WOOHOO!!! The new phone books are here!!!

Well not exactly, but I am excited as my Navigator plans have arrived!!!

Oooooooo, a very mysterious box. Could this be them?

Well I guess it sure is!! Boy o boy, am I happy to see you there.












And would you look at this .........

 Just what the Dr. ordered, a metric tape measure so I don't have to wrack my pea sized brain to convert those measurements from metric to fractions. My goodness what a pain that would be, and how many errors would be introduced as well? Far too many for sure, as I remember I wasn't all that good with fractions in school, of course that was at least 40 years ago so even that memory is suspect.

So now the hard work of trying to familiarize myself with Mr. Welsford's ways on paper. I plan on taking most of the month if not more to read and reread the instructions and put them together with the plans drawings to make sure I understand exactly what he wants to be done. I don't want to get out in the water and suddenly discover that I didn't quite get something right, ya know what I mean? I'm sure there will be questions turn up that will have to go to the forum to get a better understanding of something, and I'm prepared for that.

I'm also beginning to question the using of marine plywood as opposed to b/c exterior ply. Something Mr. Welsford wrote toward the end of the instruction sheets. "The more money you have invested in your boat the less fun it is". I kinda get that, it was something that I learned when I used to go weekend drag racing when I lived up in Connecticut back in the 70's. One of the guys I shared a garage/shop with only spent the most money on the most expensive parts and in 2 years never raced once. Don't get me wrong here, his car looked beautiful, but didn't leave the garage. Mine, well it didn't look very good at all, but it ran great. A quarter mile in 11.21 seconds at 126.7 miles per hour from a standing start. I had a lot of fun with that car, had some trials but over all mostly fun. I guess my point is that you don't always need the best of everything to enjoy something. I want to be able to have fun with my Navigator without worrying that it might get nicked or scratched or something, as long as I feel confident it's built properly and will handle as it should. Strength and utility, a work horse type, like the commercial fishing boats you see at the docks. Not those "gold platers" that you never see leave the dock.

After all is said and done no one rags on Steve Early's Spartina for her "work boat" finish, or Joel Bergen's Ellie for using rustoleum for paint. I see lots of viewers of their blogs rave about how good looking their boats are and I agree wholeheartedly, I just hope mine will sail as good as theirs and the finished product will be acceptable to me. Ya gotta know when to say that's good enough.

Well 'nuff said, I'm beginning to ramble and that's not a good thing.


Geoff