Splash!
19 December 2014
It's finally time to put her back in the water. Left school early today, got down to the boat to make final preparations to get launched, hooked up all the plumbing, checked the through hulls, rigging looks good. Also the keel was super tight, no movement at all, replace the zinc last minute, Bob forgot to paint the prop but I don't really think it matters much. Only thing we might should have done was to replace the cutlass bearing but that involved so much and it wasn't that sloppy so we decided to let it go for now. Tom at the boatyard picked her up and set her down perfectly, no leaks, engine fired right up, no water in the exhaust. After checking everything I could think of I found a kink in the new water hose, it's too long, need to shorten it a bit, and water pumped out perfectly. Moved into a slip and started the day long process of getting everything back in order aboard, hooking up lights, GPS, 12V adaptors, many of the in-line fuses wouldn't work so had to replace all of them. Found a leak in the pick-up line to the head, Keith only hand tightened the nipple so I fixed that, in fairness to him his job wasn't to finish off the plumbing, he actually went above and beyond by replacing the through hull and installing new hardware. Made some changes to my wash down plumbing, tightened the stuffing box, rewired the bilge switch before I left, had a great night aboard for the first time in six months and going back today which is December 26. Can't wait to see if everything holds up with no leaks. Just restocking some supplies today, had another problem I didn't mention above, the coolant tube connection at the water pump was leaking and I had to order another tube from Volvo which won't be in until January 6 so I won't be going anywhere until the 8th at least.