With our launch date set back a few days, we decided to have Dolphin moved into a cover-all shed and do some serious painting. The weather has been a bit unstable, this made great sense. I enjoyed being out of the sun and wind and just concentrate on one thing; painting my boat! You can see the top photo has her bottom paint on, we did that with brushes because rollers pull the primer off, plus we get better coverage with this very pricey product.
The next step was priming the topsides, I did that by rolling and tipping. Then the day I had been waiting for...I painted the topsides in a beautiful buttery yellow.
And by Golly! She's high off the hard! 
And here's Chippy, chipping away at some plank repairs with some mahogany we'd been saving just for this day (I'm just glad to get it out of my bedroom!) You might think that making these repairs should have come first, but Jim has already done a Herculean amount of work. Today alone he installed bilge pump hoses, eyeballed the shaft for alignment, installed two batteries, pulled out the water tank so he could tighten the keel bolts, and visited with the Harbour Master to determine where we would tie off and what all the details were. This is after searching for and ordering a whole bunch of other parts for later installment. Oh yes, and make and install two more plank patches.
When people comment that wooden boats are a lot of work, I would have to agree, but they are also a lifestyle choice you must have time for.
Tomorrow we rip out the head and holding tank and install a marine version of a composting toilet in its place...happy day!
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