Susan got the call from the marina Monday morning; Gypsy has been launched, her mast stepped and is tied to a dock (they didn’t say which dock). We were ecstatic. Like teenagers, we raced down to the shore. I couldn’t wait to see if all the work we did on the seacocks and the plumbing was good. It’s a hell of a test but there your have it; after all the plumbing work we did over the winter, we drop her in and hope water stays mostly on the outside and any water that does come inside, stays within the plumbing. Big test and we passed. Well almost, sort of, fudged a bit...
But first we had to find our boat. You’d think it would be easy to find a 42’ long sailboat but it wasn’t. We were looking at the field of masts out over the dock system and trying to find ours, the one mast that I know in incredibly intimate detail. It was like trying to spot one tree in the forest. We ended up combing the whole marina before we finally found her and when we did my heart soared.
The first thing we did was to check the bilges for leaks. That looked ok, phew! The next thing I was dying to know was how our engine work turned out. We had removed the engine driven refrigeration unit, reconfigured the generator & water pump belt system, moved the raw water strainer and replaced the salt water intake hose. The big question in my mind was; would Mr. Beke (our Westerbeke 46 hp diesel engine) run. And if he did, would he run well? First step in that process was to open the seacock for the water cooling system. A great gush of water, the bad kind, the kind that goes rushing into your boat trying to sink her, shot up from the valve. Unfortunately this was the most inaccessible seacock on the boat. I thought there might be something wrong with the valve itself but after adjusting it, I discovered the problem was simpler than that. I had neglected to tighten the hose clamps. What a dummy! Still, it’s such a difficult spot to get at, it took Susan and me, working together from different access points, a good ten minutes to tighten those two clamps. Once that was done and the engine fluids were topped off we fired Mr. Beke up. He coughed a bit at first but then purred like a kitten. What a relief.
We then hauled our dinghy, the main and genoa sails plus a few assorted odds & ends from my van on to Gypsy before calling it a night; finishing up our first work day on the water at dusk. We were rewarded with a beautiful sunset and a deep sense of accomplishment. Feels like we’re floating on top of the world, come to think of it, we are.152 days
