We have our bowsprit back! Now to put it back in place!

Work, work, work… The cold front moved in late night/early morning and today. It was a great day for working in the boatyard. I love it! The winds shifted around to the north and the humidity dropped to bearable working conditions with temperatures in the 70s! While I was removing old varnish from the teak with a heat gun and Wayne was working on the wind generator, David brought the sprit back this morning.


Our new mahogany sprit and platform!



What a lovely sight. They then fine-tuned it and we vacillated whether to have them put it back up for us, or do it ourselves. I can’t say that I’m comfortable handling something so large and awkward from two ladders. It’s heavy and quite a piece to manipulate from 10-12 feet off the ground. I’m not ready to lose my Capt’n from a spill, but I also know that we don’t have the extra $500 for them to do it. After asking me my opinion 15 times and hearing each time that I’d rather they do it, we told them to do it. Then after talking to two of our neighboring boats in the yard, everyone decided we could do it. One of the guys told me to just double Wayne’s life insurance and when I said it wasn’t enough, he said triple it. He seemed taken back when I said I’d rather have my husband, and intact at that. He looked at Wayne and said, “you’d better keep her, I think my wife would rather have the insurance”. I was just a little incensed at that and thought - well if the other guy were my husband I’d probably take the insurance too! All he does is harp at his wife (sound travels well in the boatyard). But I’ve found in life that when you find someone that loves you, you value him or her. I can’t imagine life without my best friend, even through all the pitfalls we’ve had in life I find the thought of being without him a tragic loss. Between them, Wayne and Eric, they convinced me that it was “safely doable”. So Wayne let Eric (the boatyard manager) know that he thought we could do it with their help. I promptly tripled Wayne's insurance (I'm KIDDING!) Eric said he’d call Dave and let him know then Wayne went to work on the windlass while I put 3 coats of varnish (okay Cetal) over our lovely new mahogany sprit and platform. The idea was to put the finish on it while it was off (at least the bottom of it) because we could get the sections covered with finish that were going to be covered by the hardware. Plus it’d be easier to do it on the ground than finishing it overhead.

Towards 5pm as we were quitting for the day, we heard Dave and his workers show up below. Wayne & I went up and Wayne asked him if he’d heard from Eric? No. Oh oh… Wayne had to tell him that we were going to finish it, as they were unloading a platform that they’d built to work on the sprit. I felt so bad knowing that he’d had to pay his workers to build the platform and then have them come back out to set it up. They’re a nice group of guys and do good, fast work! I’d recommend them to any other Bayfielders that need their sprit redone. The only pitfall is that here, they take another 15% additional charge at the boatyard and want the contractors to sign away their lives and prove that they have the insurance to cover any problems, so it tends to put people off from hiring contractors. But anyone in the vicinity that needs work done on there sprit – try out BoatSmith, they do custom marine carpentry, teak decking, boat building, etc… www.boatsmithFL.com I think they’ll treat you right and from what I can see, they do fine work!


The top one is a professional splice and the bottom two are my first two splices. I'm told it's easier with new rope...

 I practiced splicing rope & I think I’m getting better. I think that I’m ready to tackle our snubber line. I’ve never been to good at braiding but it looks like it’s pretty much a type of braid in the strands of rope (a bit more difficult than hair, in handling it). I’m just a little intimidated that I might destroy our new line. Practice, practice, practice to gain the confidence!