Bob and I installing the shoe. The (3) 5/8″ fiberglass rods will be trimmed off flush once the epoxy hardens

The heavy fiberglass layup over the stainless steel bar being fabricated.

Yikes, just four days till we leave and there’s still a ton to do.  Getting out of the house has been a lot harder than we thought.  After two garage sales, many trips to Good Will, Habitat, recycle, and the dump–still stuff left.  The barn is filling up.  But work on getting the boat ready continues.  The windvane install should happen today.  We had the challenge of attaching the self steering gear to the scoop transom which is kind of thin an fine lined but the rudder for the wind-guided steering vane will put tremendous loads on the attachment points to the boat.  Solution was to fabricate a “shoe” with stainless bar embedded to tap the mounting bolts into.