Road Trip

 As I dicussed in an earlier entry the spars were built in Port Townsend, Washington.   At one point I considered hauling the boat to PT to marry it with the spars there, but in the end I decided to finish the project here in on the Gulf Coast. So with the help of a close friend we organized a road trip and hauled the sticks back home.  The return leg took 73 hours, 49 of which were on the road.

In retrospect I should have built the spars here in Texas even if it meant importing the talent. I was too far out of position to supervise construction. 

As a result it took twice as long as originally quoted and because of a misinterpretaion of the drawing or a breakdown in communication the mast is 13 inches shorter than the designed length.  May not seem like much, but trust me, it's huge. 

Some thought was given to re-drawing the sail plan to fit the shorter mast.  That was certainly an option but not a very good one. The sail plan as drawn  is the best one for the vessel.  So having essentially started from scratch and come this far without any major design compromises, why accept less than optimum. The plan
now is to add the 13 inches of length needed to get to
the  45 foot designed length using a  clothespin
 scarf ( Page 214 of "How to Build a Wooden Boat").  I found two 6 foot long 7 x 4 inch Sitka Spruce boards in Maryland and a local shipwright with mast building experience. So we are back  in business.

Getting closer.  I'm now predicting a January splash.