Some boat building pictures.

I got to spend about two hours with James Poulos yesterday; just the two of us, in person. I enjoyed my (all to brief) visit with James very much and hope I’ll have the chance to visit with him again.

That is a long way from calling him “the kind of a guy who daydreams about sniffing school girls’ bicycle seats”, which I can’t remember if I actually said in a comment to one of his Culture11 or TAS posts, or just wanted to say. The internet is an amazing thing (I met my wife on the internet) but it is also intensely dehumanizing.

Meanwhile, some pictures from the last week in the boat shop:

What women are for?

This is Caitlyn, one of the three people I hired last week (Job Creator!). I hired Caitlyn because she showed the kind of initiative you’d expect from someone who has successfully completed (and enjoyed!) the Marine Corps’ Officer Candidate School at Quantico. Per the caption above, I tweeted this photo last week with the same. Caitlyn was amused. FWIW, Caitlyn is finishing up a degree in being a spy at Liberty University.

Making short sticks into long sticks.

In this picture we’re scarfing again. The last of the wood we got back in mid-December is being turned into stringers that will run for and aft in the upper section of the hull. And speaking of the upper section…

Dry-fitting the upper bulkheads

This week we began dry-fitting the upper bulkheads. You can see the stringers in the lower portion of the hull, if you use your imagination maybe you can envision how the stringers will run in the upper section. Just as soon as we get our final US Coast Guard approval. We’ll start doing that.

Naturally being this far along in the build and not having final approval is the cause of some stress. The backlog in re-certifying the entire passenger fleet for 185lbs average passenger weight (vs. the former 160lbs) has forced me to make a risk/reward decission of taking advantage of a good time and place to build and being ready to go this season vs. any back tracking we might have to do. I feel good about the decission, and feel my ass is well covered, but none-the-less, delay is doubt, doubt is uncertainty, uncertainty is risk, and risk is stress.

Speaking of stress, one of the things James and I talked about yesterday were the psychosomatic stress-response symptoms I developed after I got back from my second filmmaking trip to Africa, and how being embedded in the rhythm of the ocean is one of the most sure-fire ways I know to dispel those symptons.

The rhythm of the ocean is, of course, related to the cycle of the moon, which in turn bears an uncanny similarity to the rhythm of women’s fertility.

If you’re the praying or wishing type, wish and pray the Coast Guard gets it’s act together this week. If they do, it will be a big load off my mind.