MoriahLee

A (big) step in the right direction

Sorry for the lack of updates! I went off to my mom's for Memorial Day weekend so I was not hear to download Geoff's pictures & update the blog. Dave has been our trusty photog lately as Geoff is too dirty to handle anything that you do not want covered in gook. Thanks to Papa for the awesome pics!! We are going to have a mega update this week:

 

Here's the keel still on the shop floor.

 

Geoff has been writing Alex's name on everything as it goes in boat. He says that he knows that Alex would want to be there if things were different so he wants to leave this little mark because Alex is there in Geoff's heart.

 

Here's the keel all put together. I forgot to ask Geoff what kind of glue they used, I love the big clamps & the messy glue... for some reason that totally interests me. Also not Fiona's butt in the pic. I am laughing as I go through the pictures to see that Fiona is anywhere she can be to stay close to Geoff. She's such a daddy's girl.

 

Here is the keelsen (I hope I spelled that right). Those notches are where the ribs will fit in, you'll see that in a second.

 

Here's Howard making those notches.

 

Getting the keelsen in place

 

Now you can see how the ribs fit in

 

Geoff standing in the gap

 

Geoff with the handmade bolts to put it all together

 

writing Alex's name again

 

Geoff happy with the progress

 

Can you tell how happy this makes me?

That's it! We're updated. Hopefully next week will be as interesting.

It has a dividing line

 

It's in 2 pieces now, it's pretty freaky to see & I've only seen it in the pictures. Geoff is pretty excited though, which is a good thing as it would have been a bummer to have gone through all of that only to decide that the change was not going to be much.

 

  

Thursday they traveled up to Eureka to pick up the timbers that will be some of the new wood when she is all put back together. The timbers are HUGE!

 

 

We'll see what next week brings. We have video too but due to some technical difficulties I'm going to have to see what we can salvage. Also, we may need to hire the "bleeper" from the Osbornes. LOL

First round of progress

She came out of the water smoothly and will be out for the next few months, here she is waiting for work to begin.

  

Last weekend when Geoff came home the thing I noticed most was the amount of dirt on his clothes... it took 3 cycles in the washer to get them clean. After seeing the pictures I could understand why, clearly this is a dirty job (hey, maybe someone should call Mike Rowe)

 

It was a hard job, chipping out the concrete and in general just disassembling the boat. The tanks came out & will be replaced down the road

  

Then they moved onto the outside & exposing the ribs that started this whole ball rolling

 

Where we started

 

Here she is before coming out of the water on 4/25/09. Last winter during a routine haul out a few ribs were discovered that needed replacement and from there this whole project was born. The plan is to cut it in 2 pieces, replace a few ribs that needed it & add in a section to make it longer. Like a salmon she went back upstream to the place where she was originally built, Makela Boat Works. We plan on sharing the project through this blog, please feel free to leave us comments and ask us questions... we're excited to share!