He's two years away from launching, and has been for at least two years now (this is Leo's joke, not me criticising his project)

Hehe, a bit like fusion then. Well, here's to hoping that he gets it completed in his lifetime and that he gets to take her out on the maiden voyage and that all works out well. It is an incredible undertaking, I just watched some of his joinery videos, him doing stuff 'without getting too fancy about it' is workmanship level that I can only aspire to and know that I'll never reach it.

I think he's probably pretty close to the actual two year mark at this point. The bulk of the really big, heavy, structural stuff is done (getting it reframed was a big milestone). Still tons to do, obviously, but an increasingly large percentage of the remaining work is stuff that can be done efficiently by one person.

I've done my share of house rebuilding. The last 10% are 90% of the time. Boats likely are no different. The sailboats that were overhauled at the sailmaker where I worked (ages ago) just came in for new rigging and sails and that could already be a pretty major job (redoing the stay mounts in the deck for instance could turn up all kinds of nasty details). This is pretty much building a very large boat from scratch by one guy recycling the keel and some very small percentage of the bits. I can hardly believe that he started the job to begin with, that's a sign of extreme confidence right there. It is hard for me to express how impressed I am by this. Can't wait to see what it looks like when it is done.