We launched Ravenswing last year from a trailer. Everyone has had the visual perspective from the water level, or up from a high pier. Today we got to see the boat flying overhead. And it was nerve-wracking!  Thanks to Drew, Dean, Joe and RickH for humor that helped relieve the tension.

Those shots show the white Petit Vivid bottom paint after 15 months in the water. To be fair, we hadn’t scrubbed since the mast came down in August. But that paint is NOT for stay-in-the-water boats, in my opinion. This week we’re going with Petit’s Trinidad with Ingersol anti-foulant. It’s on a high percentage of boats around here. And we’re going with black, so the boat will look a bit different.

The boat stayed suspended in the slings during the crew’s lunch hour, and then a proper power wash to get rid of the growth.

That’s Bryce in the plaid shirt. He ran the huge old electric crane, and expertly taped off a new boot-stripe / bottom paint line for the crew to start on tomorrow. Basically, when we painted for the first time last year the brushes “listed aft” a bit. The bow is fine, but the stern is about 3″ too low (at least it was just-barely above the standing waterline).

What didn’t happen was getting a weight. The plan was to use Myron Spaulding’s 1963 hydraulic load cell, in between the crane hook at the slings. 

Unfortunately it hadn’t been used in at least five years and was low on fluid. And the load cell must be laid on its side to fill, which wasn’t going to work with a four ton boat hanging from it. So we’re scrambling to find a modern load cell to rent/borrow before launching next week.

We walked through the dismasting repairs with Bryce and work will start tomorrow. While the boat is out, I’ll focus on daggerboard further fairing and trunk shimming, re-orienting and fixing the hinge on the escape hatch so it swings up instead of aft, doing some motor maintenance, minor stress-crack fixes to overly thick fairing areas, and if there’s time, get some graphics onto the float hulls.

New to the website here is a collection of videos. The page will always be up in the top navigation bar, and hopefully this link will work so you can see Ravenswing in mid-air today:

https://cartersboat.com/ravenswing-videos/