Construction Log: Launch Day 8-26-81

 Early, early in the morning:  I barely had my eyes open when Peter Fromm, our favorite photographer, arrived to document Abrazo’s Launch Day.  No floorboards yet, so I’m kneeling on the floor timbers in the galley area.  As I recall, my task was to make sure there was no sawdust or other detritus in the bilge. 

Who Knew How Much Water Would Seep In When this New Hull Settled in the Briney? 

You can see our cast iron wood stove installed on the platform to my right.  That bar parallel to the upper surface of the wood stove is one of the stove’s sea rails.  The wooden box below the stove will eventually hold a stainless-steel drawer for firewood (or for potatoes or whatever you want to store). 

Between the wood stove and my head, you see the heat-exchanger with intake and output hoses for the engine.  (We’re pretty sure we did not fire off that engine until days after the boat was launched.)

The horizontal counter behind me has a curved edge (above my left shoulder) that goes under the bridge deck.  This will eventually become the aft galley counter.  In the meantime, it serves as a shelf for tools, and most importantly, as a place to step down from the companionway, or climb out of the companionway … until Richard builds the companionway ladder. 

Above that counter you see the plywood wall that marks the back of the galley, along with the electrical panel (black area above my left shoulder).  This is part of the module that fits over top of the engine.

To my left you see the as-yet-untrimmed bulkhead separating the main cabin settee forward, from the navigation station aft.  Like the galley, the nav station is yet to be.  

Again looking aft, you see the two bulkheads that mark the aft end of the main cabin.  No trim yet.  Probably not enough paint, yet, either. 

You see the open companionway … and the windows of Bob’s Super Saw Shop outside.  No ladder yet.  We stepped down onto the corner (behind me on the starboard side) where the galley counter will eventually be built; then onto the upper bilge stringer on the port side, where the navigation station will eventually be built; then onto floor timbers.

You see the battery switch … that black body just to the left of my left hand.  Black cables leading left from the switch are the battery cables to the engine. 

The black tube in the light below the battery switch is the portside cockpit scupper.  Behind that tube, in the light shining into the engine room, you see the hanging knee that supports the port side of the cockpit.

Above the nav station area to my left you can see the portside hanging knees that support the side deck, outboard of the cabin.  We don’t know what that greyish wood piece that crosses the bulkhead is.  Walnut trim for a bulkhead?

Fastened into the corner of the cabin to my left you see a vertical copper tube.  This is the vent for the port-side saddle tank beside the cockpit, a tank that will hold fuel.  (There’s another saddle tank on the starboard side of the cockpit to hold water.) 

That black cord dropping from the companionway is electric power for the light bulbs.  Hung in the cabin, those bulbs reflect on the newly-varnished cabin sides, cabin-top beams, and tongue-in-groove cabin-top planks. 
What a bright spot!  In fact, what appear to be dark lines perpendicular to the deck beams above my head, are shadows and reflections of the fore-to-aft tongue-in-groove cabin-top planks.   

 

Peter Fromm finally got permission to climb onto the building balcony to photograph Abrazo’s minimal deck hardware: a cleat and a chock in the stern, for tie-up lines:

  

  

 

Jay Taber joined us to help with bottom paint and moral support, while his partner Marianne di Angelo snapped photos.  

Then the experts from Seattle arrived:  the consummate pros of Associated Boat Movers took over the action. 

First, they installed their own supports …

... then they put their special roller skate under the forward edge of Abrazo’s  keel:

... and started knocking away the shores Richard had relied on for the past two years.  

They backed their special truck under that keel … 

… until Abrazo was entirely aboard the truck.

Once Associated had their own shores in place, we could paint the spaces that had been obscured by Richard’s shores. 

 

And here is the Boat Builder.  Is he tightening a bolt at this last minute?  

Peter Fromm immortalized the beautiful propeller.  

And then it was time to move …The exit driveway was a bit narrow, what with that rockery of strawberry plants having encroached.  Move those logs out of the way, sir.  Abrazo is bound for Squalicum Harbor!  

 

Having made the right angle turns from the driveway on to Cornwall, then on to Chestnut St …

… it was a short mile to the Weldcraft yard at Squalicum Harbor …

 

… where the Seattle pros backed their truck under the Weldcraft tammy lift … … and transferred the precious cargo to the next team of experts. 

As the lift operator moved toward the water, we were both a little anxious. 

Maybe Richard is advising me about how to whack the bow of that boat with the bottle of christening champagne I have in my shoulder bag.  I wish somebody had advised me more thoroughly.  

That’s my dear friend Marianne standing with me, along with Sid Hammond, bagpiper, and his companion … maybe his daughter? … She was ready to dance a hornpipe for the occasion.  

The piper began to play the Skye Boat Song: 
“Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing,  over the waves to Skye …”

The man in the wheelchair is Hank Baila, Richard’s father.  Blind in one eye after a stroke at age 48, he’s 64 here, weakened by coronary heart disease.  His loving companion Lura Lu Radford stands behind him.

The Skye Boat Song

We didn’t have a master of ceremonies, or any kind of protocol to follow.  All we had to go by was Bill Modrell’s strong suggestion that we have a piper play “The Skye Boat Song,” which turns out to be a beautiful piece of music. 

OMG:  Did anybody pay the piper that day?  

My first effort to christen that boat …

... … failed!  Unbroken, the bottle fell to the water below.  

Richard jumped down onto the rocks, retrieved the champagne bottle, and wrapped his arms and hands around mine for the christening. 

We smashed that heavy bottle on Abrazo’s bow, and every photographer in attendance snapped the action!  Stephanie Slade, Marianne Di Angelo, Peter Fromm, and Jan (JP) Mayo …

My buddy Ernie Limbacher told me later that I was not alone in failing with that first blow.  

Mamie Eisenhower had had the same difficulty, bouncing the bottle off the bow  when she first tried to christen a boat.  

Time to lower that boat into the water …  

She floats! 

Did anyone have any doubts?  

Richard thinks he remembers that we rented the Squalicum Boat House for a gathering, but neither of us has any memory except that way too much champagne was consumed before nightfall.  We do remember the hangovers. 

There must have been some pumping of the bilge, but the planking seams swelled tight quickly.

The next day a fisherman friend towed Abrazo to the commercial side of the harbor and her new moorage. 

We moved aboard before September 1, sleeping on top of the tanks in the main cabin, washing dishes in a bucket, doing our best to keep the sawdust out of the granola … and moving forward with construction of the interior.  

Hank and Lura Lu probably stayed for a glass of champagne on Launch Day.  They soon headed back to Seattle, but not before Hank, proud Papa Dad, posed for this portrait by Peter Fromm.    

Hank’s heart disease took him for good on October 30, 1981 … just two months after Abrazo’s launching.  So glad he came to see the boat’s progress that day, I am forever grateful to him for the fine, strong, intelligent upraising he gave his son Richard.

Construction Log: August, 1981 Almost Ready to Launch

 

Bag End Trading Company's boat yard at the corner of Chestnut and Cornwall, with the new boat behind Bob's Super Saw Shop at 1121 Cornwall Avenue.  

Considering that my last entry, “Deadline,” strictly kept to business, I mean to meander for a few paragraphs here.  In past entries, time-traveling to 1979-80-81, I’ve relied on old journals, financial records, photos and present-day consultations with The Boss for details of the boat’s construction.  I’ve presented my thirty-year-old self as a devoted partner, right next to Richard in building the new boat. May I adjust that presentation?  There were a lot of YES, BUT ALSOs for me.      

I sanded and varnished finish pieces, swept the shop floor, and cut plugs to cover the endless fastenings.  Yes, but I also sought the writer’s life, the reporter’s life, spending hours absorbed with writing local news of Whatcom County and the Port of Bellingham.  The confrontations were huge:  Chicago Bridge and Iron was a multi-national corporation that wanted to spoil herring-spawning grounds and sacrifice the Dungeness crab fishery at Cherry Point for the sake of building off-shore oil-drilling rigs that would be sent to Alaska to ruin salmon fisheries there.

Building Abrazo commanded time and energy.  Stopping Chicago Bridge and Iron was ALSO important, not least because Richard’s shipwrighting business depended on the fishing industry. 

Progress in writing fiction also loomed important for me.  Short stories erupted from the life I’d lived before Richard, before this boat; The Great American Novel tempted … whatever the hell it might be about.  Notes and fragments accumulated on my desk, while long letters to loved ones carried my literary energies away into the distance, and existential anxiety over decision-making taxed my brain.  Right now, with this hour, should I help with the boat or ‘Do my own work’?  

Meanwhile, Richard devoted every fiber of his dynamic being to the construction of Abrazo … tolerating interruptions as best he could.  When his ailing father needed attention, Richard provided some.  When his wife had to stay up late writing whatever she wrote, he slept until dawn and got up to start his day alone.

My daily habit included journaling, often focused on the specifics of progress on the new boat.  ALSO, plenty of Incidents provoked me to write about my confoundment with this man, my spouse. 

For instance in my last blog entry, “Deadline,” I mentioned July 24, 1981 when “Our favorite photographer, Peter Fromm” stopped by the boat yard to check out our progress.  Peter arrived mid-morning, while Richard was focused on stretching canvas to cover the new boat’s cabin top.  Richard took a little time off to chat.

7-24-81  Friday   Fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies & coffee made the social hour calm & nice.  Fromm talked of making connection with the Island Historical Society; he could be working for them one of these days.  An environmental battle on Lopez revealed much wealth. 

“I’ll see about coming back this afternoon to catch a picture of the deck,” Peter said.  “Is it possible to get up on the roof?” 

I enthusiastically nodded yes, grinning with pleasure in hopes of another Fromm photo for my collection, while Richard, who had by now climbed back up to Abrazo’s deck, said “NO.” 

Peter squinted up at Richard with a big grin, then turned back to me & asked again, “Is it possible to get up on that roof?” 

I might have said, revealing my consternation with The Boss, “I don’t know.”  It’s possible I never did say anything.

After Peter grinned goodbye, I stood looking up at Richard, who ranted on for a few sentences.  “And why are you looking so dumbfounded?”  “What’s that look you’re giving me?”  “Don’t stand there giving me that look like you’re thinking of a way to get over on me….” 

I calmly said that I’m always dumbfounded when he comes out with these fiercely negative pronouncements.  I told him I was not going to bow & say, “Yes master whatever you say master.” 

He said I should at least get the landlord’s permission.  As I climbed up the ladder to continue my work, I said I could do that. 

We got back to work – I sanded the boomkin & Richard went back to Slade’s boom in the shop.  Soon his head popped over the bulwarks at the ladder with further comments on the Fromm photo possibility. 

Business, he said, was vital; and Fromm had never given him a good business deal.  “Business is my life.”  Then, admitting an iota of paranoia, he said his instincts were to refuse & he believed in following his instincts.  Finally, he described the stealing of ideas and details that would occur if Fromm’s deck photos got around.  Jay Benford, an island man, had already stolen ideas, etc. etc.

“Yes, but if you constipate the flow of ideas & info?” I said, still puzzled by his fears.

“I don’t want to constipate … but I will snip out the suckers that want to sap away my energies & ideas.” 

That made me laugh, thinking of his assiduous attention to pruning excess sprouts out of his tomato plants.  “Okay, Jose.  In the battle of the metaphor, you win.” 

[We were both great fans of John Nichols’ novel, The Milagro Beanfield War, in which Jose Mondragon is a quirky, defiant rebel with artistic sensibilities.] 

Later in the day, I was back on deck, sanding the cockpit again after getting it wrong earlier.  I saw Peter on his bicycle just the other side of the blackberries.  With hand signals he asked if he could go up on the roof to take a picture.  I shook my head NO, looking grim.  He hand-signaled what looked to me like he was going up to the sidewalk to get a view, and I smiled, nodding yes. 

Then I turned assiduously back to my second sanding & didn’t see any more of Peter. 

My own paranoia tinges my recall of the morning’s episode; this time aimed at Peter.  He had flattered me, praising my varnishing, when all he really wanted was to wangle a photo or two thru me, knowing that Richard would balk. 

Oh, well.  It’s Friday night … Richard and I are beat tired, but finally showered clean.   Maybe the fear of failure is striking again?  But Emmy Lou Harris is singin’ on the radio, & the cabin top canvas has been laid. We just might give each other some love tonight.  

 

Whatever photos Peter Fromm might have taken from the sidewalk that day had to have been practice shots.  He returned in late August, the morning of Launch Day, and captured this view of the foredeck above the blackberries, with Georgia Pacific’s pulp mill steaming beyond.     

 

 

Searching old journals to feed facts into a blog inspires time travel:  provocative, disturbing, triggering back into memory, turning up details sharp and clear from the murk of the past.  Moving backwards, moving forwards in history.    

Trauma to the rudder
Before posting that last blog entry, “Deadline,” with photos of mounting Abrazo’s rudder, I grilled Richard for what he remembered, asking specifically about the pintels and gudgeons that form the two upper hinges where rudder meets stern.  He’d carved patterns and had those pieces cast in manganese bronze.  The pintel’s design includes a pin that fit into the gudgeon’s hole.  He explained that the lowest hinge on Abrazo’s rudder, below the propeller, used a stainless steel shaft as the pin between two pieces of hardware.   
 
Describing these hardware bits flashed him forward in time from Abrazo’s construction, to the boat’s traumatic experience when she was moored at Marina El Manzano in Talcahuano, Chile.  The 8.8 earthquake on February 27, 2010 centered just offshore a little north of Talcahuano, caused a tsunami.  People believe that three giant waves, one of which left a water mark thirty feet above normal, scoured through the marina, carrying dozens of sailboats into the trees above the shoreline.  Abrazo, tied to a massive floating pontoon, probably rode those waves inland and back out toward the mangled breakwater where the pontoon’s anchor settled again.  She was one of five boats to survive the waves; and that’s another story.  Her rudder suffered a crack during the strain caused by those great waves, and the boat’s shape changed enough so that the rudder rubbed against the sternpost.  Richard had to remove the pintels and gudgeons in order to take the rudder down.  He shaved a bit off the stern post to make a new fit.

He eventually filled the crack with a wedge of yellow cedar, but he didn’t make that repair right away.  It wasn’t till after he’d sailed Abrazo south through Patagonian fjords and the Straits of Magellan to the Beagle Channel, and back again to Puerto Montt before the cracked rudder really needed attention.   

Ah, the stories yet to come!

--------------------------

Back to 1981.  We were so close to launching this boat, but our nerves were strained to their limits.    

August 18, 1981 - Tuesday:  Late in the day, while rolling copper paint onto the new boat’s bottom, we fling resentments and recriminations at each other, shouting “I’m only doing this for you.”  “What are you talking about?  I thought this was all for YOU!”  

Aye, matey, you have to survive some irrational moments in the voyage of a marriage. 

August 19:  After hours of sanding interior bulkheads, and another hour of rolling on more copper bottom paint, I wrote a letter to my father to brag about the marine surveyor’s verdict that had just come in:  Market Value is $125K, replacement value $150K, and the surveyor duly impressed with the quality of workmanship and materials.  

Cheeseburger Signs painted the new boat’s name.

   

Sunday, August 23.  Richard’s hammer rings out at 9 a.m.  He assured me this morning he would have the interior finished within a couple months.  My work today includes painting bulkheads, oiling caps and guards, rolling on more bottom paint. 

8-24:  Teflon packing for the stuffing box on the shaft.  Richard ordered a case of champagne for our Launch Day festivities.  Bill Modrell told us we had to hire a bagpiper to play the “Skye Boat Song” to  launch this boat, I made many phone calls trying to find a piper. 

8-25  Sid Hammond, principal of one of our local elementary schools, returned my call.  A member of The Bellingham Pipe Band, he owns a set of bagpipes, and is willing to pipe the boat into the water.  Tomorrow!  

Construction Log: Deadline August 1981

The new boat had to be ready to launch by the end of August, a particular deadline that had everything to do with “Capital Gains Tax.” 

As we understood the tax rule back in 1981, you paid no capital tax on the sale of your principle residence as long as you used the funds within two years to build your new principal residence.  An article in Cruising World magazine assured us that a boat could qualify as a principle residence.  (Cruising World, February 1981, p. 26:  submission from Daniel F. Hinkel titled "The IRS Loosens Up.")

Richard’s schooner Sea Lark had been his principal residence since 1967.  

When I moved aboard with him in the fall of 1978, our experience of living together confirmed his inklings that he wanted a bigger boat. His contacts with Diane and Julio Ozan (see "Why A Design by Manuel Campos" - Dec, 2014) led him to commission the Campos design.  Then he sold the schooner Sea Lark in early September of 1979, shortly after I'd married him in June.

Did he ever figure what his real “basis” in Sea Lark was, and what his real “gain” on the sale of that boat might have been?   That didn’t matter.  His idea was that he would pay no capital gains tax on the sale made in September of 1979 as long as he was living aboard the new boat by September of 1981. 

Richard is a guy who still sets himself deadlines, and makes good use of a driving force like the weather, the credit card payment due date, or the delivery of parts for the next task.  Back then in 1981, the tax deadline was a force, a driver, a challenge that had to be met.  The fact is, he thrived with any spur that would drive him harder, push him more forcefully, pressure him to complete this task and get on to the next one.  Is this obsession?  I will never forget one sticky, late-July evening while we were both hard at work varnishing the cabin sides we’d sanded earlier.  I suggested we might take the next day … Sunday … off.  A day for renewal.  Maybe a drive out to the county to visit friends, or pick blueberries? 

Oh My!  What a response I got! 

“Susan, I need you to kick my ass, not propose time off.  We don’t have time for blueberries.”    

Okay.  Yes, Boss! 

Deadlines had become so familiar to him after years of working for fisherman who had to have their boats ready to meet a barge date to Alaska. He actually tried to float the idea that we could be ready to launch by the First of August if we put our minds and bodies to the work.

Well, I was too wholistic in my view to go along with THAT deadline.  Or was it laziness?  And yet, let me just admit right here my appreciation for his “stick-to-itivity” (as the old Mouseketeers used to say).  That summer of 1981 was an education for me in Getting The Work Done. 

In May:  He built the cockpit floor … having laid the deck and begun the corking.  

In June:  He built the cabin sides and bulwarks.  He carved patterns and had the chain plates cast … 

On June 21, our second anniversary, we had planned to go for a hike - to get away from the boat, from the town.  When rain cancelled that idea, Richard began to think of working on the rudder.  Or maybe he'd been thinking of the rudder since before dawn?
So I brushed a fourth coat of varnish onto yellow cedar cabin top beams, laminated from wood he had pruned away when making the hull planks.  Richard tackled the shaping of the rudder.  We talked a bit about the future, but couldn't see far  past the immediate goal of getting Abrazo launched.  

By the end of June the bronze chain plates from the foundry had been bolted thru the planking, and we sanded the hull for another coat of primer.   

In July: He hung the rudder, with Jay Taber's help to muscle it into position:  

Jay rigging rope to pull the rudder into place: 

Muscle from Richard on the ground and Jay on the scaffolding ...

till the rudder was latched to the hull. 

Pintels and gudgeons of manganese bronze (cast from Richard's patterns) formed hinges that held the rudder to the hull.  The lowest hinge, near the shaft that will eventually carry the propeller, uses a 3-16 SS pin between two gudgeons.    

Richard made cheek pieces from gumwood left over from stem and sternpost construction.  He bolted the cheeks through the top of the rudder to make a socket for the tiller handle.   

 

July 9:  He had pitched the deck seams.  I sanded the cabin’s interior finish strips, which Richard had adjusted to mask the fact that the cabin coamings were ½” off center.  OMG! How did that happen?!  When he consulted Bill Modrell about the problem, Modrell said “Don’t worry.  I’ve built them as much as 3” off-center and they floated just fine.”    

  

Next challenge involved centering the boomkin and building the walls of the cockpit.  

The weekend of July 11-12, we made that boat trip to Guemes Island to bring the mast to Bellingham, and up from the water to the boatyard.  

July 15:  Cockpit staving is in.  We scraped thiacol from that staving, plugged the boomkin, sanded and varnished everything again.  

July 16 Thursday:  We drove to Seattle for a special dinner with Papa Hank Baila and Lura Lu Radford.  Garlic Scampi at Lakeview Lanai.  Wonderful feast.  Huge interruption to THE WORK!  Hank lived with Lura Lu in her beautiful home on Lake Washington, very near "the pits" for the hydroplane races.  At dinner LL  announced her plan that Hank would stay with us in Bellingham during the first week of August when the Sea Fair races drew crowds to Lake Washington, and Lura Lu's family would all came to party in her home for the race events. 

July 17:  I put the first coat of varnish on the red cedar tongue-in-groove pieces that will make the cabin top.  The foc’sle bulkheads were ready to be sanded and painted, too.   Meanwhile, Richard fit the cabin top beams.  

A graceful winch block unites boomkin and cabin-cockpit sides.

July 19:  Rain all day. We worked in our apartment upstairs preparing to move out by the first of September!

July 21:  Sanding the cabin top cedar pieces again, I got the final coat of varnish on before midnight.  

July 23:  Richard had the cabin lid pieces all screwed on.  Amazing what a jolt of security comes with a fixed roof!  And it was so beautiful inside:  red cedar strips, glassy with varnish, glowing between the shining yellow cedar beams that cross-connect the autumn-gold of those Douglas fir cabin sides.  I wish I could give you a photo of that fine sight.

“Now,” he said, “We need hot sun for 4 days.”  That would be to condition the layer of Irish felt, stretch the canvas over top, and paint with Gacoflex.  

July 24:  I sanded the boomkin, while Richard fit the canvas cabin top. All work was interrupted that Friday by visits from Peter Fromm, our favorite photographer; and from Peter Burgess, on a break from  building his own boat behind a blackberry patch in Edison. 

July 25, Saturday:  We hosted a garage sale out behind the Bag End Trading Company shop wanting to free ourselves from the boxes of dishes, doodads, pots and pans we'd brought from Hank Baila’s place in Seattle, as well as any books and clothes we could sell from the apartment to make moving easier.  We cleared $55. 

July 29:  Another rainy day.  Richard wanted to finish the gumwood caps but he had to wait for dry times.  We worked inside the cabin, sanding foc’sle stringers and main cabin interior before varnishing all.  

During this time, also, Richard had been working to repair the boom on S/V Aura, owned by Alan and Joyce Slade of Red Star Paints.  Alan would do the finish painting of Abrazo's hull in trade for the boom repair.  

August 1:  Sanded the main cabin interior thoroughly:  deck beams, cabin sides-back-front, curved bulkhead, mast step.  Then we vacuumed out the hull for the first time, getting ready to put the last coats of varnish down in a dust-free interior.

ERROR:  During one of our sanding frenzies I snapped my dusk mask into my eyeball, abrading the cornea … very painful.  Richard had to take time off to help me get to the doctor’s office where they squirted salve into my eye and fitted me with a patch.  The eye is the fastest-healing part of the body …  the Doc assured me I’d be fit to sand and varnish again in three days. 

Looking back on this time, I remember a story from the wonderful  Seven Arrows, by Hyemeyohsts Storm.  The brave little character, Jumping Mouse, is faced on two occasions with the need to give up one of his eyes in order to heal a Greater Being, and the story suggests that giving up one of your eyes is symbolic of giving up an old way of seeing. 

Richard and I both had to trade away bits of our old ways of seeing to accomplish the creation of our new boat.  Meeting deadlines, balancing work with time off … Oh, what waves of revisioning are required sometimes!

By 8-2  Richard had scraped the pitched deck, and set the gumwood caps in dolfinite.  He plugged the fastenings, and scraped the dolfinite. 

  

8-5  We prepared to take care of Papa Hank during Seattle’s Sea Fair hydroplane races.  Brother Bob flew in from Boise to drive Hank to Bellingham.  Bob’s 12 yr. old son, Rob, who lived with his mother in Vancouver BC, joined our temporary bed and breakfast.  Poor Robbie had terrible nightmares his first night sleeping in our apartment; maybe it was the tension among his relatives, or maybe the constant rumbling roar of Georgia Pacific’s pulp mill outside. 

My varnish work on the interior cabin sides was poorly done; so Richard decided to do that himself.  Despite the guests, we were both still working at 11 pm when a strange man came along, wanting to talk.  He might have been drunk, or otherwise mentally impaired.  He just wanted to talk about boats!  

8-6  Wilder, Inc began work … at 6 a.m. … on the parking lot next door, including attacking the wall of blackberries that guarded Abrazo’s hull!  

Richard started painting at 6:30 a.m.  I varnished the cabin’s port side – outer, that is.  Later, we took young Rob to the Bellingham Armory for an active session of roller skating;  he slept much better that night.    

8-7  Richard put a 3^rd coat of primer on the hull, then crafted and fit the cap for the cockpit.  He knocked together temporary covers for the forward hatch and for the main cabin’s skylight hatch.  

8-9  Alan Slade painted the first finish coat.  Hank suffered constantly with hiccups.

8-11 The Extra Bailas left for Seattle.  Richard booked Launch Day with the boat movers and with Weldcraft's tammy lift for August 28. 

8-12  Worked on deck all day.  After many coats of varnish on the cabin sides and boomkin, the work is completed with grey paint to maintain Abrazo's "work boat" appearance.

16 days left.  Al Slade completed the finish paint and the waterline.  

Tune in again soon for the last weeks before launching.