Bear with me on this. Have you ever watched the movie The Great Escape? The one where they have to go down the hole and then tunnel away? And keep on doing this until they reached the other side of the fence? This was Nina’s weekend, sans moving dirt. Her job was to figure out the platform for the autopilot and all the supporting cleats and whatnot that go into that project. This meant innumerable trips up the ladder, across the cockpit, down the locker hatch, crawling on hands and knees under the cockpit to measure things, wrestle them in place only to have to unwrestle them, take them out and recut, redo or re-something them. Multiple, interesting bruises later, exhaustion has clearly set in. Technical and proper names are no longer readily available. And thinking in three dimensions is not something that you normally have to worry about as a knitter. Bill was moaning about having to drill more holes to cast. At least he got to be standing up, and in a position that did not remind one of World War II tunneling movies or multiple trips down the rabbit hole. Marsden got to polish more. He got to be outside, and standing up. No sympathy from the tunneler.
In many ways, we are at the “are we there yet?” stage of the project. The real excitement for the week was bees. Tom had a swarm attach itself to a tree in his yard. Being city folk, we’d never seen anything like it. Even more exciting was watching another swarm of bees swarming.
GypsyKramer 
There really is a light at the end of the tunnel?!?!? Good thing the bees didn’t hurry it along! Keep up the neat work. Love the new chapters.
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I think Nina has earned a spa day.
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Hi there,
I’ve been following your site since “week one” (third or forth post) when I stumbled upon it doing a google search for cascade 36. I also have one of these great boats that I got from my grandfather who bought and built it new originally. I am wanting to retrofit some of it and make some changes to get it ready for cruising. So I’ve been researching other cascades, finding out as much as I can about how others have been done, laid out, rigged, equipped, etc. to compare to mine and get ideas. Since you are doing exactly what I want to do, (except to a much greater extent,) I’ve been most intrigued as you’re site has been by far the best resource with lots of detail and photos. Each week I’ve been eagerly awaiting your next post pressing the refresh button countless number of times with you site occupying a continually open window since I found it. So thank you for that.
What I’ve been wanting to ask you, now that I have time, is if it would be possible to meet with you, that is if you don’t mind of course. Not only would I love to see your boat (and your progress!) in person, but I would really like to ask you about several things you’ve chosen to do and how you came about those decisions. I thought the we might be able to trade our knowledge and swap ideas as I have been researching and thinking about this for several years now and probably have some ideas that you haven’t thought of that you might like and vice versa. I figured I should ask you soon before you complete your boat (not to mention leave on your trip) and it would be too late for you to incorporate any new ideas if you liked any of them. I am in Salem now but am from Portland originally and go up there frequently as my boat is on the Columbia and would be willing to meat you anywhere.
Please email me if you’re interested and I would be glad to give you more information. I see how busy you are but would appreciate it greatly.
Thank you for you consideration.
– James.
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