Launch!

The big day finally arrived. The boats were pretty much ready. No masts yet, so we are launching the world's largest 4 person row boats.

The launch was a 3 step process : get the boat out of the shop, get the boat to the ramp, and finally get the boat into the water.

Here is the first step. Just like the Egyptians. Except our long tubes are lightweight aluminum. But the boat is still heavy. The timbers the sled were made of are getting pretty rotten as well, so they tended to dig in rather than roll. It took several of us to get the boat lined up with the exit.


But we finally did.

Dale is a good friend of the shop. He is a mason and therefore has a lot of big boy toys, including a tractor, a farm winch, and a really big truck. Here he is pulling the boat along the muddy parking lot.

This worked for awhile, but it turns out what worked best was simply tying the rope around the hitch on the back of his truck and towing it to the ramp.

Meanwhile, a few folks have been busy at the ramp (it is low tide) getting the slides ready for the sled. They greased it up with 3 gallons of Crisco.

Here she is, all ready for launch. See the gudgeons (the bronze pieces which hold the rudder) in the back? We were up until 2am the night before installing them (and finishing the rudder) . . . we have yet to put the rudder on.


Of course, one of the many cool things about this boat is that there are 2 of them! Now we just wait for the tides. Check out the 8 monster oars which new apprentices Jim and Doug made for us the last few weeks.


As you have already noticed, it was rainy. Really rainy. But we still had a crowd of about 100 show up for the launch. Maybe it was the free chowder.

It wasn't all about the twins either. We had 5 boats to launch. 1st up was Pat with his new Susan Skiff.


Next was Curtis and Martin with the A&R Tender


Then Kat and Phil with their Lawley Tender

And finally it was our turn.

OK, funny story now. See the sled underneath the boat in this picture?

In theory, the rope attached to this sled keeps it on the slide. Well, the theory doesn't work in practice if the rope breaks. We ended up taking the sled with us. We were wondering why the other boat was rowing circles around us.

Nevertheless, we were able to get her to the dock.