The day started early; I was at Home Depot at 7:30 this morning to buy 2x4s, 2x6s and casters. Over to Western Auto to buy a bottle jack and then off to the shed.
Wow was it warm inside this morning! Leaving two heaters running overnight brought the temperature up to 85! The epoxy had hardened up enough that I wasn't going to have to worry about it when we went to flip the boat. Yay!
First I took the tent down. Opened the space back up visually, which was great, made things just... feel better.
Grabbed the small sander and went to work getting rid of the excess epoxy on the spray rails, sanding the sharp edges off and generally smoothing things down.
I measured under the hull for three 2x4 cross braces, then cut them to length. Next I cut the 2x6s into two foot pieces and screwed them together with the casters to make furniture dollies. Crawled back in underneath and screwed the braces to the shelves, then very carefully jacked up one end of the jig and put a furniture dolly underneath and did the other end. It was a little creepy listening to the jig creak and pop. Crawled out and pushed the boat closer to the wall and then removed the furniture dollies.
Then it was time to haul stuff out of the shed and into the garage. And haul stuff. And haul stuff. Man I had a lot of stuff in there!
Left the broom and the shop vac behind so I could clean up as much of the sawdust as possible. It had crept in everywhere. I was knocking it off tools and wood as I hauled it out, coating the fiberglass where I had to knock it off by lightly brushing the glass, piles under the hull (how does that much get underneath?) and piled up in every crack and corner. Yeesh. Last, I mixed some hot water and ammonia to wipe down the hull. The graphite bottom is slippery enough without a coating of dust to help. :-)
I put the ladder up and set up my GoPro camera to capture the flipping process.
By this time it was 12:30 so I ordered pizza and waited for folks to show up.
And show up they did! The first to show up was Mike and Ben Schlecter. Mike has built a Tolman Widebody, which I have yet to make time to go see. Shame on me. Then others started to show.
Let's see, Patrick DeFreest and his friend Kirk, Gary and Daniel Leder, Wes Cassell, Steve Mattix, Mark and Darryl Petz, Brian Goettler, Chad Dubois. Plus me, that makes 12! Whoo hoo!
We talked boat stuff for a few minutes, then I got everyone's attention and explained the flipping process, what to watch out for safety wise and did a final glove check (no blood on the boat now!) and we were off.
I'm just going to post the video here, as that's easier to watch than me to explain!
As I'd told people it took about fifteen minutes and we were done!
Yay! A GREAT BIG HUGE THANKS! TO EVERYONE!!!
After everyone left I hauled all the tools back in, sorted the lumber scraps into keepers (into the shed) and burners (into the truck) and finally the epoxy workstation.
Made a run down to the beach for another small bonfire and watched the sun go down. It was an amazing day, no wind, no rain, the boat it safely flipped and I'm PSYCHED to get started on the inside the hull work.
I need to move the boat and jig back to it's original place on the floor, get the boat releveled and then I'm off.
Spent about half an hour just staring at the boat thinking and wondering and being amazed and then I went home.
8.5 Hours