Week 33: She Floats!

Gypsy has been launched. The blessed event has happened and we survived. Wednesday was filled with excitement, anxiety, waiting, and last minute tasks.

We met the truck carrying Gypsy at Danish Marine at 9:00 am. While preparations for launch got under way we got the mast ready. The mast was rigged and wrapped for transport. We unwrapped it and started to put the radar, VHF radio antenna on and the wind instrument. And this was when we discovered that we had installed the wind instrument cable upside down.  Pull all the wiring out of the mast, cut all those cable ties, flip the wire, rebundle it all with new cable ties, and pull it back up the mast.  It’s not as neat as the original job, but it will do, and the job did go much more quickly with four of us working on it (and now Tom has at least one good story about us).  Next attached were the spreaders to the mast and shrouds. About now the yard decided that there was not enough water to launch. Consulting the tide charts showed that we would have to wait until about 5:00 pm. This did give us plenty of time for those last minute changes to the mast.

On the days leading up to the launch all the last minute things were done. The engine was started for a test run, the mast had the rigging attached, the boom got lashed to the deck. All that was left was the waiting.

About 4:00 things started to happen.

We cast off from Danish about 5:30 and arrived at RCYC at 6:15.