Living Well With Diabetes

This morning at 9:14 AM, I finished lacing the sail to the boom and yard and that marked the official completion of my eight and a half month long, ill-advised and epoxy-drenched journey into boat-building craziness.

To mark the occasion, I hauled everything into the front yard and hoisted the mainsail for the first time. Here is a photo from that occasion:

And, in the interest of full disclosure, here’s a photo of the very first time I hoisted the sail. I quickly realized that the sail was on backwards! Oops! Better here in the front yard than out on the water, I suppose.

So, now it’s time to go sailing!

Tomorrow is the earliest we can go. We wanted to launch it on Little Dell Reservoir, but it is still closed. The next closest body of water is East Canyon Reservoir, but the road through the mountains to it is still closed. The next closest body of water after that is Rockport Reservoir. The Rockport Reservoir State Park web site says it is open year-round, but the water is only 40 degrees. I guess we won’t plan on doing any swimming. The boat is on the top of the car and all ready to go (and the car still fits in the garage with the boat on it, much to our relief).

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I’m finally working on the varnishing of the interior of Barely A Wake, the Eastport Pram that, in a moment craziness last summer, I decided to build.

I’d like to put on at least three more coats, each of which takes about a day to accomplish, but I’d also like to launch this thing next weekend. Ideal conditions for varnishing are 55-65 degrees and 45-55 percent relative humidity and with the snow and rain and generally wintery weather that we’ve had here in Salt Lake City for the past week, I haven’t made as much progress on the varnishing as I had hoped. Oh well. The coming week should be better.

Here’s a photo of the boat in its current state. I’ve turned it on its side so I can more easily get to the undersides of the seats.

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