Resting back in the water

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.

Keith came down to work on my floor in the head where I cut out to replace the rusted beam under the compression post. He should finish Wednesday hopefully and re-paint the floor, hopefully his work will give my boat her life back. Funny thing, Keith, myself, Ricky Moore, and others have all tried to work on my bilge pump and switch and the darned thing still doesn't work. Bypassed the fuse and it runs great, getting another switch soon and hopefully that will be the answer. Can't go back in the water without that for sure.

Bob painted my bottom, boot stripe to come tomorrow or Wednesday, got the rigging all tuned and ran the engine for awhile, still don't have the temperature gauge or voltmeter working but Mark will get to that later hopefully. Connected up all the wires to the mast lights and they all worked! Just waiting on Keith to do the floor and with any luck we'll splash this weekend.

Been working steady putting everything back together, got the dodger and bimini back on, probably in everyone's way but I needed to see some progress. Stepped the mast but in the process made the decision I should have made when it was on the ground to replace some of the standing rigging. Once we got it set up I took off the lower shrouds and replaced them, then replaced the split backstays. Got everything tensioned and looks great. Put my boom on, mainsail and headsail, realized I had put my main halyard on backwards so had to change that, then during the raising of the headsail got my jib halyard wrapped around the foil so had to pull that down and fix that too. The joys of working on a boat when you really don't know what you're doing.

McKenzie and his brother came to town and hauled Almost Paradise to Sam's Boatyard in Washington. Never got as much done on it as I had hoped, didn't get the new gauges to work and I just couldn't keep waiting on Mark to come back. Keith needs to finish my floor repairs and painting but it's closer for him to work in Washington than Wilson so he'll finish up there. Bob Loeber is painting the bottom for me and doing all the rest of the details, there are many....