Perhaps some of you have taken on a restoration project of some kind, be it a house, a car, a piece of furniture or what have you. It always takes a long time. That's what this has been for us and continues to be. This is a civilianized recreational version of a Catalina PBY sea plane. The PBY was used by the military starting in the late 1930s and served extremely well during WWII in roles as diverse as long range reconaissance, air-sea rescue, anti-submarine patrol and interdiction and even as a light bomber in some circumstances. Famously, it was a Catalina PBY patrol plane codenamed "Strawberry Five" which first spotted Japanese warships headed to Midway island in the early hours of June 4th, 1942. These aircraft kept an eye on Kido Butai (the mobile strike force) throughout the day and witnessed the utter destruction of four of Japan's fleet carriers throughout the first day of the battle.

After the war many of them were sold on the surplus market and used in civilian and public roles. One popular use was to turn them into essentially a flying motor home, with the owners taking them on vacations and using them as floating/flying Recreational Vehicles.

This is one of those, or will be when we're finally done with it.