Whitehall Progress

I'm making progress on getting the boat ready for sailing. While the boat is in good condition, there were still a lot of steps:

• I had to put a tongue hinge on the trailer so that I could get it further into the garage, under the stronger joists.
• Once there, I hung two chain hoists from the ceiling.
• With those, I could properly sand the bottom.
• I started with the centerboard. The part that I could see when it was on the trailer looked pretty corroded. It turned out that this was the worst part. Since the leading edge is always in the water when the centerboard is pulled back, that is the part that looked the worst. It was mainly paint bubbling off with some minor surface rust. I sanded this down to bare metal as much as I could. I primed it with a Rustolium for rusty surfaces. This is supposed to be stickier and should take care of any place I missed when sanding. I used two coats then put two coats of finish paint on.

I have the hull sanded down, ready for priming but I need warmer weather. In the meantime, I used some new line that I bought to redo the rigging.

The boat came with 1/4" line for rigging. This was too big for many of the gromets and the cleats. I repalced it with 3/16". This seems to be the right size.

I think that I have all of the thumb cleats figured out. I'm still wondering about a pair of blocks and cleats. They seem to be placed for the jib but there are also a pair of thimbles on the side that are more typical for the jib.

I have one piece of line with an attached bronze block left over. Possibly it is for dowsing the sail by raising the boom up to the mast. I will have to experiment with that.

I still have to get the boat turned around so that I can hoist it off of the trailer so that I can get the trailer weighed. Then I have to get the trailer licensed so that I can take the boat to the DNR to get a hull number so that I can get it licensed. I'd like to have it painted before going to the DNR but that depends on the weather.