Boat building

A lot of people just seem to fit nav lights directly onto cabin or hull sides without worrying about the requirements for correct alignment to meet the rules.I have made up a couple of angled blocks for mounting my port/starboard lights on the sides of the cabin that give a much closer approximation to the correct alignment than if I just screwed the lights on - and the new location is easier to wire than the old one.

Looking closely at the inside of the cabin top while painting some of the repaired areas I am convinced that Dovekie was built without the raised cabin top and that it was lifted at a later date. There are glue lines across the cockpit bulkhead that match the lower cabin top lines and are symmetrical side to side. They also match bright wood stripping along the sides between the cabin windows at the right height.

I saw some recycled oregon in a front yard while walking the other day that could serve to make a new mizzen boom. I knocked on the door to see if they would sell some but no-one was at home. Will have to go back again.

Made some good progress in the weekend with fixing reefing hooks on both sails, rigging the main sheet, fixing the patch in the coaming, painting the interior of the starboard bulkhead etc.

Having decided to fix a cheek block for the mizzen sail reefing line I drilled a couple of holes for the screws and found the wood coming out of the boom was sodden. Looks as though I have a bunch of rot and I am trying to decide whether to make a new boom as it's only 3 metres of 3x2 with a bit of shaping, or whether to pull the current one off and see whether it is a bad as first impressions seem - and what are the main boom and the masts like!

Anyone got a few metres of nice clean old oregon with close annual growth rings to spare?