Launching

Monday 21st April, time to move the boat out of the hangar so we can paint the hull with antifouling. After 7 months standstill in the hangar, Lovisa started to move again. Now the trips begins!

We chose Monday 28th April for splash day. Lovisa with the new antifouling and the polished and waxed hull is absolutely wonderful. It is nearly a shame to put her in the water. Every launch is stressful. Because ”what can go wrong” after all ? A loooot of things. First because a boat is not supposed to fly and Lovisa with her 7 tons will be lifted high up in the air before going in the water. And during that process, we will have to listen to the crack noises from the lifting belts and ask ourselves ”is this crack actually coming from the belt ?”. This time, the weather was also not in our favor with strong gusts of winds making the installation of the mast a bit more challenging than usual.

But at the end, as usual, it was a success.

And she is tight ! … or wait a little bit. Is she? What is this small drop there at the back ? Yes, several hours after putting her in the water, we noted a few drops of water at the stern. Considering the quantity of sikaflex we put to seal the ground plate, no way this water comes from there. After some investigations, we realized that the water was coming from the rudder shaft box. Actually between the rudder shaft box and the hull. So instead of going ahead with our task list we had to spend time on this issue. With the boat in the water, we sanded the entire area around the rudder shaft box so we could check if there was any structure damage. Nothing. All seems to be good. Although we are not really expert in boat construction, we suppose there must be a sealing between the rudder shaft box and the hull and we suppose that one is the one to blame. This will need to be fixed at some point but we decided to do a temporary fix by sealing the area around the rudder shaft box with an elastic type epoxy.

Now as we write, the area is dry.

By the way, we are not alone to think Lovisa is a beautiful boat. This year’s celebrations for the opening of the canal took place in Norsholm where we launched her. Journalists were there and guess who ended up on SVT?
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/ost/gota-kanal-storsatsar-pa-ny-verkstad-tom-31-kanns-stort It is here at 00:20 !