Tastes salty! (pic-heavy)

[Figment]

Ok fellas, I can unclench. It was a dismal friday the 13th of pouring rain, but she floats.

This is that travelift I wrote about. This very unit hauled my dad's Luhrs 25 about 20 years ago.
The sentimental part of me was hoping I'd be launched by this unit, but as it turned out, this unit merely pulled mast stepping duty.
For launching the boat, they used this newer model....

Though the PO speculated that the seacock at the head was at fault for the partial-sinking that precipitated #78's last haulout, he understandably wasn't about to declare that with any degree of certainty. I'd replaced the seacocks, and inspected other hull penetrations as well as I could, but there was still an element of uncertainty with this launch. Alas.....
She floated without a care.

A new sunny day, all rigged, loading essentials
And of course, the abject humiliation of the 20-minute trip downriver, being towed by my brother on a friggin jetski.
The opinion of professional mechanics be damned, my father refused to be defeated by some piddly little 4cylinder sailboat engine. He pecked at it and pecked at it all week long, finally getting it to fire 11hours before launch. Choke control was still erratic, however, so the tow was the safe play.

Finally at rest on this season's mooring.

[kaynee30]

A toast to Carl Alberg! A toast to you! A toast to #75! A toast to your dad!
Way cool: these boats; this subtle sailing "counter-revolution".
A toast to every scratch and itch sailor who owns a Triton.....may their numbers increase! There's a lot of 'em what still need adoption.
I can feel it....the Force. It's getting stronger.

[Tim]

Congrats on your successful launch! She looks great. Too bad about the jet-ski, but at least it was put to good use for once!

Very interesting sling setup--that's a new one I haven't seen before. It's actually a pretty graceful fabrication, with the support arm "growing" out of the center of the tractor. One of the local boatyards here used to have a sort-of-similar arrangement that was pulled behind an ordinary truck tractor. Actually, they had two for a while.

[Tim]

So, always hungry for more, of course I went and checked out Figment's website. Lo and behold, there are several more pictures there of the boat and launch day. Looks like you had nicer weather there than we did this weekend--pretty much a bust here.

It looks like your mooring involves a tieup between one or more pilings? Or is that an optical illusion?

Dinghy looks good too, all finished up. And able to carry three people in a single bound!

[dasein668]

Sweet. No more needs to be said!

[Figment]

It looks like your mooring involves a tieup between one or more pilings? Or is that an optical illusion?

It's no illusion. Around here, this is referred to as a "stake mooring". Pilings are driven along one edge of the dredged channel, and you tie up bow and stern to basically keep the boat in line with the channel. This concept wasn't working so well yesterday, however, as the tide turned to come from behind and the wind was stiff off the port bow, this cranked the boat around so that the nose was pointing 45degrees off into the channel. I need to pay the boat a visit after work today to tune this balance a bit, and also to lay on some proper mooring lines, as the ones I'd planned on using were several feet too short.

I'm not surprised that you don't see this much up in Maine. Too much tide. The stakes would need to be REALLY far apart to allow enough scope for the tide change. Some places construct small wooden square collar frames that float around the piling, and you secure your mooring line to this frame, which rises and falls with the tide. This particular marina gets too much current for these to be effective, however, so finding just the right amount of scope for the mooring lines is a delicate balancing act. Too little, and you hang up at low tide. Too much, and your boat is blocking half the channel when the wind is just so...

Ah, so Julia did a little webmastering? I gotta go look.

Thanks for all the good wishes guys.

[Tim]

Interesting. How much tide do you get there?

Upon reflection, I think I prefer a large tidal range (which brings its own challenges, of course) since it means that floating docks and moorings are all the rage. I look at some of the piling-type docks and setups elsewhere (the Chesapeake springs to mind) and think of what a pain it would be to use those in comparision with nice easy moorings.

Then again, it's all a matter of what you're used to, and what sort of things you take for granted. For example, tides, currents, and lobster pots don't phase me--it's what I know, what I'm used to--but they freak out many visitors to the coast of Maine! To me, the absence of these things would be weird!


As usual, I digress. Sorry.