Sailboat Project Day

One of our family goals is to get the sailboat in the water by this fall.  Just one time in the water.   I have had a 1973 O’Day 22 foot sailboat for over 10 years and I have never had it in the water.  It is in the garage, and the trailer has lots of rot.  Too much rot to move the boat, so even if I wanted to get rid of it, I would need to repair the trailer.

The first part of the project required lifting the boat off the trailer, pulling the trailer out from under the boat, and setting the boat down on stands.

The boys and I started working on the boat this afternoon when Susanna headed into work.  The goal for today was to finish this step of the project.  I couldn’t have done it without the boys.  Ben helped the first part of the afternoon, and Will the second part of the afternoon.    All three of us struggled to pull the trailer out from under the boat (one of the tires was very flat – made it even harder to move).  It took the three of us and the tractor to pull it out.

None of the usual complaining about being bored and not helping.  There was a period that I wasn’t sure that we would get finished today.

The next step is to clean out the inside of the boat.  Susanna is planning on doing that over the next couple of days.  Then we will evaluate the scope of the work remaining to get the boat in the water.

We even dug out the mast from behind the barn (the boys washed it).

We are all scraped up and banged up from the project today.  I’m tired, but I think Ben got the most banged up (not all of it was project related – a lot of scrapes playing around on his bicycle after a hard day working outside) – he got a good cut on the palm of his hand helping put the mast on it’s storage rack.

I haven’t forgotten my other projects.  I am still working on the kitchen island – but I can’t just have one project going on at a time.  I want to make progress on the boat before we break to paint the trim on the house in July (with Susanna’s sister, Rebecka’s, help).