Afloat once more
Scot Free III
Frank & Anne
Fri 17 May 2024 21:26
The one plus was the new Plastimo life raft arrived on Wednesday from Nova Scotia, a heavy item which had to be lifted onto the bathing platform using the dingy davits. Getting it into position once the boat was in the water would have been much more difficult.
The old, 15 years old, life raft, which couldn’t be serviced here, was donated to the fire service to practise with. Didn’t go completely to waste.
Arrived at the boat yard early for launching. Soon became apparent that the hoist couldn’t get far enough in because of the forestay. A, of course, had photographic evidence to show Scot Free had been taken out stern first but a large boat was too close to the stern to reverse the process today.
F set to, to remove the forestay. Easier said than done. After a lot of scratching of heads the hoist was dismissed and a hydraulic trailer took over. Had hoped to drop the keel when she was lifted to scrape out last year’s barnacles and to antifoul it. But this couldn’t happen and off she went to be launched. Fingers crossed the electronic anti fouling will be sufficient. Still don’t understand why she didn’t slide off, but the pads kept her secure.
She is now on a berth after a lot of faffing to get the hydraulic keel down and replacing a few screws in the rigging. The worry is always of dropping something overboard and the metric stainless screws would not be easily available in Newfoundland. That would certainly spoil the season.