Eclipses, Hurricanes, and The Plans of Man

So we had your basic solar eclipse here Monday. I took a nap. What? It was supposed to be dark. It does this every night. United Statians take any opportunity to raise their arms over their head to display their armpits, yell "Woooooo" and drink beer. Now hurricane Bejesus is pounding the Tejas coastline. This means the boat yards will fill up with broken boats from the storm after being filled up by the storm surge. See? See? As soon as you make plans, God laughs. So, pour that beer............Wooooo?

Thanks to Olivier for his comment. He is another guy dumb enough to attempt to build one of these. He is in the water now (grrrrrrrrrr). I wonder how this blog comes across in translation to non English speakers as It is barely comprehensible in its native tongue. I don't understand it half the time myself. And Sergey, another Tiki 38 builder (dumb guy) has just put his boat in the water (grrrrrrrrrrrrr). He doesn't blog about it (smart guy).

The Tiki 38 community online is small; just a few people reading each other's websites. Brothers in alms, it would seem. I appear to be the only one left dumb enough to regularly document his folly in detail. Why? Dunno.

People say that I never show Budge's face It must be a mistake. Everyone knows his real name is Rusty Shackleford.......................................... I wonder if anyone gets this: Ben and Budge only.

Hey, it's the Aluminum Guy! He sleeved, plug welded, cut metal, made brackets, annealed brackets, bent brackets and drained my wallet. We pick them up next week. They no longer fit on that 20' trailer (they didn't fit in the first place). I'm trying to borrow a 30' one to avoid paying a hefty delivery fee. More money gone to get the masts put together. All told they will have cost around $1900. More money thrown into ​Charybdis.

Budge mounted the SSB ground plate. Me on the inside tightening the nuts.

The the phrase "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" epitomises the concept of familiarity. If I have a problem to solve, I think how I can do this in wood. I know wood and its properties. Every person that builds a pod to support has it done in metal. I cannot work in metal; it is alien to me. What I can do is take some reclaimed wood from a discarded kids bed and construct strong laminated supports that cost less than paying a person to make something from metal. Basically, "Ya dance with who brung ya".  So we cut and positioned four support posts and made some blocks to glue to the top. The blocks position the posts and provide  something to bolt gussets to for triangular supports.

Budge positioned the water boxes,

And screwed them down (up??) from below.

Another thing off the list.

We had to re-re-re-do the rudders where water got through. Budge sanded off the bottom and re-applied glass to the damaged area. Then we noticed that the original green paint started peeling so we scraped and sanded it off (sigh).

Of course, then we had to take the pod top off very carefully so we don't die manhandling heavy objects, or fall off the boat, or drop it on a foot, or drop it and have to repair it, or whatever you can conceive. Video on this coming soon or maybe not, Ben's busy with school.

That way, dumbass!

Bringing it down.

See? Easy..........Hah!

So we pulled the posts down and routed a roundover on them. Then we epoxy coated them, next: the paint. The next time all these parts see each other is in the boat yard, if there are any yards left and haven't all floated away!

The Music♪: TACO "Singin' In The Rain"

Tra La, Tra La!