Springtime in March

With spring weather forecast for the weekend our plan was to have a full weekend of working on the boat. As plans sometimes go we ended up with a Saturday morning meeting, and other things that kept us from the boat all day on Saturday.
Sunday morning we arrived at 08:15 and fully un-covered the boat for the first time is a couple of month.
I had a couple of hours left to complete the frame that will be used for pulling the motor. Patricia started in on removing the Mahogany decking.
With the frame completed I un-bolted the headder from the vertical supports, and stacked the three pieces of the frame assembley aside ready until I have enough help to erect the assembly over the boat.
I still need to pickup a chain fall from Northern Tool, or Harbor Freight.
Patricia starting in on pulling the first of well over a hundred nails that held the decking in place.
I joined in on the deck removal operation using a variety of methods.
Multi tool for cutting nails, nail puller, shims, and wedges.
All in all not too difficult of a project.
Everything looks pretty good in here, with the exception of a couple of ribs.
It does not appear these ribs will be too difficult to replace.
Famous last words.
In anticipation of replacing ribs we removed one rib from the boat to see how big of a project this was going to be.
Patricia removed the screws from one Port side rib, and I pulled it out with minimal effort.
The deteriorated bottom six inches of the rib broke off in my hand during removal, which is why wWith the rib removed you can clearly see the dark oil soaked, and detoriorated end of the rib.
Something tells me they are not going to go back in, as easy as they come out………..
After considering building a steam generator, we have decided to spend the time on the boat and purchase an Earlax steam unit from Highland Woodworking.http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/earlex-steam-generator.
This unit appears adequate for steam bending the ribs.
This leaves me only having to build the 5″ x 5″ x 60″ box for steaming the ribs.And just like that ten hours had passed. We did take a one hour lunch break, as our new favorite Mexican resturant Zama is only five minutes from where we are working on the boat.