Please forgive the shouting, but I really am over excited. Barb is going to have to give me some sort of sedative, hopefully of the best kind.......

On Friday Nelleke made her long awaited debut with Shelburne Harbour. The launch was for the most part uneventful. For the first time since we owned her the travel lift operator actually put one of the slings under the keel. In the past they were always around the hull itself but this time it was different. Different isn’t always bad and this time all went well. I was a little worried about the sling slipping out and the whole shebang coming crashing to the ground, but that didn’t happen – hurrah! Once she was floating I cranked the engine and the surrounding audience didn’t laugh too hard when it refused to catch until I noticed that the kill switch was engaged. Once I pushed that in she caught immediately and purred like a wee kitten – double hurrah! The trip to our dock was uneventful and we spent the rest of the weekend working on various alongside projects. The first thing was to do some work on re-installing the anchor windlass motor. We hooked up the wiring and (triple hurrah) the repairs were effective and it worked! Now we are awaiting some nice weather to work on the bright work on deck, and to repair the port running light. Who knows, we should have our first weekend away in a couple of weeks.

On Saturday morning we spied a three-masted tall ship flying the French tri-colour tied up at the town dock. We toddled down to introduce ourselves and ended up driving them about for groceries etc. They are a training ship for a marine academy in Brest in the north of France. On this trip they have 20 crew and could berth up to 40. The ship is fascinating as it is a Thames River barge with interior ballast and three, count ‘em, three centre boards one of which is in the rudder! Really interesting especially considering that the traditional Thames Barge design calls for lee-boards. It also has two small steel bilge keels that keeps the boat upright when the tide goes out and it lies out on the mudbank. Neat!