and I went to Stem to Stern’s workshop to work on our hatches.

The hatches have had the old plexi removed but now ALL the old silicone has to be removed so that new stuff will bond. This takes awhile. Art helped us get started and made a couple of custom tools (torture devices) for us to work with. We worked on these from about 9:30 to 3:30 with a short lunch break. Whew! Not used to real work! They are coming along. We have a little more to do tomorrow and then we can learn how to bond in the new plexi and then they can be re-bedded to the deck. That will be good for our ventilation while we’re living here! Right now we have plastic and duct tape covering our hatches. Since it will take a month or more for the hull to dry out we are in no big hurry and want to enjoy a dry boat in a heavy rainstorm at some point in the future so it is worth it to get it right.

Saturday we returned to Art’s sweat shop. We finished cleaning the frames and then put on the masking tape so that the goo used to re-bed the new plexi doesn’t get everywhere. Art is a good teacher and showed us how to do one.

In the ‘by-the-way’ department …

We got the new name on the boat …well the old name but new for this boat!

Our new dodger has been installed. What a difference. We can SEE again! There will be a zip on bimini to go with this and new binnacle cover. New sail cover coming soon will be of the same color.