Well, the New York extravaganza is finally over. We returned to my brother's house this past Thursday where we spent a very busy three days visiting with family. We managed to squeeze visits with the entire distributed Gillispie clan and it was great to see everyone after another year away.

Special thanks go out to my brother and his wife Jen for not only housing us during our visit, but for putting up with the weasel tribe even after Sattva tried to eat their middle child. In the weasel's defense, the little head (child) did step on the weasel first, so it was really just self defense.

Anyhow, we returned home on Monday after a long 9 hour drive south. It was nice seeing the family, but it's good to be home.

This morning Amy had to get to work on a freelance assignment she took and I got busy on board Dream Catcher removing our inner fore stay. The inner fore stay is mounted in a transverse bulkhead that separates the forward two cabins and like many other PDQ 36's, ours developed a fresh water leak some time ago.

I rebedded the slot in the hull deck and I had thought we had it under control, but while down island this past season, I inspected the area and found that we had developed major rot. Shitty death !!

As an aside, does Major Rot report to General Confusion? Just wondering....

Anyhow, I began removing decorative bits and pieces, then carpet and backing panels until the bulkhead was exposed and the damaged area was fully visible. Sure enough, a small section of the bulkhead underneath the baby stay opening to the deck was so rotten, it needed to be cut out and replaced. Double Shitty Death !!

Of course, this discovery does now explain why our inner fore stay is constantly needing adjustment. The rot was so bad that all four bolts the hold the chain plate to the bulkhead were removable by hand! Ooooops. My bad. Future guests on Dream Catcher may want to stand up wind of the rig....

I spent most of the day cutting out the saturated area and then truing up the cut to facilitate it's replacement. I scored a 3/4 inch plywood section from a marine supplier nearby and with my trusty Ryobi cordless saw, I fabricated a replacement part and rough fit it into the cut out area.

Tomorrow I hope to epoxy in the new piece of wood and then begin securing the repair with some new cut stringers and some stainless steel braces I got from Lowes. Hopefully by Friday I'll have everything back together and life can begin to return to normal.

More to follow, end of line....