Work on the Cynara’s wiring continues. In most parts of the world, the crews working on boat maintenance—the shipwrights, carpenters, engineers, painters, varnishers, and electricians—usually try to work at staggered times, so that they’re not in each other’s way. However, shipyard trades tend to overlap, especially on old ships. Also, this restoration is an extreme case because the work is being done not in a fully fitted shipyard, but at a marina with no onsite trades and services at hand. With deadlines looming, the crews on Cynara often have to share time and space, which means working together to avoid clashes. It’s like a well-choreographed dance at times.

On Monday, Lewis and Hashimoto spent time discussing the right color adjustments on the interior to match the tone and texture of the original mahogany. Lewis has been repeatedly retouching and testing colors in a time consuming, but smoothly running operation.

On the deck, Murata and Shibano have been carefully varnishing all the woodwork on the hatches. The deck has yet to be sanded down, so the caulking is still very visible. It’s interesting to imagine what it’s going to look like when that’s been done.

Also on Monday, Mattis and Richard were installing the capping rails, which still had square corners. On Tuesday, they began forming them into their finished state. By Friday morning, they all had been sanded down and transformed into their gorgeous, silky smooth C shape.

After discussions between the electrical engineers and Paul and Ben, it was decided to remove the pre-installed walls, to speed the wiring process in the long run. Since then, things have been progressing more quickly.

The amount of varnishing work has increased, but there is still work being done on the masts.

Japanese crew varnishing the details on the deck.

Lewis runs many tests to ensure that the color of the repaired interiors match with the original mahogany paneling.

The breath-taking results of the work on the capping rails by Mattis and Richard.

The beautiful curve of the capping rails.

On Monday, forecasts of a storm that night had everyone preparing. But that didn’t stop Mattis and Richard from working on the bow, drilling holes for the hawsepipe and for the bowsprit. The steering gear pedestal was installed before the rudder stock was done, and is now ready to be connected to the rudder shaft.

Lewis was working on the mahogany interior paneling, using his professional skills to work out the complex shapes of the panels and other interior fixtures with Tatsumi.

Graham and Paul started to assemble the rudder shaft and steering gear today. It took some precision work to interconnect all the almost 100-year-old bronze parts of the original (which have been serviced with a new gear cut) to achieve silky smooth rotation with no binding. As with other parts of the boat, as much as possible of the original materials were being used. In this case, we almost achieved the magic 100 percent reuse figure.

The electrical engineers, Reece and Daniel, carried on 12 batteries and installed them below.

              And a government ships inspector came by to do a pre-test of the airtightness of Cynara’s brand new steel engine bulkhead. Some leaks were discovered and will be fixed by the time of the actual inspection.

Beautifully restored bowsprit chock.

Graham fitting the steering bevel gear onto its shaft.