You guys are scarring the hell out of me! I have to disassemble the
shed from around the boat, then hire a crane to lift RUTU over a fair
size cedar tree and lower it onto the mover's trailer. Everyone wants a
picture of the boat flying 40' in the air. Once I get to the marina it
has to be lifted onto the keel and set a 65' mast. One little mistake
could cause a lot of damage.

To complicate things, there are only 3 marinas within 4 hours capable of
launching RUTU. The marina that I had arranged to let me complete the
commissioning myself sold out to Hinkely this summer and nobody is sure
what the yard rules will be. OTOH, PJ is now Thunderbolt Marina and
their rules may have loosened up a little.

Ron White wrote:
So there are others ( probably many?) that have had years of hard loving
work put at risk during launch.
My own story with "Hammer" is one of premature launch. I had all the friends
there with video cameras, (which I came to regret) as things went horribly
wrong. My tale of woe begins when I pulled my hull from it's cradle dolly
onto the boat trailer so I could more the hull outdoors and install tee top
and center console, ect. To facilitate this skidding operation I liberally
sprayed the carpet of my trailer bunks with a silicone spray, that stuff
really works and kept on working after I had forgotten about it. Flash
forward to launch day, cameras rolling champagne ready . I back the boat to
the ramp un-hook it then have a friend continue to slowly back the boat down
as I held the bow line. The plan was to stop the boat after the trailer
began to get wet and say a few words and break the bottle. There was this
little sound, pop, that still rings in my ears as the boat broke the bounds
of friction and slowly began to slip back . Fortunately the motors were down
as the boat slid of the back of the trailer the skegs landed on the concrete
ramp, ouch!, and skidded to a stop. The skegs got about 1/8" shorter but
saved the ass end of my hull from some serious payment rash. Next problem
has to get the boat off the trailer as there was no way to pull it back unto
my formerly pretty new aluminum semi-custom trailer which was bent in ways
you wouldn't believe. After some head scratching, and
scrap lumber ect. we were able to complete the launch. The boat suffered
surprisingly little, the trailer sprung back to shape, but I didn't. Then
there was the video which included me pulling on the bow line trying to stop
a 30' boat as it was headed to the water on its own. I watched it once and
threw it away, never want to see that again.


--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com