Jude, dude, this is pretty impressive.

Jude, will you need some help to finish up today or for unloading/docking tomorrow? I can ride my bike to Calhoun and be on hand tomorrow, and even help today to finish the build if you need it. What time do you expect to arrive at Thomas Beach?

My Brother Will be helping me tomorrow. I'll be a the Beach at 8am the races start at 10 and End at 3 Pm.

They have dumpsters there so I'll be tossing it right after that.

I am just tweaking the head 'til then.

Great! I will be there by 10:00 for the races and to cheer you on, possibly earlier to beat the crowd. Again, if you need/want a logo template file let me know and I'll email you one. It would be more important though to get TCMAKER.ORG on Bessie somehow, in BIG LETTERS, if possible. A logo isn't going to help people find our group.

If you want to bring a template with letters no more then 6" high I'll have some gray spray paint.

Oh and bring cards. I mean all the contestants are Makers.

I'll see what I can do. I have some printed cards but I can perhaps print a few more later tonight.

Ready to move.

The Head didn't quite come out the way I had hoped but ... (I never claimed to be a sculptor ).



The holes in the shell are so I can see out.

Looks AWESOME, good luck tomorrow.

After action report.

Well the day started out poorly. My Brother whose truck I was going to use failed to respond (I have since found out that he was in the Wis. Dells and didn't get back until this afternoon (daughters birthday celebration gift from grandparents who he thought had told me)).

So I had to devise a way to get it on site. Grabbing a dolly and a ladder: I put some cross braces on the bottom of the structure, put one end of the ladder on the dolly, set the boat on the ladder and lifted the open ens and started wheeling to the lake. (I did try a bicycle at the front end but I didn't have time to work out a stabilization mechanism for it so it was brute power.) this would come back to haunt me later in the day.

After the trek to the site I find out that 1. all the races will have the same prize and 2. that only first places will be awarded a $50 prize. So I decided to enter the second race (cow themed). That race went off at 11am so I had a bit of time to recover.

On to the race. Every thing seemed to be working well enough. It floated, it moved and it even sunk and rose before the race started, Unfortunately the lake bed was only like 4 inches below my supports so I doubt anyone on shore noticed the sink and rise. The horn blew and we started. Bessie seemed to be making her stately progress and I had decided to try sinking again as I got to the stands as the bottom seemed to be getting deeper. But then my transport system did me in. I hit the weeds and I couldn't generate enough power to push 3 4' rakes through the weed bed. The paddle wheel was throwing bits of weed all over the interior. With a bit of help from the volunteers I finally got out of the weeds and got to the finish line.

All in all it was a success if not a great one.

I'll have another post on what I'd do differently later.