Mistral shows off her old-school spinnaker on a recent run down Lake Union. 

A Gardener's Delight

Joe Follansbee over at the Maritime Heritage Network blog kindly points out that The Center for Wooden Boats has a bunch of boats for sale. Not on the Center site, but on Ebay, is this spectacular William Garden pilothouse sloop. $10,000 of the sale goes towards the Center.

In kayak, you really are one with the water

The skipper of the S/V Mistral scaled down for a day and ventured out to Chuckanut Bay with the Puget Sound Paddlers Network. Read all about it in the Seattle Times.
Here's Rembrandt Smith of Anacortes photographing one of the fossilized palm trees on the shore.

Waiting for the Bridge

The S/V Pirate strikes a pose in the Montlake Cut while waiting for the tender to come back with the tow rope.

Mistral is sporting a new mast. Now all we need is a boom, and tuned rigging, and sails. 

Mast Step in View

Here's Pete Dorsey, a rigger for CSR Marine, guiding the mast towards its rightful home.

Ocian in view! O! The joy!

We ended up using one coin for good luck in the Mistral mast step. After searching far and wide on my dresser I found the newly minted Jefferson nickel featuring the Pacific Ocean, where Mistral twice won the Swiftsure Yacht Race. After so much scraping and varnishing, actually stepping the mast brought great joy in camp, to use the Lewis and Clark expression.

Perhaps we'll put two coins in the mast step for extra luck

Moments ago, the Mistral skipper dispatched the following to the merry band of Mistral volunteers:

Mistralites,
It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, well, actually we’ve all been waiting for the moment we turn off the engine and watch Mistral sail.
But anyway, the other moment is the stepping of the Mistral mast and it’s slated to go down tomorrow, Friday, at 3 p.m. Anyone wishing to take part in the festivities is welcome. We will shove off from the Center dock around 2:30.
If all goes well, Sunday will involve the application of some hardware, affixing of a boom, the tuning of some rigging and, dare we wish, a sail.
Eric