Well, we’ve been on vacation and things slowed down — but interest remains high! The lads are charged up…

Just was given a new book “Legendary Locals of Bristol.” Lo and behold RELIANCE and RELIANCE DEDUX – our model are featured!! Holy Cow, can you believe it…

Our Muse Maggie returned for a brief visit (photo 1). Unfortunately she is having too much fun in Boston to stay longer. We also had a visit from Adam of Nat Wilson’s shop who showed us how to make miniature fids for wire splicing (photos 2 and 3) and as you can see the first shipment of scale wire arrived from R&W Rope, New Bedford(photo 4). We’ve installed the martingale (dolphin striker) (photo 5) and nine bollards and a lot of other bling. RELIANCE is looking well indeed.

Many other notables and very interesting people visited us this past week, and while I cannot comment on all their visits (except to say that Barbie Bristol is a big hit) I do want to say how much we’ve enjoyed each and everyone.

We also received a large shipment of GI Joes from HASBRO while I was on vacation, so we now have 60 crew members ready to sail (FYI 12 of the full crew would be below deck manning winches). Another visitor, a sculptor, said she’d help us recreate crew faces so we’re looking toward a full complement from Iselin to NGH to Barr and mates and crew. A few more sculptor volunteers and we can have a party… But the GI Joes and rigging shipments really deserve a blog to themselves, along with a huge THANK YOU! We’ll get to that shortly…