On January 30th the AC72 finally arrived! It was met with great excitement by our staff and might now be the most photographed object in the collection since we all had our camera phones out. The delivery came by way of three trucks, two we unloaded that morning and one that arrived later in the day.

The first piece to be unloaded was the central pod. It was an incredibly tight fit, but they managed to get it in. Small doors at a boat museum do not work well. What followed were the forward and aft crossbeams, one of which was so wide that it had to go through a different door and made it around a corner by a hair. This thing is huge! Then came the j-foils and a couple of smaller pieces.

Later in the afternoon the third truck with the two hulls arrived. They had a nice audience as they were brought into the building. And of course when we started to unwrap the first hull we uncovered…

USA! USA! USA! It has been an exciting process to watch these pieces come together and I look forward to seeing the finished product. Staff and visitors have also been able to view the progress from a safe space in our A to Z exhibition and have probably also heard the happy screams from Jeanne as two pieces connect as they are supposed to. Haha! The exhibition opens May 27th and it’s going to be awesome!