On February 4th we decided to put the boat in the water, after having heard that if it gets too muddy, it would be difficult to remove it from its spot. Not wanting to take chances, we decided to launch the boat just before some rainy and snowy days were announced. While launching a boat always involves some adrenaline, this time it was really quite adventurous. The boat lift did get stuck in the mud and had to be pushed by an old excavator (with our boat in the lift!) to get unstuck. They did do a terrific job and everything went well, but it got us worrying a bit. After a night of sleep on the boat in the lift, we launched the boat first thing in the morning with high tide.
Once in the water, we had a solar arch made by welder Brandon and his dad who did an amazing job! We are so proud of our new arch, even though connecting all the cables and setting up the solar chargers is still on our long list. We can’t wait for the day it will provide us plenty of solar energy. Just when we were ready to depart, another snow-storm and minus temperatures were announced, so we decided to wait for at least non-freezing temperatures to get going. We also installed two small heaters in the engine rooms at below 0 temperatures to be sure that the now de-winterized engines wouldn’t take harm from frozen cooling water.
