7-16.

Prepping for the second coat of primer.  I taped off the maple (and somehow still got paint on it - but it wipes off fine when still wet), we sanded, and painted.  I had spent the week pondering how to have a more efficient painting process so that we could get the paint rolled on and tipped out before it dried and left an ugly finish.  The new strategy worked soooo much better!  Daddy started on the floor while I worked on the centerboard case.  When that was done we moved on to frames in the bottom, seat sides, and seat tops.  Then Daddy did the deck very carefully and quickly while I started the sides.  This is the trickiest part because of the gunnels and all the gaps and corners.  This time we rolled as close up under the inner gunnels as possible while doing the frames, then came back when doing the insides of the gunnels to meet up with where the side paint stopped.  This coat looks fabulous - not like a kindergartner took a brush to the boat (which is basically what anything I paint will normally look like).  

We were planning on painting Monday, also (putting the first coat of color on the inside), but some spots of primer hadn't quite dried yet, so we're waiting for those to dry before sanding.  Instead, we glued leather on the lug and boom and fixed the trailer lights.

Cut out the leather strips, sanded the square sides of the lug and boom, and applied the contact cement - a super hard-core version of rubber cement that looks like caramel but smells disgusting.  You smear it on the surfaces to be glued together, let it dry for 15 minutes, then press them together with 75lbs of pressure (per some small area).  Had to reapply the glue on the leather as it is a porous surface and sucked the glue right up on the first application.  Now the lug and boom are ready to go - the leather protects them and the mast where they'll be rubbing as the sail is raised and lowered.

Then the fun part.  Where is an electrical engineer when we need one - Carson?!  The trailer lights had been working for the most part (all except the right turn signal) when we first finished the trailer and tested it on my mom's car.  When we hooked it up to my car, though, nothing was working, so we started taking things apart.  We disconnected the running lights that we determined were unnecessary and had never worked, reconnected the wire leading to the back right light (twice to no avail), and took the bulbs out and switched them back and forth between sides.  Finally we got everything working but the right turn signal on my mom's car, but my car still nothing.  A current was coming through the wires in my car, but the lights just wouldn't work, so I had to take the car into the trailer place that installed the hitch.  They said there had been a short in the electric box and replaced it and somehow fixed the right turn signal.  I don't know how because I'm not too much of a physics person...