After more than a decade, RELIANCE moves off her shipping cradle and on to the display stand. Can you believe it?!!!

We moved RELIANCE to the back of the shed under the chain falls; we hoisted her out of the shipping cradle and said goodbye to that cradle. Our head rigger Laura holds RELIANCE aloft with one hand.

As you can tell from their work, our female team mates are very talented, great team members, and very strong! Laura holds the bow up so Steve can position Bill’s display stand under the keel blocks.

Bill carefully lowers RELIANCE onto the 1,500 lb. steel plate while Keith inserts drift pins to assure alignment of bolt holes (since Keith measured and drilled the holes in the steel plate, he is actually out of the picture saying a couple of “Hail, Mary’s”: the secret of Notre Dame engineering, I’m told).

Steve and Laura tighten the bolts in place, noting how perfect the fit is – no shims or alignment tricks needed!

Here are the bolted blocks up close. Note the wooden wedges which keep the boat aligned fore and aft, and away from the blocks which were welded at a 15 degree angle. The engineers assured Sandy these wedges were unnecessary, but he’s a belt and suspenders guy and has been around engineers too long. (P.S. they were necessary!!.)

RELIANCE’s profile is revealed; beautiful, amazing form!

RELIANCE is moved back to our work space and “The Guy Upstairs” Dave miraculously appears to inspect and approve our work.

Then Keith and Sandy replaced all the parts that had been stripped off RELIANCE for the full evolution.

Bill has started building the grand stand to top it off.

As part of the celebration, we have a Tuesday crew photo opportunity moment; unfortunately, camera shy Laura has gone to another job.

This respite is short, however; soon, everyone is back to work. Except, apparently, for Sandy, whom we’re sure needs some relaxation time!