Spars and boat bits

I am making good progress on the mast, yard and boom. Boom? Hey, didn't I finish that in December 2009? I thought so but yesterday, while I was measuring the yard deflection, I decided to recheck the boom.

Originally, the boom deflection measured 20mm when 10kg was suspended from the mid-point. Yesterday - with 12kg hung from the mid-point, the deflection measured 16mm. Did the boom become stiffer with age? Did I use a better method to measure the deflection yesterday? Is there some other explanation? I think it may be a combination of all these factors. Also, originally the boom had a slight kink in it resulting from misaligned scarph joins. But yesterday I noticed the boom is definitely straighter than it was when first built.

The boom has been scratched a bit from my travels so I decided to refinish it.

The yard and mast are nearly ready for varnish, too. I filled a few small gaps in the glue lines on both spars. I am planning to start varnishing tomorrow.

The Interlux Brightsides (yellow) paint I ordered on Friday arrived today. The bits of hardware ordered from Duckworks should arrive tomorrow.

I moved the spar bench up to the garage. This will allow me to varnish the spars and prep the hull (lots of dust) for painting concurrently. This is pretty exciting.

Now if I can figure out why my flickr photos won't post to this blog I'll be able to once again illustrate these posts.