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Happy New year everone. Sorry for the delay in my posts. I have been spending the holiday season at the new boat working as many hours as I can. We have come a long way in a short time and really have done a lot of work for a reasonable amount of money. I have been happy with the progress although it has taken about seven 18 hour days to stay on schedule and on budget. These big jobs are difficult to project what we will find and what makes the most sense is to get the work done that will need to be done soon while the boat is here in the yard for a long time.  It has been a great year thanks to our boss Rob McCarthy and the entire Northern Lights team. As 2009 leaves us I want to thank all of you that came a long way to fish with us. Stay tuned for our 2009 year in pictures and year end wrap up. We are working on it but for now the dry dock of the new 40 Gamefisherman Northern Lights is days away from completion.  Thank you for you support in 2009 one of our best years ever. We look forward to the future and wish everyone the best in 2010. Aloha Kev

My good friend Brian Benda Balencio and I went to South Point on my 29 foot Radon to catch fish for the new year. Sorry for the terrible picture. It is the only one that survived a desaster with the camera card getting deleted. We were expecting to have good weather and found that the reports were bad and the weather was really rough on the first day. We were fishing for snapper opakapaka and onaga fish that are traditionally eaten during the new years holiday. For some reason the bottom fish would bite. We didn’t catch enough to sell but we caught enough to give our friends. What we did find biting was the tuna. We caught 21 tuna 55 to 78 pounds. It was a good surprise. We got to eat sashimi for New Years this year. Sorry we lost the great shot of the tuna and my daughter standing with them.

Sam Hicks shot this nice wide billy with us and Delico ranch.  We took him early after we found him in the 3rd heard we saw. A truck passed and spooked the whole herd we were watching and this Billy and 2 more nice ones brought up the back. They stopped long enough for us to get a shot. Sam was on target and we spent the morning looking at the herds of other goats. Another beautiful day with light winds.

Here we are putting on the gold boot stripe. Blue tomorrow.

We are doing the name in gold with a blue back ground and aback out line. Perry from Signs by Jackie Made me the stencils and stuck them on the back. I sanded and sprayed the black first. He came back and put the blue stencil on and we sprayed that over the top. The last step will be the gold and we have to wait until after the holiday to get the stencil for that one.

The hard top has been taking awhile to get done. I keep getting side tracked with other jobs. I finally sprayed the edge and we continue to work on the new channels for the wiring and the teaser reel pod and radar pods. We made a cut out for a drop down electronics box that is being prepared to be painted as well. The picture here doesn’t really show the work that is going on on this. Sorry for the poor photo.

Tracy’s varnish is coming along well. I started to spray the building coats of clear Awlgrip over the varnish that Tracy and Steve put on the varnish early in the job. We need to let the varnish cure until week 5. We didn’t sand it back much yet because we are still trying to build material. It is starting to get where it is hard to see the grain in the wood. We have had good luck with our wood varnishing a good base of varnish and spraying a good amount of clear Awlgrip or Imron over the top to build a bunch of coats with out sanding. Once we finish this step we will put a few coats of Awlbrite over the top to finish it off. Here you see the various stages of the process with tons of Tracy’s sanding in the middle of it all. He really has done a great job on this wood.

Nice billy at Delico Ranch for Mike Price. Good herds up on the bluff early today. We had a bunch of nice ones to choose from. The weather was great. We shot at about 75 yards and he ran over the side of the cliff and fell  off coming to a stop about 40 yards down the cliff. Here you can see Mike on the cliff side with the calm waters of south point in the back ground. The seas are usually rough there but today it was beautiful. Would have been good to be fishing after the hunt. It was really great to hear about the fund raising Mike has done for the Safari Club International or SCI.

Mike Akazawa sprayed the hull today. I had to guide a hunt so it worked out great. No work can be done around the boat while the painting is underway so this is what I found when I got back. it really came out great and with all the work we did to the bat it is really going to finish the job off nicely. This dry dock almost came 5 cent short of a dollar. I really feel it is going to make a big difference in the finished product to see the hull done. Not only that it will be easy to care for the boat for years to come.