Successful spash

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Thu 23 May 2013 01:33

Mon, Tues & Wed – 20th, 21st & 23rd May

 

Monday was spent making the final preparations for launching and double checking everything underneath as this would be the last chance for a while!

 

On Tuesday, as promised the crew arrived to lift Serafina from her cradles using a travel hoist and she was trundled down to the slip where the paint crew gave the final touches to the anti-foul paint ensuring everything was properly covered. The launch went well and then Serafina was taken round to her berth by a team using a dory, with us just on board as observers! The first berth they tried was not deep enough for our 7 ft draft and so they came to a gentle halt in the thick Chesapeake mud, but we were then taken to D25 which is the same berth they gave us when we arrived 6 months ago. The whole of this bay is very shallow and Serafina is certainly one of the deepest draft boats here. Cannot praise the whole team involved in this process enough and it was certainly the slickest launch we have ever seen.

 

In the afternoon North Sails from Annapolis arrived with the four sails that they had inspected, repaired, laundered and stored for us over the winter and by the end of the day we had ‘bent’ the two headsails onto their furlers as well as made a start of re-doing the stainless steel with the Spotless Stainless cleaner. This job gets easier and easier every time with this remarkable product!  Sarah went up the mast to help reeve the genoa halyard – could hardly have a fit-out without her going up the mast at least once and this was achieved  without incident!

 

Sarah has had several encounters with snakes so far. The first one was a 2 foot Garter snake and she has been assured that it would have been more frightened than her, but the second one might have been a Black Rat snake, but this should have been more interested in finding a rat rather than a passing English sailor!

 

On Wednesday we had another setback as we put the mainsail back up. It turned out that North Sails had done a load of work as promised, but simply failed to either inspect or repair the batten pockets which is pretty fundamental. Not overly impressed, especially as it also transpired that they had failed to even start to make the new cushion cover that they had taken away 6 months earlier. So they arranged to collect the mainsail and have promised to return it on Friday.

 

Spent a good part of the day finally putting everything away and getting sorted inside as we have guests arriving for the day tomorrow. Craig and Karene from Il Sogno have just arrived in Hampton, Virginia having sailed up from Florida and they are hiring a car to drive up (3 hours) to say hello which does seem a bit above and beyond the call of duty, but it will be great to catch up with their winter’s cruising news.