Blue Blaster Update from Don Mock

[David D. Williams]

Phil sent out some good shots from today including the money shot of the boat with both airtraps in place. They're not attached quite yet but will be next week. Phil also describes today's events as we got the inserts glued into the right airtrap as well as the doubler plates for the bottom/airtrap bolts. So it should go on the boat for good Weds next week. We should be able to get the left side drilled and inserts glued in by Thursday.

With the airtraps in place we can add the sponson assemblies fairly easily but we're debating how easy it would be to first rout out the top of the airtraps for the 1" square wood insert. Gail could just walk along next to the boat and rout the top of the entire airtrap the length of the boat. It would be a harder job with the sponson frames and non-trips in place so we may decide to make that little detour. This would include gluing in the wood leaving it about an 1/8" above the top of the honeycomb for shaping later. So as anxious as I am to seeing the boat with the sponson back on, it might be best to deal with the routing first.

Lots of other jobs got worked on this week. Wheeler came in Thursday and sanded the right non-trip 45 degree cut. It needs to be shaved a bit to be dead straight but we have the extra room so that should be easy. Marc and I worked the on the new sponson transoms cutting the access holes and drilling for the skid-fin mount. He’s also making the large 5/16" bolt inserts for the skid-fin mount and the backing rings for the access holes.

I think our skid-fin mounting structure/support in the boat is really good, probably better than it was. So as long as Bill Muncey doesn't come back and crank the thing hard around corners, then it should hold for a long time. Next week is back to a normal schedule.

Apparently some of you can't read this part of the emails so here it is in BOLD!

Wednesday 10:30 am – 5 pm
Thursday 10:30 am – 8 pm
Friday 10:30 – 3 pm
Saturday 11 am – 3 pm

- Don Mock