Splashed!

A great word … “splash”. It's a figure of speech called onomatopoeia … when a word mimics the sound it actually makes. There's always a little trepidation when we hear the TraveLift rumble up and get into position to lift Cups for her trip back to the water. They hitched up the straps, lifted her a little and then removed the stands. David snuck underneath to paint the small patches at the bottom of the keel that we hadn't been able to paint.

Will those straps hold our 20-ton girl? Of course, they will, but there's always a hitch in our breaths as they pull the stands away.

We followed her down the dirt road to the haul-out/launch bay. The TraveLift moves about 2 miles/hour and Cups swayed ever so slightly as they rolled along. It wasn't hard to keep up.

The driver aligned the TraveLift wheels with the narrow tracks and they moved Cups over the water. Slowly, slowly, slowly they lowered her and then in slow-mo, her keel touched the water. There's no actual loud splash … at least there shouldn't be. It's a gentle reunion with the water and she was once again floating, the straps still in place till we boarded her and made ready to go.

We clambered aboard, a long step from the TraveLift track onto the port side deck. David checked the new seacock and thru-hull for leaks and made sure the engine seacock was open. He started the engine and burped the new shaft seal. We checked there was water coming out the exhaust. He gave forward and reverse gears a try to make sure we were ready. We'd already rigged lines and the dock guys were holding the lines as the TraveLift lowered and released the straps and Cups was on her own. We backed slowly out of the launch slip into the waters of Chaguaramas Harbour.

As luck would have it, Zephyr, a sister ship to Nine of Cups, had been hauled the day before. Bill stopped by just before we splashed to ask if we were interested in the mooring they'd just left which was all paid up for another week. How sweet is that? David maneuvered us to the mooring field, I hauled in the docklines and prepared to pick up the mooring. Two tries before I lassoed the sucker … I'm out of practice. But we're back in the water and making plans for finally putting some miles under the keel in 2016.

Dash & Cash Before We Splash

Even though we reserve our splash date and time just a couple days in advance, the last minute dash to get everything done just before we splash is always hectic. There always seems so much to do and so little time to accomplish it even though it's a planned event. Because the antifouling is always done at the last minute, we applied the last coat the day before we splashed which meant removing the masking tape and doing several other odd chores like replacing the hull zinc on splash morning. We were up with the sun. I waited till the very end to get the laundry done (just one more load) in hopes of limiting the amount of sweaty old t-shirts and painting clothes we'd have aboard before I had the chance to do laundry again. Our bunk had clean sheets. David filled the water tanks to capacity. He washed down the decks which were filthy with soot and bushfire debris along with gravel and boatyard grime. Since we have no refrigeration for this trip, the last minute provisioning of freshies would have to wait till we were in the water and ready to head out.

I cleaned and vacuumed below while we had fresh water and power available and stowed anything that might jar loose with the move and the splash. We disposed of last minute trash while a trash bin was handy. David had downloaded all of our Yahoo emails into a new folder, so that we could sync with SailMail and get shadow mail up and running again for our upcoming passage. He'd also renewed our BuoyWeather subscription. We had plugged in every possible electronic device and battery to charge them up while we still had land AC power. We'd sent as many blogs and pix to Gentry as we could in advance because the odds of having wifi aboard while out in the mooring field were pretty slim. I paid our boatyard bill (No cash … no splash). Ouch … that hurt the old bank account!

We removed the covers from the windscreens and instruments and rigged docklines. A forklift drove up ...they removed the A/C unit from the coach roof hatch. All the scaffolding was cleared away. A last minute cuppa before the ladder was taken away … the last thing to go as soon as the TraveLift arrived.

We're ready … let the splash begin.