May a Puddle Duck go swimming?

I know it's been a while, but the boats have been moving along. 

When I showed up this saturday, Dan and Aga had already fitted his mast.  However... this is what it looked like when I got there.

If it's not obvious, that is both cats, and dogs, falling from the sky.  Thankfully, just a few hours later, we had this beautiful scene.



It's so pleasing to have a photograph actually represent what you're seeing in the sky. 

So lets talk about what happened to the boats yesterday.

Dan got his mast rigged.



And after I showed up, we got the sail raised.



There wasn't a whole lot of reason to do it... but it feels SO GOOD to get that sail up.  Dan, is a very happy man there. 

My goal for the day, was to get the rudders bedded into the tiller cassettes. 



We used great stuff construction foam to take up the nose shape of the rudder. 

The big concern was the foam was going to break apart the cassettes.  But in the end, we actually ended up with less foam than we really wanted.  But there's enough to keep the rudders stable, and we're happy.

Dan's boat didn't have his rudder gudeons installed yet. 



While the concept is simple.  A pair of blocks of aluminum that the rudder pivot drops through.  Sadly, the blocks we had, were over bored, so had to be sleeved.  A couple months back, we had Dave sleeve them down.  But their retention was poor.  When we went to bore the sleeves to the proer 5/16" one of sleeves spun. 

Cue a full hour of trying to pin that sleeve in there.  I am ~actually~ very good at drilling holes.  Yet the process took four tries, and the pin that's in there now, is a broken drill bit.  *shakes head*

Here is Dan putting the blocks in place. 



And that's really where we ended for the day. 

We're very close to the water.