Loading ...
« The week of progress… | Main | Heavy weather sailing - drogues and para-anchors »
The Launch…
By Ewan | August 9, 2008
After all the hard work on the hull and the underside, we’ve finally managed to hide it all our mistakes and put the boat in the water, stepped the new mast (put it in the boat), connected the new rigging and moved the boat to it’s home for the next few months in Poole.
As ever the final preparations took longer than we thought, and what we felt would be plenty of time, again turned into a few long days and late nights getting everything in order for the big day. Fortunately we had loads of help from ‘clan Briggs’. The clan were put to work immediately, and worked tirelessly till dusk - the plan was to then stop, fortunately this was the time Ewan pulled out his phone, hit a random button, and assumed an almost biblical role with the statement “let there be light” - “and more work!”.
Launch day started (for some) at half five, to get down to the boat ready for a possible launch at 7. By 8 the boat was on the move - slowly heading down the road to the lift in a remote control cradle - making the biggest remote controlled toy I have ever seen! A bit of nifty work by the crane operators got the boat out of the cradle and into the slings. After a quick bit of last minute antifouling we were in the water. First things first, Ewan checked all the seacocks to ensure she actaully floated, while Duncan started playing with the B&G instruments on the pretext of ensuring the depth sounder was accurate. All turned out well, and we were soon motoring round to Port Hamble to pick up the mast…
It took us a few hours and more than a few English pounds, but we finally managed to iron out the issues (getting toggles for the outer shrouds and getting a burr in one of the primary rigging screws machined out). We then had the rig tuned by HYS rigging. Reasonably confident the mast was now sorted, it was time to send Ewan up the mast with the wind instruments and a spanner. There was a suggestion to send Ewan up while motoring out of the Hamble, though for some reason Ewan didn’t seem to keen on being at the top on a 20 metre lever heading out to sea. By 6pm we were all done, well behind schedule.
It was a close call, but we decided to head off to Poole that evening, and while we would like to say it was due to overwhelming excitement to finally go sailing, it was more due to the only other option of paying £40 per night to leave the boat where she was for the next week…So we bold adventurers (ahem…) headed out to sea, sorting a couple of final issues with the rig as we went out into the Solent. Before long we were being stalked by a coast guard helicopter, initially we were concerned that they had spotted a fundamental flaw in seaworthiness of the boat, however it soon transpired that they were keen to give their winchman some highline practice. A few minutes later with a lot of noise we had a random orange guy with a big grin shaking hands with us on the boat, who disappeared just as quickly.
With the tide helping us we made good progress, and got to the Poole harbour entrance just before midnight. Kirsten and Mark came out to meet us and guide us into the mooring - legends! This time we were against the tide - with quite a way to go up to Hamworthy. Secured to the mooring we packed up and finally got back to dry land at about 3am - a long day and some very tired crew!
The Video…
Topics: Boat Preparation |