23 May 2023

This morning we arose and treated ourselves to a someone-else-cooked-it breakfast at the Cafe on the Bay in town before we set in to a whirlwind of chores prior to our launch which I have rescheduled to this afternoon at two-thirty.

I did a first parade on the engine and transmission to confirm that we were ready for launch which we have rescheduled for this afternoon; Barb and I changed the anode; Barb carefully scraped off the painters tape, or should I say, the not-painters tape, from the water line; we put in place the section of 1” stainless tubing on the life line; and I took the rental car back to Enterprise where we were pleasantly surprised that they were prepared to drive me back to the boat.

As I write this at ten thirty i am beginning to go through my normal jitters about starting the engine that I do every time we launch.

OK! It is now four thirty and Nelleke is afloat again. As expected the launch team here was great. They treated Nelleke like she was their own and us like distant relatives. Yoki Yanmar started up a treat and after she worked through an air block was pushing coolant through in fine style. One unfortunate thing: While we were still in the lift dock we tried to fill up the water tanks with the good municipal water but when we ran the pump to pressure up the fresh water system water came pouring out of the lead pipe to the pressure tank to the hot water system.

Sigh!

I could see where it was (a piece of vertical copper pipe) but of course this is one thing that is in a place that is inaccessible to me so we asked Clint, the maintenance manager if one of their younger, more supple guys could come down and fix that piece of pipe. We were in luck as the maintenance manager was feeling a little guilty because when he was bringing Suzy Suziki, our outboard, over to us, he managed to drop it and break the carry handle. He was going to buy a part to replace it but we pointed out to him that it was integral to the lower engine cover and replacing that would bee ridiculously expensive, I told him that if he could cut off the remaining part of the handle and replace it with something else that would give us a carry handle, I would be happy. When it came to the plumbing job he told us that he would send someone over first thing in the morning.

I’m not sure how this will affect our cruise plans for this weekend but, hey, shit happens and there are much worse places to be stuck.