Thinking about the upcoming long weekend. My wife and I also decided last night that 62 is the magic number where I “pull a Willy” and take the retirement that very day which is indicated in the counter on the right. This is a major deviation from my old plan of cutting down to a four day work week at 62 but I think alleviating a lot of stress will help me live longer. It’s always a good idea to have goals. Our soda blaster took all day long to do one side of the GB42. He said it had more paint than any other boat he has ever done and projects 1,000 lbs of paint to dispose of.  Can we say “ablative paint?”

The Catalina 32 has been many colors this week — with grey primer, black hard coat and the final layer of blue ablative. It’s now waiting to have the mast put back in at some point.

The second depth sounder is being installed on the Trawler Cat. With the boat being so wide and the original sounder reading only one pontoon, you never knew what the depth was under the other pontoon — especially close to the shore lines.

Yesterday I showed a photo of a new, bigger outboard in a little Cape Dory. Since the motor was so large the lid no longer worked. We built a “riser” out of  epoxy coated Douglas Fir painted white. This should work just fine to get the lid to cover the engine.

We have had one boat out in the yard who has been staying with us for years.  Willy had always claim the Vetus bow thruster didn’t take a zinc. I finally called them this year and they told me the prop had to be removed to change the zinc. What kinda BS is that? Fortunately there was still quite a bit of product left on the old one so there was no degradation of equipment. If we go to the trouble to pull the prop, you are going to get a new one on anyway.