Launch Day!

[Rafici]

Let's see if this sums up, bust butt every morning and night before and after work for the last month to get the boat ready. Day of launch, looses registration and DNR stickers that I had yesterday, lose key to boat find key to boat, lose key to truck. On way to lake check engine light comes on. Get to lake, to windy to set up the mast, go fishing, catch nothing while everyone around me catches fish. Wind dies, time to step the mast, half way up, foreward starboard shroud busts, mast drops, breaks bunch of stuff including mast raiser, luckily didn't hurt buddy that was helping..... heck with it I'm going home....

[crazycarl]

welcome to my world!

[Salty19]

Indeed this does sound like a story that crazycarl would tell, and trust me, he's got stories!!!  Any relation?

Hang in there, Rafici, and you too Carl!!!

[Tim Gardner]

Trying not to laugh, really!!  Lately, every thing I touch costs two hundred clams.  Wife comes home with a bargain marble vanity, costs two hundred in backsplash materials.  Try to fix a gasket on our disposer drain  and a $.05 hex head cap screw breaks off in the aluminum casting, and pow, another two hundred clams!

Time to quit.
TG

[Jeff S]

To borrow a line from an old movie I saw once, "If your dog were dead, you'd be a country western song!"

[Dogboy]

We are in a somewhat similar place.  My wife and my two older kids (11 & 9) and I we were able to get the mast up, but that took like 2 hours of figuring everything out.  We got the mast up, attached everything.  Then we go to tighten the headstay and discover that this is not possible because the foil measurement I took was apparently off by an inch.  If I adjust the headstay to tension, I can't keep the foil off the turnbuckle.  Guess what I get to do....unstep the mast, cut off an inch of foil, then re-step the mast.  Alternatively, figure out how to do the "mast-up version" of the furler removal.

You aren't the only one by far...

[Rafici]

So this last weekend, with new shroud in hand I bravely returned to Solitude,  used the local yacht clubs 50' crane to set the mast.  Got to say that makes life a lot simpler.   Launched her solo off the trailer and got her rigged, spent the night in the vberth, at 6'2 it wasn't to bad....delt with a few unforseen issues and finished up with just enough time to tie her to the mooring and head home.   Nother 2 weeks at work and I'll be back to see how she sails.   "Continuous effort, not strength or Intelligence is the key to unlocking our potential"  Winston Churchill

[Rafici]

Well the frustrations of that launch day back in May have been worth it.     Have had a wonderful summer learning this boat.   Granted it's been on a lake in Iowa.  Have put together a short list of fixes and changes for the winter.   Still can't belive I'm almost out of summer already.