With the clamps now off, it was time to inspect our work. To use up leftover Marine Tex, we went ahead and  ran a bead top and bottom around the metal gunwales. Thirty years of dings and dents had left some suspect spots and the last thing we needed was more holes in the boat.

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Not bad for the first coat.

Ol' girl's looking good.

William was in town from Hawaii just in time to remount the tiller. Remember that the oversized tiller mount was the root cause of the entire structural failure. The tiller post had rubbed a hole in the transom gunwale which resulted in catastrophic failure that fateful day in Charleston Harbor. The trick was to remount the old tiller without causing the same problems. The solution? A plywood spacer block.

William reaming the 3/8 hole with a 1/8 bit 

I decided that since we had the whole thing taken apart for the first time in thirty years, we should go ahead and replace all that corroded hardware. Well at three dollars a piece, those six bolts, washers and nuts added up to almost forty dollars! 

We applied a nice layer of silicone behind the mount, in the holes and along every wooden edge.

There she is boys.

It was cloudy and windless last day in town for William...that is until the sky's opened and 10 knots of wind showed up just in time to load up and head to Sullivan's.