So after 2 1/2 years of having the Cheese on a trailer in my back yard I finished all of the mandatory repairs and upgrades to get her back into the water.
My goal was to have our boat in the water for July 4th this year, since we had missed 2 already. Unfortunately my wife tripped over our two standard poodles in the middle of the night and shattered her ankle in 3 places. After the surgery the Dr. said no boating for 2 months. My wife insisted that I still go to the Mandeville fireworks show with the other members of our Yacht Club.
So with just a few days to work before the Holiday weekend and with the help of some good friends I was able to trailer the boat down to Korths Pirate Lair, a marina on the Delta Loop near where we are now keeping the boat.
After two blown trailer tires and 4 replacements over two days we were able to launch the boat and my new (to me) dinghy I motored to Andreas Cove Yacht Club looking for a couple of guys to help me step the mast.

Finally got some help to step the mast but by then I was exhausted and ended up just staying the night aboard and in the Yacht Clubs guest slip.

Finally got the stupid map settings to read correctly and actually show my boats location, at the marina, instead of in some field out by Lodi.
The older I get the less I seem to know.

Getting ready for the SF Bay Doo Dah, our club's version of the Latitude 38' Delta Doo Dah event. only in reverse.

Heres a picture of the Cheese on her new home for the next 2 1/2 years. Seeing her out of the water definitely gives you a new perspective on how big this little sailboat really is.

So because "Sailblogs" doesn't seem to allow me to insert pictures into my posts anymore I will have to make a lot of small posts to be able to illustrate my point with pictures.
Here is a picture of the Swing Keel. The orange spots are rust bubbling up through the paint, these had to be ground down and repaired. I can only imagine how bad this would have been if the boat had been kept in saltwater.

So once the cheese was out of the water I finally got a good look at the bottom.
The bottom paint wasn't as bad as I feared and the keel looked better than I expected, but the boat looked like it had Mumps with all of the blisters on the bottom.

Your text to link...back on the Delta!
There were points over the last couple of years where I thought that I might just sell the boat and move on, but a mix of perseverance and procrastination won out and I got all of the projects under the water line done and the boat is now back in the water.

So I'm going to spend the next few posts bringing everyone who reads this up to date on what I found and what was done.

So back on March 5th 2012 with the help of some good friends I dropped the mast, and motored over to a launch ramp to haul out the Cheese.
The first attempt was a failure as the used trailer I had purchased, bunks were to low and the boat was resting on the keel.


So back into the water with the boat, the trailer came back home for some modifications and came back the next weekend this time the trailer fit fine.
All was well the trailer made it the 45 miles home and the Odyssey began.