Launch day

We have had a tremendous amount of rain, and winds blowing out of the south so even though we were looking to splash at the 8:00 PM high tide, we had basically all day long to go in.  High tide was ridiculously high, and low tide was higher than your average high tide.  We finished installing the last of the deck hardware we had removed to work on the cabin house and cleaned as much as we could inside while we had electricity for the shop vac.  Then suddenly the tractor was in need of minor repairs so we found we had some extra time.  I had ordered a 4 inch memory foam topper for the vee berth -- sounds like a lot, and it was a lot.  I hauled it and the cushions into the clubhouse and went to town with a steak knife.

It feels like a cloud, no joke.  Over the fall I had removed the shower grate, which was just old gray teak, and sanded it a bit and oiled with teak oil. Made it nice and dark and pretty looking. Forced me to clean the dirt out of the shower pan so you can see it actually is white under there.

When the tractor was fixed, our friend brought it over.  She's a beast!

It was a little bit of a process deciding how to configure the new yard trailer to lift our boat.  We are the biggest yet to go in with it so we were the guinea pigs.  It went very smoothly thanks to the driver being incredibly patient and also quite skillful.  

Here's a link to the video -- stay to the end to watch the hydraulic telescoping trailer tongue.

https://youtu.be/unVxvYMB-aE

And we're in the water:

It was a bit wet out but that's OK because the engine started!  Slept like babies on the new foam, but it's really really thick now:

Sunday AM we got up bright and early for our first boat breakfast of the season.  Then we closed her up and headed to the marina that is storing our mast to work on that.  We still had to wire in the fixtures, test them, install the mast head, install the light fixtures, sort out the lines, install two flag halyards blah blah blah . . . We were in the middle of it when the rain picked up and the wind started blowing a bit.  We got one call from a club member that someone's dinghy was getting squeezed between two floating docks.  We brushed it off, having really just left the club and seen that it was fine.  Then we got a second call from the dinghy owner saying that his dinghy was getting squeezed so we left our work and ran back to the club, to find that the dinghy's painter had ripped off the d ring on the bow and the boat was in fact stuck between two floating docks.  The only thing to do was to drag it, thirty gallons of water, and it's engine up onto the dock.  We hauled it out with the hand trailer and put it somewhere safe.  

Then back to work.  Mostly got it done, but we had the rig assessed by our local riggers and they found three cracked swages, meaning another 1500.00 spent on new standing rigging.  We are crossing our fingers that the cables arrive today so we can install them this afternoon and keep our appointment to have the mast raised tomorrow.