Back afloat

At long last Robinetta is back in the water! We heard that French Marine would finish installing the new engine on Friday morning, so I phoned Tollesbury Marina with my fingers crossed, and asked if they could launch her on the Friday afternoon high tide. Miracle of miracles they could. They would even be able to put the mast in her on Monday morning. Julian and I drove down from our new home in Scotland with Worm on the car roof on Thursday, and spent Friday morning washing off mud residues then painting on anti foul. I had not expected so much mud to be left on Robinetta since she was power washed when she was lifted out, so I expect they were careful not to use too powerful a jet, which has been known to wash out stopping and caulking from between the planks

Having to wash her did slow the painting down. There was no time to touch up the topsides that still sported their crack filling layers from last summer’s extended drying out on land, and I was doing the final touches below the water line when the tractor arrived, launch trailer in tow, to take Robinetta off the cradle. That did mean that I had a brush all ready when the pads of the cradle were removed, but there was not a lot of time for the anti foul to harden before she was launched. The other unfortunate news was that when the harbour master told us they could get the mast in on Monday he had forgotten that it was a Bank Holiday, and they would probably not do it until Tuesday.

 Rather than trying out the new engine the yard used their work boat to move Robinetta to her new temporary berth. Once she was tied up Julian and I jumped on board. She had only been out of the water for a month, but five weeks of July and August sun had not been kind to her, and quite a few seams were seeping. For the first couple of hours I was pumping her out 24 strokes of the pump every ten minutes. Normally the float switch and electric pump would have taken care of this, but all the old electric system had been disconnected when the new engine went in. 

French Marine had installed new wiring from the batteries, heavier gauge that the old, and it took Julian nearly four hours to get the electric pump hooked up to the power and working. At one point he was sure the pump was broken, and took it out of its housing. He discovered it was totally blocked by wire wool, and after he cleaned it he hooked it up directly to the batteries. This proved it still worked, which was a huge relief. I had not been looking forward to waking up every hour to pump!

Once the pump and float switch were working (but not the rest of the electrics) we went out for dinner, before heading back to Robinetta for our first night afloat since May.