July- the work contines as the heat builds!

Well, the good news is that the smell that had previously plagued Luna is gone. The bad news is, the more we look the more it costs. July 2010 will be know as the $5000 month. While scraping Luna's lovely teak bow sprit for re-varnishing, we discovered that it had rotted straight through from the deck to the sprit! Who knew teak could rot? So, we found Earl Matheson, a local carpenter in Rock Hall, who assured us that he could make us a new one....and he did. It took a few weeks, but the new deck and sprit is mounted back up on its perch. We had to take the trail boards off in order to re-bolt the sprit properly so they are in the process of being put back on this weekend. More pics on that to come.

While removing the sprit, we had a local fiberglass man (Mark Reuwer) come and look at something that "didn't look quite right" $2000 later, that got fixed also. One of the previous owners had moved the innerstay 2' forward to the bow of the boat. Sounds good from a tacking standpoint, but he never reinforced the fiberglass and it started to pull the boat apart. Fortunately, that's all fixed now, but it was quite a distraction from our normal work, and our bank account for the month.

Meanwhile, inside the boat, our hole still continues to gap at us every weekend. It's been brutally hot (over 100 degrees) this summer which makes it impossible to work with fiberglass expoy and also challenging to think! What started as a 2-4 weekend project is taking all summer. Our best hope is to have her in the water by September. Sigh.... oh well. She'll be great when she's done. (repeat 10 times each day..)

Our one saving grace this past weekend however, came at the hands of a wonderful new friend. "Rob", the polite southern guy with the Cabo Rico 42, invited us out on a "night sail" on Saturday night. We left under a full moon, clear sky and steady breeze at 8:45 pm and didn't come back into the dock until 1:45 am! It was an amazing trip filled with peace, relaxation, wonderful conversation and new friends. Helped to remind Tom and I why we are doing all this.

Remembering the small things is sometimes the greatest joy.