It was a race to get to the T200 in the first place. We started in January and were really pressing to get it finished up enough to take.  Rather than detail the race to finish up here, I'll add that stuff on the build page.  We decided to lay down some primer or some rattle can paint to keep the S. Texas sun from making the ply super hot.  That was done Thursday night before we left.  We also had to alter the H18 trailer to let the Tamanu hulls ride securely.  Although we wanted to get an early Friday start, with all the last minute stuff to do we actually left about 4 pm on Friday.  We figured we'd just drive till we got tired and then pull off.  We ended up driving through the night to get to Port Mansfield by Saturday evening about 8 pm. We left the boat stuff on the trailer and got together for a late dinner with Pete and his crew.  Laurent and Yves stopped by but the kitchen had just stopped serving dinner so they left for the other restaurant in town.  This year, rather than stay at the less than appealing Fred Stone County Park we stayed in the clean and relatively empty motel right in town.

SUNDAY--With all the assembly we had to do on the boat (it's 9' beam precluded driving down assembled), I thought it would be best if I stayed and assembled the boat.  We didn't have some mission critical pieces for rigging the boat as we had never assembled the whole boat or stepped the rig before.  I know, I know it's kinda dumb to have a maiden voyage be a 20+ knot wind affair with an 80 mile run before civilization.  However, we were committed to making the Tamanu hulls work.  Chuck had the skipper's meeting which emphasized the remoteness of the setting and the need to be ON TIME for the shuttle.  Brian dropped off the stuff and headed to Corpus Christi Waste Marine for some amsteel line to lash the stays since we needed a bit of extra stay length due to the wider beam.  Between that run and a stop at Home Depot, and a quick direction issue, Brian was late for the bus--which did in fact stay thankfully.

Meanwhile, with the crew of Pilgrim helping out a bit, I assembled the double Tamanu/Hobie 18--hereafter referred to as the double Tamanu.  It was hot windy work and took most of the day to accomplish.  In retrospect it would have been immensely better in almost all respects to have the boat be 8'6" and transport it fully assembled.  After wrestling with it for about 5 hours it was together and had the rig temporarily stepped.  Naturally I forgot to remove the trailering flag from the masthead which came back to bite me in the butt on Monday.  Brian made a profuse apology to the rest o the busload and was able to secure a seat despite my making him late.  Brian and I had dinner that night with Kevin, Laurent, Yves, Pete, and John.  After crashing again at our motel, Monday morning left quite a bit to do to the boat to be ready to launch.  We had left our gear in the under renovation Port Mansfield Marina building which will be up and running by late summer.  Thanks guys!

MONDAY--