Finishing up...

The last couple of months has been a continuation of the race against time to finish the build before Summer ends, in two days! I did end up 'glassing over the skeg and runners on the boat bottom, a difficult and time-consuming task as the fabric didn't want to make the sharp turns at the edges. I think the trick is to let the epoxy cure a while until it has just the right amount of tackiness to hold the 'glass in place, while at the same time not getting sidetracked on something else and getting back to it too late...in the end, there were a number of large bubbles that had to be cut out and filled back in with epoxy/wood flour, and the whole thing took far more time and effort than it deserved...but it will be worth it in the long run.
After that, the lion's share of the work (as usual with any painting job) was surface preparation, and I don't care if I never see another piece of sandpaper again. I was within 1/2 hr of finishing the 'glass edge sanding when my trusty random orbital sander started to make a funny noise...it was the "random" part of the motor; it had become just an orbital sander (not good for avoiding gouges, as I soon discovered). Ironically, I had just replaced the rubber pad on it a few weeks before--go figure...fortunately, Home Depot is just a mile away, so I was back in business in short order. [Note to self...if something breaks on a power tool, (unless it's brand new), strongly consider just buying a whole new one...]
The outside of the boat wasn't nearly as smooth as it should have been in a more than a few spots, but my patience finally reached its limit and I started priming. Two coats of primer, then 3 coats of paint (Interlux Brightside, Hatteras off-white 1990) then two more coats for the blue stripe (Interlux, medium blue) along the sheer line. All of it was done with a 3" foam roller (except for the very first coat of primer, where I stupidly used a brush and had to spend hours sanding smooth).
It took most of a Saturday to clean out the garage from 2 3/4 years of wood scraps and sawdust, then it was finally time to put the trailer together (another whole day, but very satisfying :)
The first rigging task was to attach the hound to the mast...measuring the luff, the distance between the tack and the mast, and the angle between the mast and the deck(86 deg), then applying the law of cosines and the quadratic equation to give a distance of 160.7 inches between the hound thru-bolt and the bottom of the mast. The two shrouds and the forestay were sized by trial and error and each fitted with a turnbuckle. It took some pondering to figure out a way to attach the mainsheet rig to the boom...I used a s/s spin strap (duckworks part #RL 318) to attach the becket block to the end of the boom, then fashioned another wooden block for the outhaul using a small nylon sheave from duckworks and some leftover ash. The rest of the running rigging went together pretty smoothly and after attaching a number of cleats and test-fitting the sails, she was ready to swim!