Gettin' Er Done!

It's amazing how much work gets done when four capable boating guys come together.  I guess it's no surprise, I mean, eight hands can certainly accomplish more than two but sometimes when multiple people get in a small space to work you can wade into "too many cooks in the kitchen" territory.  Not with these guys.  They are in full-on divide and conquer mode and it is pretty awesome.  Dave (our neighbor) is an extremely skilled woodworker so he has been tackling projects that involve wood and/or starboard.  Jake is skilled in just about every discipline and has been working on our bilge pumps (we replaced our current one and are adding a new manual pump), Scott is working on everything electronic (like installing our pactor modem and cockpit stereo remote) and Mike acts a floater to helps out whomever needs a hand.  It's an excellent team.  Every day at least three items get crossed off our list, every day we inch toward having our boat ready to go.

Thanks to the advice and help of a few of you awesome folks, I have ordered replacement and/or service parts for our out-of-production Barient winches as well as located a company in New Zealand who currently makes almost the exact same windlass as our defunct Simpson Lawrence unit (ours is the V2000 and they make a very similar V2200 whose parts are interchangeable).  We should be able to order a new gypsy and it's looking like we won't need a new windlass after all!  HUGE thanks to our friend, Willie, for being the first to alert us to the winch company and MEGA props blog follower Belinda for the tip-off and contact info of a guy in the UK who was able to help us with our windlass.  Awesome stuff.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: you guys are the BEST.  Thank you for not only following along on our journey, but helping us out along the way!