Moving Right Along,,, or Not

   Been kinda slow of late. Put the car together, timing belt tensioner slipped and seems to have caused the valves to hit a piston and  bend a bit. I have been spending a bit too much time on this car, which is diverting me from the boat project. Since you have to pull this engine to get the head off, I think I have gone as far as I am willing to go with this project. Put and ad in craigslist and sold it to the first caller for about half of what I had paid for it. An acceptable compromise to get back on track. I had always worried that when we sold the car it would be a problem in California to get it smog certified, so give up the problems and move on.

    Finished the mast, and stepped it without incident. We decided to leave it bare aluminum and the appearance is quite a change from the former black. It all went well and I just have to hook all the wiring up( rainy day project, must make paint while the sun shines).
    Doing some of the final bits of sanding when I came across what appeared to be a 2" x 5" soft spot on the cabin side. As I cut out the wet plywood, it became apparent that there was a lot of wet wood in there.

 Finally found dry stuff all round, but it turned into a hole about 1 foot by 6 feet. Not the end of the world, but a bit of a bubble in the pert chart. Filled the gap with a sheet of structural foam, and glassed and filled it in place.

 No chance of more rot now, too bad the whole boat is not foam glass, perhaps it will be before I am done.
    Made an insert for the dagger board exit. Kind of a challenge since the profile of the board is perpendicular, while the exit is slanted. So I had to project the profile a few inches longer and elongate the shape to still fit the board at an angle.

 Looks pretty good, but not attached to the boat yet. As boat things go this is just one more interesting challenge, as the reason for the plastic insert is to eliminate turbulence, fix the position of the board and provide a near frictionless bearing surface for the board to slide up and down on. The frictionless part means that you cannot use any type of adhesive to attach it, as nothing sticks to it. Current theory is that I will make a fiberglass lip around the bottom of the dagger board case and screw through it into the plastic.
    We have made some progress in the paint department, but as usual, two steps forward and one back. As we prepared the top of the starboard aka for primer, all the paint wanted to flake off. Sigh, once more with feeling. Not a big deal, but another day or two lost from painting.

 Finally got the two amas and a bit of the front akas primed, but the weather window is getting pretty short these days.  It has been getting down near freezing every night, but up to about 60 in the day time. The painters say that you can work for about 2 hours painting if you are well organized. At that rate, it will be a month before we get the paint on, and that will be well into the rainy season. Having spent 5 prior winters in the bay area, I have no desire to sit freezing in the rain wishing spring would hurry up. It also seems that I have a torn rotator cuff and will need to give my shoulder a break.

    After considerable discussion, we decided to store the boat in the yard until the weather improves( ie springtime). The coldest winter storm in Tampa is about like a normal winter day in Napa. Should we have finished the painting and other jobs, it would be late in the season for the passage south. The winter storms are rough offshore and we aren't up for it. To put the boat in a slip would also be hazardous due to winter storms and also cost about 3 times as much as the yard. Joan's father set us up with some wheels and we elected to head for Florida.
   Made it to Florida ate turkey and probably won't have any Hot sauce updates for the rest of winter.