And the Bowsprit is gone.....

Wow, time flies. We spent the weekend disassembling the pulpit, lifelines, stashing stuff and trying to avoid the heat.

The pulpit dissassembled from the bow and bowsprit.

Saturday, we’d been working on the boat all day and in the evening we could hear latin music playing somewhere. It occurred to us the next day that we’d missed the Saturday BBQ at the marina. We’d forgotten that every Saturday they have a potluck BBQ where they supply the meat and everyone brings a dish. Oops – sounds like it was fun! Sunday we had our first (real) dinner onboard Kolibrie. Steak and salad – yum… Sunday, I also got stung again - by a wasp who decided to fly up the back of my shorts while I was trying to hold the pulpit off the sprit (while Wayne was wiggling it off the front of the sprit). Wasps two, Patti two and Wayne two – so I guess we’re about even in the sting to swat and kill ratio!

Trailboard removed to access bolts to the bowsprit. Wow!

The trailboard made it in one piece!

Holes plugged (wasps!) Pulpit removed & ready for sprit removal!

 

The culprit that needs replacing!

The bowsprit and platform (the platform is in two pieces)

The carpenter that’s going to shape the new sprit for us showed up about 9am this morning to remove the remaining 4 bolts and take the sprit off of the boat. Wayne was busy polishing the hull and I was trying my hand at a gel coat repair when they showed up. They unloaded a large axe and sledgehammer, which worried me a bit. I had visions of them hacking it off and destroying the pulpit and fiberglass below the sprit, but they never used those tools. They ended up using a couple of mammoth crowbars and with a little persuasion they soon had the sprit off, and on the ground, as I stood there gaping looking at our bow with no nose to her.

Pobrecita, she looked so naked without the bowsprit and pulpit! So we’re now officially without a bow until they return the finished pieces for us to put back on. It looks like we’ll be using mahogany for the sprit. Originally they had used Sitka Spruce on the sprit when she was built but since that’s not a native wood here it would cost us just as much as the mahogany (if not a little more) in Florida. Sitka is the wood they use to use for the masts of the old sailing ships.

As the day wore on and the temperatures climbed to the mid eighties, we decided to head to town to hit the hardware store and two marine stores. It was a busy and hot day… we also found an ABC store and picked up some gin. We have quite a bit of tonic but nothing to put in it and on these hot sweaty days, sometimes a gin & tonic goes quite nicely!