Well, after much speculation, it was finally time to bring 70407 over to Petaluma now the hull is structurally built. This'll make finishing it much easier as it can be worked on in smaller chunks of spare time if we ever get any :-)   

Since Mark's shoulder was still knackered and he couldn't really help, other than providing the SUV to tow the boat back, Shawn bravely took on this mission himself (almost).

Sadly there are no actual pictures of 70407 coming out of the shed, which, we were seriously concerned about - big yay! 

Above, 70407 gets ready to depart from Oakland.

And finally, to the right, 70407 makes its debut over in Petaluma. We were a little disappointed by the underwhelming crowd; obviously we were expecting more, though the dogs seemed pretty excited to hear the car pull up.

Since everything got dumped in the garage, that'll have to get cleaned up before 70407 can live in the garage. Also the trailer will get modified slightly to shorten the rear bar everyone trips over before any work starts again.

In tribute to this historical moment, and since it hadn't been started in at least 6 months, it was time to fire up the old Evinrude - worked like a charm. It'll likely get used on the river after the transom is fitted with a removable motor mount using the plans posted on the www.usmirrorsailing.com site.

So there you have it. Everything is home in Petaluma.    

Unfortunately the story doesn't quite end there. Since Mark needs somewhere to park it outside during the summer months (well, that's actually most of the year given the climate here) so the garage stays less cluttered, this spawns a construction project that had been on the back boiler for a while. So, it was time to get started courtesy of 'Greg's Concrete' here in Petaluma. I suppose it can be justified on the environmental water savings as concrete doesn't need watering regularly like grass; then again that's another patch of greenery not soaking up all those carbon emissions out of China that we so encourage through all the Harbor Freight puchases.

The boat, when you add in all the extras, is starting to probably approach the cost of a mega-yacht now :-)    

To the right, work is in progress, or is it a crime scene?

This new section really doesn't add any useful content to the site at all, but it's for the family scrapbook. A record for posterity...

Since Mark wasn't able to help, long- time helper Diego came into the picture before he heads off back to Guatamala. This was good as it wouldn't have been possible to bring the boat down the hill single handed (well, not in one piece anyway).   

Believe it or not, it came out with no problems at all, and since Shawn was removing it, he couldn't take photos. Use your imagination. Visualize a shed, a door, and a boat......  

Below, 70407 makes a quick visit to Berkeley Yacht Club.

And, finally, the expanded driveway where 70407 will probably live most of the time but it will get wheeled into the garage during the periodic stormy periods we do have out here and when it needs inside cover when it's being worked on.

To make this a bit easier on the boat, a custom cover order, made to to fit a Mirror, thanks to a tip from Rich Larson, was placed with UK based David at boatsncovers@blueyonder.co.uk

This will also deter any boarding parties by the local kids since it's awfully tempting to get into an open boat.

David does a nice, fast, and very cost effective job even if the order has to go international so send him an email if you're interested. Check out the pictures below - really great fit.

So the boat is home and it has a place to live. Life is good.