“We had too much stoke!” Ryan declared. “All those amazing times — now we’re paying for it! In this never-ending boatyard purgatory”

We sat exhausted on the cockpit bench after 4 hours of grinding and cutting wood.  I just nodded, entering that numb phase of week 3 in the boatyard.  “Everything takes five times longer than you think — nothing is square. The only thing that goes down easy is C minus,” he mused as he took a swig.

Danielle and Sabrina put together some sweet floorboards for the pantry, aka “The Cavern”

Tom, the “Yard-Father”, doesn’t look all too pleased. “Why do you have so much weight on this boat? Why do you keep hitting stuff?” Tom frowns and shakes his head. 

South African Lloyd surveys a 45 year old piece of bronze. The shaft goes through this “log” the seal finally broke when we ran over and backed up into a lobster trap. 

During a rainy day we managed to paint.  Sabrina Littée, otherwise known during projects as “Qualitée control”

Ninja kick late bodysurfing session at the harbor beachbreak — the daily surf session has been keeping us sane. 

Our 238lbs shipment from Westmarine, with giant savings thanks to a handsome employee discount. New toilet, new porta-potty, 5 gallons of paint, 500 feet of anchor line, and a whole lot more!

Michael and Jack were troopers and helped sand the bottom paint — we all got the “blues”!  

Jason’s son Kai in the Cavern (aka the pantry). His little grommet size came in handy when installing the floorboards

Sean cleaning out all the bad wood in the bow, with precision !

Note the gigantic hole on the bow… 2 gallons of water were stuck in the collision bulkhead (due to bad caulking of deck hardware on the bow) and suddenly delaminated the side of the bow.  One of those surprises makes light of the typical boatyard “two steps forward, one step back”, in this case, many steps back!  We don wetsuits for the evening bodysurf to freshen up. 

 Sabrina got a scare at the end of this session — a huge thing came swimming and breaching right next to her when it was getting dark and everyone had gone in.  It was a little humpback whale!  It continued to breach without stop for several minutes. 

The universe has dealt too kind a hand with our island stoke and now we are paying the dues… working non-stop in the most unkindly of environments… but as you can see all is not lost… we are making the most of our time here in Ventura Harbor. Meanwhile, Aldebaran is loving all the attention.