We're going home! Just before Tuesday midnight, Conni purchased our tickets! The current plan is to have the TraveLift lift the boat and leave her suspended on Thursday night. I'll paint the areas that were covered by the cradle pads and any other areas, then we'll splash the boat on Friday morning. If all goes well, the crew at Svendsen's will step the mast on Friday, and we'll step aboard a flight to Anchorage next Wednesday. It's likely that we'll be prepared to step the mast on Friday, so it can be moved to Monday, allowing more time to complete the mast preparation task, but the travel schedule remains the same. Jeez, we've been working here on the boat for four weeks, now. I want to go home!

Two new coats bottom paint are on her. The new transducer is installed but cable not run to the cockpit. The forward head sea cock is installed. There is all new hose in that head. An unused transducer hole is filled. The mast and boom are painted and were returned to us on Monday. We re-caulked the chain plates (the attachment points for the rigging that supports the mast). Conni sweated for a day to clean the hull of yellow water stain and general mung, so it looks great. With luck, a new forwar-looking sonar transducer will arrive today and I'll install it tomorrow, but will not have time to run cable to the cockpit.

We still have a great deal of work to do to re-install all the hardware on the mast: we must re-wire it, install all the fittings, and run all the lines. Conni's dad will help since he is a retired machinist and "chasing threads", that is, clearing the threads for new machine screws, is something that he can easily do and that will help us a great deal.

We also have tickets to return to Oakland in six weeks. That will give us a week to get ready to take the boat to San Diego and ready her for the Baja Haha to Cabo San Lucas, with plenty of contingency and sight-seeing along the way. In late October we take on two crew, friends Jerry and Nancy Wurtzbuaer, and head to Mexico with the Haha rally.

Yesterday, we also closed a deal to for a two-month home for Wings here in Alameda: Fortman Marina. http://www.fortman.com/about_fortman.html