If someone knows how to reply directly to comments on Blogger, let me know because I see no way to do it.
Shawn Perry has left a new comment on your post "Bulwarks need love too":
Is Jeff in the water now? I hope you are enjoying a sail now and then.
Is that other Key West Smackee still in the area? It was in David Barbers back yard for a while.
Well, Shawn, glad you asked. At the moment, poor Jeff is an "exhibit" at the Red Shed, partly because I am no longer close enough to work on him, and partly because, well, insurance surveys catch up with the best of us, don't they? We need to do a Go Fund Me page to do the necessary repairs that Paul and I just, well, deferred. Hey, it was floating--what more does one need? But a dry exhibit is better than a floating one--all that in-the-water, out-of-the-water stuff does not a happy boat make. So I have high hopes that we'll raise the thousands necessary to fix stem and stern, quite literally, and then it's heave-ho, back in action.
A few years ago I was treated to a glimpse of Dave Barber's smackee, under canvas and in the middle of shall we say an overhaul (Dave had removed some of the decking for a reason that escapes me now), and even though it has been out of the water for years and years, Paul says its hull is in better shape than Jeff's, because it was made with bronze fastenings. Uncle Jack did not go in for luxury items like that. An interesting detail is that it is truer to the original plans than Jeff Brown--the combing (is that how you spell it?) is reversed in Jeff--Jack thought it was foolish to have the flat end in the stern, since that's where you need more arm room for the tiller. Dave's has the curve facing forward. It's still there, far as I know, waiting for an enterprising naif (and we are legion) to come rescue it . . .
Coaming.
That's how you spell it.
I never knew . . .
