Today marked another major milestone: the first deck edge toe rail went in place. We still have the port side to do, but we have the process well-proven; though we still have a lot of faring work to get the new railing to flow evenly as a continuation of the shell plating, but we can see how it’ll all work together. Whew, another risk milestone overcome!

These rails really change RELIANCE ‘s profile.
Keith and Bill, with help from Laura, Don, Sandy, and new volunteer Bern worked all day on the 24’ long starboard rail.

Bern has begun restoring the 1899 COLUMBIA topmast, which we’ll show in upcoming blog posts. Turns out that COLUMBIA’S topmast truck served as the model for RELIANCE’s, so we’re looking at this with great interest. As an exhibit accompanying RELIANCE, our COLUMBIA topmast will also show how massive these spars really were.