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With my plan of getting to St. Michaels "as is" went off without too many small hitches, it is time to really strip my GP down and get her looking pretty again.

Today was only the start, I did manage to get everything but the cleats and splash guard off the deck. Hopefully Wednesday I can bring her home for a day and get some of the hull sanded down to bare wood.

The amount of dirt in the hull was sickening, especially considering I was sleeping aboard a month again. What was behind the buoyancy bags was truly eye opening.















I am now aiming for a May re-launching. I have a small vacation planned where I want to trail her down to Delaware for a cruise down the Lewis and Rehoboth Canal to Bethany Beach and back.

Speaking of envy, I have a sailboat but you have a work of art. If anyone should be envied it certainly isn't me. The Lusty Slogger is a nice boat but I have had very few boat people come up to me and praise the looks of the boat. You are going to spend half your time answering questions about your boat.

I can see the beauty in it from here.

If you think so.. she is just the last of her kind, a production boat made of wood. Mostly made of mahogany, at one time Spark was nothing all that special, just another cheap to build boat. Now that 'glass is the norm, people want to know about her.

I do hope to get her nice and pretty by spring, but I doubt too many people will ask about her here. Sailboats have very little place in Southern New Jersey. Around these parts if you do not have a sport fishing boat with at least 300hp, you do not own a boat.

I firmly believe that by the time you get the boat painted and varnished, new fittings installed and ready to launch very few people will say "Oh, its just another old boat". Fiberglass is wonderful, it's low maintenance, it can be made to look like anything the builder wants but it does not have the soul that one finds from building a boat out of a living material like wood. I don't care what I do to the Lusty Slogger it will always be a fiberglass boat. Spark, on the other hand will quickly become a work of art.

Keep the pictures coming.

pictures coming? As you wish!

Today was constructive. First I finished stripping my GP of all her hardware and even some of her cockpit trim. Then I flipped her over on the trailer. At just under three hundred pounds rigged, it was an awkward but not hard job. I screwed a couple of 2x4s into the trailer bunks to support her properly.





Next came the sanding. I am only a quarter done with only half the bottom done. I found white primer, light green paint, blue paint, and finally the dark green.



Thankfully the mahogany ply beneath all that paint is in great shape. I will be refastening her before fairing and primering. A lot of the screws I pulled from inside the cockpit had turned red from leaching their zinc.