Welllll....finally, we are doing some painting! Not too much yet but hey, any is better than none. We put the first coat of two stage epoxy on the inside of the first finished weld today. Tomorrow we should be able to get several more areas done and hopefully I can get some of the top coat done on the first forwrd port side. We have four more days (hopefully, if the weatherman is correct) of nice weather coming and are in a crunch to get as much done as possible in those days. This epoxy paint requires the temps to be above 45 degrees to apply and dry, which takes 72 hours. Everyone keep their fingers crossed...we are pushing ourselves to the max every day to get this done!! :)

Captain Mike has been welding like crazy and has recruited some help. A friend that we have made here in the marina has graciously volunteered to help; probably because his boat, which is in the water, will be taking the place of the jezebel on the hard once jezebel goes into the water (just kidding J...your help is greatly appreciated)! We are hoping to have her in the water by January 1st but that is going to be a huge challenge. Once she is in the water, we will probably be in port here another week at least getting her ready to sail and finishing up any land-based business that needs to be done.

We did have a major issue arise about 5 days ago...Captain Mike got down in the keel in the aft cabin and found major rust damage. This has added a huge amount of welding and the steel plates going on are large as the rust damage not only made some holes but also weakened the metal pretty badly in a large area. The patches are going on nicely but definitely added several days onto the time frame of getting into the water. I wonder how many more surprises the jezebel has in store for us???