1971 Newport 30 Sailboat
Fun story: posted the fuel tank for sale on Craigslist and the guy who got it bought it for his 1973 Newport 30 mk 2.
What are the odds!?!
With just a few dozen Newport 30 boats in SF Bay Area, when one of them had a tank removed another one was in need of a tank.
Definitely a wrinkle in space-time continuum.
With no access to CNC due to TechShop closure, today was the day of going back to the roots and making backing plates with hand-held tools. Took forever but turned out great!
In parallel, continued to do surface prep on topsides and started taking gelcoat off the cabin top in prep for new fiberglass layer.
Finally, drilled out and dry-fitted transom thru-halls. The exhaust hole will have to be glassed over – electric engines are zero emissions 🙂
While I was slicing and dicing, Nadya sorted through old hardware and rounded it up for a trip to Duke’s Chandlery.
Two big setbacks today. First, the enclosure built around the boat didn’t survive the weekend storm and completely collapsed. Thankfully, nobody was hurt and the boat is in good shape (just rainwater few inches deep inside).
Enclosure built around the boat is no longer thereThe second setback is a bigger blow: our beloved TechShop SF shut its doors forever. The following parts of the project are now in limbo as I’ll need to figure out tools and machinery to get the job done:
Need to find a new wood shop 🙁
Started building enclosure to be ready for a few weeks of rain and help ensure smooth paint finish. Bottom paint looks OK, just a few spots to deal with.
Was ready to make test backing plates for Marelon seacocks this morning. Spent several hours trying to make CNC ShopBot Alpha at SF TechShop cooperate with my tool paths from Fusion360. No luck so far – will have to troubleshoot some other day.
