Calling All Volunteers

We’ve said it before and we’ll gladly say it again: Mistral is an experiment in community curation, which is to say it takes a village to hoist a halyard and do the list of tasks that rests on the official Mistral Palm Pilot Task List. Here’s the list, with comments.

Varnish toilet seat – as wooden toilet seats, this baby's state of the art. Here's your chance to try your hand at some serious curatin' where it matters most.
Find and install lamp shades – the boat has bare bulbs now and needs the warm glow of diffused light.
Overhaul the winches - Thunderbird foredeck master Suzy B. has offered to lend a hand at this and will give a tutorial should you want to learn the craft.
Chase bow leak – challenging work. There’s a slow trickle coming from the port bow.
Overhaul sink/bilge plumbing -- there’s some old pipes there but it could be interesting, not to mention very helpful if that bow leak turns into a gusher. It’s a few hours with some hunting for gaskets, most likely.
Connect head – it’s overhauled and just needs the lines connected. One hour. Easier right now with the mast out of the way. The volunteer who completes both the seat and the head will win one overnight trip on the Mistral, complete with working plumbing.
Replace gas tank valves – not that hard a job, actually, though there will be a trip or two to Fisheries or a plumbing store.
Countersink and replace teak plugs in cockpit – this could eat up some time.
Check battery levels – piece of cake.
Repaint interior ceiling – waitable.
Bottom paint – for the haulout.
Paint hull – see bottom paint.
Repack stuffing box – see paint hull.
Replace warped bulkhead veneer – possibly the lowest of priorities, unless that’s your bag.
Replace faucet -- a one-hour job, if I remember to bring the new faucet down.
Top off stove with alcohol – 10 minutes.
Clean ceiling of fo’c’s’le, hatch – an hour or two with some water, soap, bleach, not to mention some nearly instant gratification.
Clean cover – an hour with a brush and soap on a sunny day.
Change oil, plugs – an hour or two.
Replace elastics on cover – in progress. The trick is to set the elastics up with hooks.
Pictures – if you see us out on the water, we could use pictures under sail.
Sew cover – Paula, CWB seamstress, is being courted.
Refinish mast – we’re scraped and half sanded. Props to Martin, Dave and Kemp.
Strip and varnish hatch doors -- they’re mostly scraped and need some further work. A nice, self-contained project.

Before undertaking projects, please consult the Mistral steward, Eric Sorensen, at svwhim@yahoo.com or 206-799-9186. I thank you, and Mistral thanks you.

Volunteer hours count towards your free sailing time. As an added bonus, time spent sailing on Mistral is not deducted from your volunteer hours.

Key: D, in Shavings

Center for Wooden Boats boatwright Heron Scott looks on as Dan Berube works out the changes to "Poor Wayfarin' Stranger" in an after hours pick and grin at the CWB shop. That's the Mistral mascot in the background, in front of the wood stove, obscured.

Quoth the Mistral Admiral: "It's a little like a Dairy Goat Journal butt shot."

This is Mistral in her earliest incarnation, in the Blanchard boat yard shortly before completion in 1939. The picture has an honored place on the wall above the drill press in The Center for Wooden Boats shop. Kemp Jones, steward of the Center for Wooden Boats Thunderbird and celebrated Mistral driver, suggests we post a link to Steve Bunnell's excellent WoodenBoat article on Mistral designer Ben Seaborn. Here's an excerpt:
"In 1938 [Seaborn] designed a 26’ racer/cruiser (foreshadowing the Thunderbird?) of which the Blanchards built three. Seattle sailor Keith Fisken purchased one and was so impressed by the performance that he quickly ordered a second Seaborn boat, this time a 31’ vessel, he named Romp II. That boat proved to be the most successful race boat of Ben’s prewar designs.
Completed by the Blanchards in 1939 and considered very fast, Romp II didn’t really hit her stride until the late 1950s and 1960s when she was campaigned by Bill Baillargeon under the name of Mistral. The boat won overall in the 1966 and 1968 Swiftsure races - the smallest boat ever to have done so."