LAUNCHED!!

Today was the big day. We loaded everything into Cassandra and took her up to Fair Point Marina for a 1PM launch appointment. By 2 she was floating in a slip nearby. Those of you following closely may be asking yourselves, "But Brian, why weren't you sailing her?" Well, I'll tell you. It turns out that the outboard bracket I welded up was too high to actually get my outboard (Jackson) into the water enough. Despite having figured and plotted where is should go, the bracket just was too high. Luckily a friendly fellow who's name I'm afraid I've forgotten offered to sell us a swing down bracket. It was a great deal and a God send. The rest of the day was spent figuring out how to mount it to the boat. The Jackson is too big to just have the new bracket bolted to the stern, and removing the old one would have left seven holes to be filled. So, we opted to instead bolt the new bracket onto the wood plate on the back of the old bracket. Lost yet? Good. Finally, after finagling and tweaking the thing with all manner of wedges and a few busted knuckles we got Jackson sitting nicely in the water. By then it was 11PM and we were all ready to crash. Christine and I spent the night in the boat hoping to leave early the next day.