Kaholee Refit, Phase 3 | Friday, August 8, 2008 (and period preceding)

Project Wrap and Final Delivery
After several weeks of inactivity, during which Allen, the owner, traveled home to visit his wife and do other things before returning to Maine about a week before our final departure, I made the final preparations for Kaholee's delivery to Chesapeake Bay, where Allen planned to truly begin his southbound cruising activities.  The final week's worth of activity, mostly involving Allen's loading of final gear and equipment and my preparing the trailer for the highway delivery trip, brought us to Monday, August 4, when we departed Maine early in the morning in order to reach our destination of Havre de Grace, MD early enough to launch the boat that day.



The trip down, approximately 580 highway miles by the chosen route, was uneventful enough, and we arrived at Tidewater Marina at about 1400.  Although Allen had supposedly set up the launching and mast stepping some weeks before, and had called in advance during our trip down to confirm, the service department seemed not to know about the job.  This happens routinely at boatyards for whatever reason.  Nonetheless, they were able to launch the boat almost immediately, though because the yard's rigger ended his day at 1430 we weren't able to step the mast right away.

That was OK, since we had preparations to take care of beforehand.  With the boat now in her slip, first and foremost  on the immediate list was the final erection of the radar mast and solar panel, this time permanently.  Earlier, I'd added some additional tubular braces to help support the tall, heavy arrangement, so final setup took some time.  It was nice to have abundant time to take care of this, without any feeling of holding up the yard.

Afterwards, I worked to prepare the mast for the next day's stepping; we unloaded it from the trailer and I removed the lashings and tape securing the shrouds in place, and rigged it up as needed. 



Early the next morning, working with the yard's rigger on the crane, we stepped the mast without particular incident., and I spent the second day in Maryland finishing up the final rigging details needed, which I hadn't been able to do earlier.  Among the things I finished up:

1.  I installed a final padeye on the mast to run the outhaul down and then aft to the cockpit, completing that installation, and reeved all the other control lines as needed.

2.  I rigged up the adjustable lazy jacks in their final configuration.

3.  I installed the Boomkicker and new boom vang tackle.

4.  I installed the jib.

5.  I installed the mainsail and reeved the first and second reeflines.  We discovered during a reefing test that I'd embarrassingly installed the line stopper for the reefing lines in a backwards position, so we had to remove it and turn it around--a simple chore, but one which shouldn't have been necessary.

6.  I ran the mast wires down through the new deck fitting and made up the final connections on the terminal blocks in the head.

This completed my work on the boat, other than incidentals.



The next day, my last in Maryland, we took care of a few boat-related errands, and then had time to explore the nearby area a bit before I had to depart early the next morning to return to Maine with the trailer. 

Here are a few tourist-y photos of Allen and Havre de Grace from the day.

               

         

    


 

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