Scott and Shawn came by today to see their new baby and left me a lovely bottle of tequila from Mexico. As the photos below indicate, it is very good.

I spent the entire day playing in the boatman’s footwell, putting in all the framing and walls, and building a self bailer. The tube is made by taping two cardboard wrapping-paper tubes together, then wrapping them in plastic and fiberglassing them. When luck is with you (it was with me today) you can pull out the tubes and plastic as the glass kicks and get a very nice translucent oval tube. I like oval because it takes up less hatch real estate, but still dumps a lot of water fast. It is also kind of fun when the sun is coming from the left side of the boat and you open the hatch and find it all aglow.

The original Briggs self bailers went straight out the bottom of the boat from the stern end of the boatman’s footwells, so that the first wave you hit each morning would send an ice-cold whale-spout straight up into your genitals. Not welcome. So we decided to move it to the bow end of the footwell, safely behind the foot brace, and tilt the false floor forward slightly for drainage. This protected the genitals, but, when the boat was parked on a slope in surging beach conditions, it had the effect of pumping the footwell full of sand. So now I run it out the side of the boat rather than the floor, and the problems seem to be solved.

I put a light in it to help me see where I have it sealed and/or not sealed. It looks especially cool with the shop lights off. Yeah. The tequila is good.