Railings done, rudder fit-up, through hulls

All the hand-rails are finished and they came out very nice. Also fit-up the rudder and welded the pintle bearing support (this supports the lower end of the rudder). Alignment is dead-on, so we seem to have ended up with a good straight hull. We welded on pad-eyes on the centerline,  fore and aft of the rudder and drilled two corresponding lifting points on the rudder itself. You can just make them out in the rudder photo. By hooking up a chain hoist to each one you can crank the rudder right up into place with no drama... this will be very handy for future maintenance as the rudder weighs well over 200 pounds. Also finishing up the through hulls... we have  316 Stainless 1.5" fittings (well above the waterline) for each compartments bilge pump- 4 total. There is a 2" schedule 80 pipe discharge at the waterline for the engine driven bilge/fire pump (which I am still looking for), and another 2" schedule 80 pipe for grey and black water discharge (offshore only) below the waterline. Also fabricated a seachest inlet using 3" schedule 80 pipe. Schedule 80 refers to pipe that has a thicker wall than normal (schedule 40) pipe. All the waterline and below waterline through-hulls have a welded flange inside the boat that is bolted to a 316 Stainless flanged ball valve... all pretty standard commercial boat stuff. Jesus is understandably eager to get on with the prepping and painting so my focus in the next week or two will be to finish designing and fabricating anything and everything that gets welded to the boat. The main items are: footings for the masts, misc pad-eyes for the rigging, some misc deck vents, fuel tank plumbing, and an anchor roller. Speaking of anchors... we received our 120 lb Rocna anchor. By all accounts we've heard, this is a really good design for cruising- known for its fast setting ability in many different types of bottoms. Look forward to giving it a try.  -PB