Ephemeral beauty

What makes a nice piece stand out ? The answer is probably entirely subjective but I sure have enjoyed building and manipulating this little component for the boat.

It will live its life as the mizzen mast step. It'll be buried down into the aft locker, covered in paint and not to be seen again. I've built it out of pieces of mahogany offcuts. I sure like the geometry and the nice grain of the wood.
I thought of dedicating a post to it as ... it won't be seen again after it is integrated to the boat. That makes it in a sense pretty ephemeral.

Inspiration

This photo from my internet friend Steve Earley keeps my motivation going through the current stages of the build.

With a self imposed deadline for my project set for the end of April 2016 in order to participate to the sail raid organised in the Venice lagoon, Steve's source of inspiration is indeed very helpful...

Some progress!

In the past few weeks some progress has been achieved. Different components have been spiled and dry fitted including the bench tops, the foredeck and its teak cover and the teak cockipt floor.

Also the inboard compartment has been fitted with a propeller inspection well (just about visible in the first photo above). This will allow to access the "saildrive" propeller from inside the boat in order to clean up fouling or to remove it altogether when racing. For this purpose I have designed a quick release mechanism allowing easily unplug the propeller with one hand through the well thus reducing drag when racing. Not that I will do a lot of that (or any at all) but I just thought it was an interesting feature to develop and integrate to the boat.

Of course none of this progress would have been possible without a helping hand or two ...