Thunder Liver

In my last post I was reveling about my knee surgery recovery. Woohoo! Two days later I had a hernia. Who is writing this script? Surgery four days later and back to recovery mode. 

But the doc said I could putter in the shop as long as I don't lift anything, so it's been back to puttering and helping BJ get the Thunder River done. Decks on and primed.

Hull primed.

And painted. Wowzer.

Bowpost on and trimmed.

Oh yeah.

Pinstripes or no? Yo.

Hatch hinges temporarily fixed with 5-minute epoxy--long enough to get all the screws in the right place.

But how to precisely mark latch placement from the inside? Find a friend who fits in a side hatch. (I am already getting orders for this revolutionary hatch accessory.)

Hatched and latched.

No walnut stock big enough for the oar blocks? Make lemonade. Laminate some white oak in-between thinner sections of walnut.

Enough of this nonsense. Off to Lake Mary for a sunset champagne inaugural launch. Roy and Amy brought out Brown Betty to help celebrate--another Fretwater boatshop baby from last summer. (Roy built Brown Betty, for the most part, while I was on the river last summer, so other than a few appearances in last April's blog posts, she escaped documentation here. She is the second clone of the Betty Boop, which we rebuilt from a rot-pot back in 2011-12.)

She floats. She rows.

She motors.

She knows how to party.

She even finds her way home by the fingernail moon.