Wow! Looking very good.

Lots of visible progress last week. The windows were fitted into the dodger, more deck hardware was mounted and they boxed in the ring frame so they can mount the headliner. Last weekend the bottom was painted. Three coats of Pettit Vivid white bottom paint. The bottom looks very fair! And most dramatically, Peter applied the graphics and name to the quarter sections.

Giving her the boot (stripe)

The boot stripe went on last weekend, a real finishing touch. This weekend the hailing port (Kingstown, St. Vincent) will be applied to the transom, and the New Morning logo will be applied to the quarters. The final painting will be the non-skid on the deck in about two weeks.

The refrigerator / freezer boxes are also almost ready for installation.

She's painted

Wow! What a difference. Gleaming white with no ripples. A stainless cap will be placed on the rub rail just below the toe rail. More deck hardware going down now. The bottom will also be painted white so it's more obvious when there is growth and the bottom needs cleaning.

Navigation and Communcation systems

I added a little information about these systems, but nothing about why. For now, the Nav-Comm page will give you some idea what the systems will look like.

Interior Design

Added a page on the interior design. How it came to be, what we chose and some of the unique details.

New and improved logo!

There it is, up in the top left corner of the page. Smoother waves, crisper text, same funky sun. Appearing soon on the port and starboard quarters of New Morning! Our thanks to Peter Achorn, who spends most of the year designing and applying graphics for fire trucks.

Home stretch

Last week was the last trip to Maine before the launch on May 15. Visible progress is coming fast now.

The deck was painted last weekend and really transformed the look of the boat.

No longer covered in flat gray primer, she's begun the transformation to gleaming white yacht. The hull will be painted this weekend. Lyman Morse normally works Monday -Thursday, then the painters come in on Friday and Saturday.

With the deck painted the riggers began to mount deck hardware. My favorite so far is the Nomen folding cleats. You can see one on the port quarter, along with lots of new pictures on the Putting it Together page.

The pictures really don't do justice to the progress. Pieces move in and out of the boat frequently as the individual craftsman build a section. Then when completed and installed, they are immediately hidden behind layers of cardboard or paper. There is a lot of finished work behind the cardboard in the pictures. The electricians and mechanics even move pieces in and out of the boat, though much of their work is done in place as you can see on the photo page.

Fay's sister Evy Rogers created two unique and stunning table tops for the salon. They are original designs etched in aluminum. The piece shown here will be on the inboard side of the settee.

The nav station has been built and the frames for mounting the electronics are now in place (outboard panel shown here).

The electronics will be mounted in a piece of black formica, in turn mounted to an aluminum frame. The aluminum frame is hinged to allow the entire panel to swing down and provide easy access to the various connections. Mounting to generic black formica means that as instruments are changed and updated over time it will be easy to source the panel material and maintain the same look on both panels. This is much more flexible than the teak panels on the Swan which were difficult to source and expensive to purchase.

Christening Party - August 9th

Added some travel and planning information for the Christening Party.

Mark your calendar!

Great trip to Lyman Morse this week. The boat is coming along really nicely with great progress in almost every area. The hard dodger was glued and glassed down last week and this really transforms the look of the boat, as well as being a nice step towards completion. Finished joinery was hidden behind cardboard and protective paper, but underneath it was clear that there is a lot of very nice looking wood furniture. The electrical system is coming along nicely, portions of the autopilot were mounted, etc., etc.

Even more exciting was that JB set May 15 for our launch date. When the project started in early 2005 the target was spring of 2008 so it's a real accomplishment for everyone involved in this project to be in this water this May. So mark your calendars, on May 15th she'll be in the water!

Fuel system

I've added the fuel system description to the Systems section.

More progress

We're moving forward quickly as our goal of being in the water by May 1 is fast approaching. The hard dodger is being glued and glassed into place this week. The detail work around the helm stations has been finished and they have been primed, ready for painting.

The picture at the left shows a plinth for the clutches, and another plinth for the winch. The compass will be set into the mound and it is flanked by sheet bins.
The picture on the right shows the chain pipe take takes chain from the windlass to the chain locker. The windlass will be mounted roughly where you see the green tape.

A couple more joinery pictures were added here.

Solar panels

Today they started

installing the solar panels on the hard dodger. Joe, the guy in the blue sweatshirt, found that we could orient them as you see and reduce the wiring difficulty. The wiring will enter a channel in the dodger along either outside edge and then down the forward frames and into the boat. It's pretty exciting to see starting to be installed! The dodger is going to be complete fairly soon.

Dodger is painted

The painted dodger was lowered onto the boat late this afternoon.

It's the first piece of the boat to be fully painted and it looks beautiful. The exterior is a high gloss white and the interior has a matte finish. The handholds, inside and out feel very solid and look great.

Because it inhibits the steady flow of workers in and out of the boat, the dodger will only be on the boat for a day or so to check out some wiring channels and double check the location of the lights. Then it will be removed and they will begin installing the solar panels and related wiring. In 4-6 weeks it will return to the boat to be glassed in place before the deck is painted.

More pictures in the Deck and Dodger section of the photos.

Interior resolved?

We think we have the interior issues, the inch here, inch there, finally resolved. These 3D renderings give you a pretty good idea how it ended up. On the left you see the port side of the salon. The big thing missing here is the salon table which will make all this look much smaller than the wide open look it has now.

The black "TV" will actually be a 30" Apple monitor for watching movies, getting the big picture when we're planing a route, and enjoying Fay's photography. To the right is the starboard side of the salon. The key items are here are the two chairs, our vantage point for watching the big monitor, reading, lounging etc

We've also spent a lot of time on the "watch station". This is the forward end of the port side bench in the cockpit. Snug up under the dodger, it will be where we spend a lot of time on watch.

The electronics here will include a radar / plotter, autopilot controller and VHF radio. This unit rotates up out of the deck on the port side of the companionway, but of course well under the dodger. It won't actually rotate up as high as is shown here, the bottom of the display will sit at deck level so it doesn't block our visibility out the windows. Standing watch still involves watching the horizon and not just the display.

A couple of pictures of the bow roller from earlier this month are now in the Construction photos.

The game of inches goes on, and on, and on...

Way behind on posting. Went to Maine, came back and been buried in the details ever since. As the build progresss the pace of decisions has picked up quite a bit.

A lot of time was spent on adjustments to the galley upper cabinets to accommodate the microwave and acheive the proper asethic. Two somewhat obscure factors, a 1" reveal (area of wood between the top of the cabinet door and the underside of the deck) at the aft bulkhead, and the height of the microwave, were pretty much the determining factors for the opening of the dish locker, height of the top of the nav station and height of the electrical panel. At least if we wanted to maintain a consistent line throghout without out a lot of bumping up and down. After several days of back and forth we acheived what we hope

will be a very consistent and pleasing line from the aft bulkhead in the galley all the way through the nav station. The cardboard above the galley counter shows the previous plan, and the green string shows the revised design. Much of the change was to make sure we could easily get dishes into the dish locker so we would never have to dry a plate!


The electronics are also starting to be introduced to the mix. We spent some time on the layout of the switch panel on the starboard side of the companionway. This panel will control all the on deck lighting, cockpit lighting and navigation lights.

On the port side of the cockpit we're creating a "watch station" which will have the radar / chart plotter, remote microphone for the VHF radio, and a remote control for the autopilot. The cardboard mockup shows how the radar / plotter will look in the "up" position, the VHF microphone and autopilot remote will mount just inboard of the display. The whole thing will drop down into the deck when not in use. This unit will project into the space above the inboard counter in the galley, so we're working on pushing it further inboard and making it a little shallower to reduce the impact on the space above that counter. A 1" adjusment in one direction, 2" in another, pretty soon we've spent six hours to move something a couple of inches. That's how the days go in Thomaston.


I'm now spending a week of each month at Lyman Morse in Maine and probably even more time in April as we get ready to hit the water in May. After three years of this project being mostly an abstraction on paper we will soon have a real boat in the water!

Shower window

The shower in the forward head is small at best. To make it feel larger, we first added a hatch above. That allows in air as well as light which will help dry out the shower. Then we added a window into the forward cabin. But rather than just a plain glass window, Fay found an artist in Sonoma, Vincent Taylor, to create a piece of art for us to look through. He finished it today and is shipping it to Lyman Morse to be installed.

3D Modeling

At Fay's insistence, and over my protests, we asked Lyman Morse to model many of the interior areas of the boat to facilitate our discussions on the phone and via email. They turned out to be invaluable and we soon found new ones were popping up in the mail from JB whenever he had a question. Now we don't know what we would have done without them. We've posted them in the Mockups section of the photos. Enjoy!

First mast photos

Today we received the first photos of the mast from Offshore Spars. It's bare carbon now, but will be painted white eventually. You can see the masthead on the left, and the forestay tang on the right.

The rudder arrives

We were in Maine last week (and caught the big storm that hit Boston).

The big news was the rudder arrived and looked great. They wasted no time in getting it fit into the boat to see how the quadrant fit and confirm the additional structure that will be built to support the rudder bearings. Now they'll send the quadrant back to PYI to be beefed up to accept the autopilot cylinders.

It was also our first opportunity to sit in the cockpit under the dodger and it was wonderful. Good view out and protected from the elements, yet with immediate access to the helm and lines.

We made numerous decisions about the final location of various pieces of joinery and equipment, adjusting their positions by 1" - 2". This included the location of the lead blocks, cleats and clutches in the cockpit and on the quarter decks.

The joinery is all coming together nicely and we made the final decisions regarding the upper cabinets in the salon and the materials that will finish the headliner and inside of the hull (aka ceiling). I'm not sure if they are white or off-white, but Fay does!

The convertible becomes a hardtop

Yesterday they lowered the hard dodger onto the deck, totally transforming the look of the boat. The center (opening) window will be larger than what you see after they cut it out to install the real window. Offshore Spars also began construction of the mast and boom last week.