Spring has sprung...it's time to get back to work on Firefly!

With the super nice weather, this last weekend was our first chance to finally pull Firefly out of her garage and get back to work...and work we did! We mounted the new motor mount, polished the sides, installed the new dolphin striker, reinstalled the rudder and tiller. I also got the cabin hatch sliding smoothly and we rebedded the front eye hook for safety. A few more holes to fill, reinstall the cabin parts and get the companionway hatches reinstalled, finish the new mast support for the bow that Stacey has started designing based on another Fox owner's photos (Thanks QuietBoating.com). I also hope to get Firefly over to a welder to create a new stern/rudder mounted mast crutch at some point.

The things that will likely be left over this year until next season is the interior cushion recover, the electrical rewire/repower and some minor comfort odds and ends. Along with hopefully a trailering cover, new bimini and a cockpit table. New lifelines are on the list, ours are really ugly but...they will have to wait.

The new mast support for the bow my Wife is creating.

Maybe not the perfect choice of attachment points but considering the original was simply screwed directly to the bow with one oval head #12 screw with no backing... well, this has just got to be better!

One of the hardest things to do as a boat owner...putting HOLES in your boat!!

I may end up adding some aluminum strips as backing here. Seaward didn't leave me any room to put any backing material in the transom and the cockpit liner & transom were sandwiched together on 3 of the holes. I injected epoxy in the 4th hole as a filler.

Buffing is hard work but the results are worth it!

Pretty good results considering how bad of shape the hull was in when we got her. All those deep embedded scratches you see were put there by someone who obviously tried to polish the boat without knowing what they were doing. :(

Our poor pock-marked rudder...looks like a pimply teenager...wait, she was born in 1998!!