Email This Page to a FriendPreview: It’s All in the Details – Impeccable Bronze Hardware

– Sunrise here in Port Townsend the first morning of the show and the gates haven’t even opened yet. We just found this Buzzards Bay sloop that is just impeccable in detail and I wanna show you some of these little bits and pieces of hardware detail. So starting back here at the back end of the boat you see this pipe that goes across the back is what the mainsheet block runs across, that pipe comes into a fitting here that you see on both sides that forms a bracket that receives the end of the coaming. Everything just seems to have a dual purpose here. But then these incredible little bronze blocks, you see this bronze block on this bail has a little sheave so as it renders on that mainsheet bail that sheave just roles back and forth. That bail is braised to this strap. It’s through bolted and screwed, very elegant. These little stern cleats, check these out. Just a solid bronze casting with a locust pin through ’em. And really gorgeous stuff. Coming down the boat, another bail here for the mainsheet with that sheave I was talking about. Then this beautiful little bronze swiveling cam with the backend of the center board case mounted on that bracket is just really, really slick. The lead for the jib sheet comes through this fairlead and then through this turning block right in the coaming. Which is bronze-lined sheave, really spectacular. Another incredible detail here is the pinrails at the forward end of the coaming. But also down here this bilge pump there’s a little pump handle that pumps bilge water up and right into the centerboard trunk to drain the bilge. You just come here and to bail the boat just up and down on the handle, it sucks the water up out of the bilge and into the centerboard case. Very cool. These really beautiful ogee buffalo rails that come up. Another beautiful bronze, bronze and locust cleat on the foredeck. And then this incredible stem with this incredible bronze work down the face of it, it is just really, really unbelievably, well done. So the incredible bronze work comes right into the rig, this gooseneck, have these little pelican hooks to hook a reef cringle into. You lower the sail, there’s an eye in the sail I’m sure that goes right under this hook. It’s a gaff sloop, a very short headed gaff. But you see the gaff has these just incredible little spliced strops with a bronze block to raise the gaff. And then all the bronze cheek blocks and so forth at the top of the rig are just really elegant. It looks to be lapstrake cedar on oak and copper riveted on these steam bent oak ribs. You can see the frames but also on each lap there are two rivets riveting the laps of the cedar together. As well as through the ribs themselves. And then our underwater profile is just really clean. And elegant. There looks to be about a 700 maybe a 750 pound lead ballast that you see notched into keelson and that’s the centerboard pin right there that is pinned right through that lead casting that the centerboard swings on. Just a really sweet run, beautiful stern. Elegant detailing in the top of the rudder. Just a really, really well done traditional, salty peak color. Kick-ass boat.