S Boats racing on Narragansett Bay July 10

Egbert - 1885 Oyster yacht

Here is a photo of Egbert at Stanley's Boat yard in Barrington taken with my camera phone during one of my morning bike rides earlier this week. She is an antique yacht built in 1885 in the style of a traditional oyster boat.


The marina still has quite a few open spaces, which is unusual for this time of year, and I hope is not a sign of more economic trouble to come.

P-28 Heart of Gold fired up the diesel today!

Still have a lot to do before the boat hits the water, but I fired up the diesel today. Great to hear her start right up.

Sheeves from the masthead of my P28-1

Here are my sheeves, removed from the mast, before and after polishing with a fiber wheel. Replacement halyards ordered Friday. Yesterday I managed to cut off the mounting screws with corroded threads stuck in the masthead fitting to hold a bracket for the windex. The screws were over an inch long and nearly touched the halyards above the sheeves. Had to grind a metal cutting blade for the sabre saw down to less than 1/4 in width to squeeze it into the slots separating the sheeves.

Here's the bugger on the left.

What a pain! Next drill and tap new holes for the windex bracket. Looking forward to removing the winter cover from the boat today.

Defender Annual Spring Sale

I drove down to Waterford today to Defender Marine's annual spring sale. It was my first time there and it was really busy. At times the check out lines were snaking around inside of the building, fortunately that cleared up before I got to the check out. I threw lots of dough into the hole in the water. I bought a bunch of maintenance items and safety equipment that needed to be updated. I also got a bunch of little stuff that we needed for the new dingy and a GPS Chartplotter. I ended up spreading the wealth around a little though the GPS was out of stock at Defender. They said I could order it online. I stopped at my local West Marine store on my way home, and they matched Defender's price. That put a good sized dent in the credit card. I'm doing my part to shore up the economy.

Heart of Gold - Stripping peeling paint off the boom

I started today stripping paint off the boom. It was a beautiful first day of spring today hitting the low 70's with clear blue sky. It's coming out so nice that I'm considering leaving it un-painted.

I got about 1/3 of the way through it today. I bought a variable speed Dewalt Random Orbital sander with a vacuum hook up. It took me three trips to the store to get the right vacuum attachment and sanding disks with the proper vent holes to line up with the 8 hole pattern. Once I got going, I made progress faster than I was expecting.


Also last week, I cleaned up the propeller, which was crusted with many years of paint and barnacles.
before:
after:

Ralph W. Stanley, fine wooden boats Southwest Harbor, ME