Countdown and Launch

On the afternoon of the 29th April 2019, Alter was finally ready to go back into the water. Diving cylinders had been bought and stowed, the gas barbecue fitted, the life raft secured to its new cradle on the pushpit, and the flag strung from its staff. We’d even had time to celebrate the impending launch with Mark and Margaret, two Kiwi yachties that Nicky had picked up in the laundry in town. We had dealt with myriad things over the previous days and, although we had ticked off everything on our list, doubt still gnawed at us. There was the constant feeling that we’d left something out, something crucial. Alter was ready, but we were not.

For me it was the fear of putting her in the water. She would be the biggest, heaviest boat that Nicky and I had handled on our own. Her manners in the water were unknown. Neither of us had ever maneuvered a yacht with a lifting keel and its idiosyncrasies. There was no bow thruster to get us out of trouble.
But all those thoughts evaporated at 16:30, when the tractor arrived with a cradle to tow Alter from her resting place. Nicky and I watched apprehensively as the trailer slipped into place and the hydraulic rams began to lift Alter. There was a hesitation, a lurch and then a loud bang. Alter slumped like a wounded beast. A deafening hiss sent a spray of hydraulic fluid across the tarmac. One of the hydraulic pipes had burst. Our hearts stopped and we stood rooted, hoping that the lurch had not gone too far and that Alter wouldn’t break out of her cradle and crash onto the boat next to her. The cradle held and we could breathe again.

We finally got he into the slings just after the sun had set.

By the time a new trailer arrived and we’d been lifted safely into the slings, the sun had set. There was still a lot of work to do. For the previous year, Alter had been sitting on her cradle with her centerboard retracted. It was our first opportunity to lower the centerboard, inspect it and give it two coats of anti-foul. We had worked out a schedule to apply the anti-foul during the night, painting on one coat and waiting for it to dry, before getting up again in the middle of the night to paint the second coat. Our delay getting into the slings meant shorter drying times between coats as we were going into the water first thing in the morning.
We took turns painting the centerboard and the patches on the hull where the cradle had obscured the hull. And when the sun rose the following morning, we both trekked to the distant bathrooms, our bicycles safely folded and stored in the equipment room.

At 8 o’clock there was a sudden bustle and it was launch time. A motorboat had pulled into the dock to be lifted and I thought that might delay us. No problem; the crane lifted Alter a little higher and she flew gracefully over the motorboat.

Alter flew gracefully over the motorboat.

They lowered Alter gently into the water and we went below to check all the seacocks and bilges for leaks. I remembered to burp the new stern gland, allowing a small trickle of water into the bellows to lubricate the prop shaft.
There was no time to savour the moment or to draw breath. It was a busy dock and we had to be on our way. The engine started on the first turn and it was soon burbling away happily and pulsing spurts of water from the exhaust. Mark and Margaret helped us cast off from the dock and we steered gingerly to the fuel dock to fill the tanks. There was little wind and our first docking went as smoothly as I could have hoped for. While we waited for the refueler to arrive, we lifted the RIB from its position on the foredeck and lowered it into the water. Despite its diminutive stature, the RIB has a name too. She is called Persephone after the Greek Goddess who ruled the underworld with her husband Hades. Mark helped me fit the outboard motor so that we could take the Persephone for a test drive.
Starting the outboard proved challenging. I don’t remember when last I started one, perhaps never, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Even if I had, I would have been surprised. After checking the fuel was on, the kill switch was in place and the choke was open, I gave the cord a solid pull. It resisted. I pulled again and the motor started, but it ripped the cord from my hands with such force that I thought I’d damaged my wrist.

Trying to get Persephone’s outboard started without breaking a wrist.

If I’d had more experience, I might have known that the outboard motor was telling me something. But it was less than a year old, so I didn’t investigate further and put it’s aggression down to it being new and not yet properly run in. It was a mistake that cost us time and money later. Once it had started, the motor purred innocently, so Mark and I went for a little tour of the marina.
With our tanks full and no more excuse to stay, we said goodbye to Mark and Margaret and motored slowly out of the harbour. I had wanted to spend the first night nearby, tucked up in one of the small bays on Ile Ratonneau, only a few miles from the marina. From there, I hoped that we could visit the infamous Chateau d’If from Dumas’ Count of Monte Christo. But there was a westerly coming and Patrice, Alter’s previous owner, who had called to wish us well, warned us that the rocky bay would dangerous in those conditions.
Time was pressing, so we set course for La Ciotat, thirty miles away. I pushed the throttle forward once we were clear of the harbour entrance and the engine’s contented purr turned into an anguished roar. I throttled back and the noise went away. Nicky and I began to troubleshoot, checked the engine parameters, went below and pulled all the covers off to see if anything was loose. I dismantled the aft cabin so that I could see the propeller shaft, in case it was loose or misaligned. We couldn’t find anything wrong, but whenever we increased power the noise returned.
We turned around and returned to port. On the way back we phoned the engineer who had helped us with the installation of the propeller and also contacted the agent for the Maxprop in Fréjus to try to find out what might be wrong.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle docking as we had not expected to come back and there was no readily available berth for us. After a couple of aborted attempts to come alongside, we finally nudged up against the quay and waited for help to arrive. I imagined that we would have to get back into the slings to examine the propeller, because that seemed to be the only thing that could be causing the noise. But it was a little after 12:00, and that can mean only one thing in France. Everyone was on lunch. Nicky suggested that I jump in to inspect to see if there were any obvious problems while we were waiting.

A reluctant diver.

The sea in Marseille at the end of April isn’t exactly balmy; it’s freezing. I reluctantly pulled on my wetsuit and kitted up for the unwanted dip. I wasn’t wearing a weight belt, so I had to pull myself under using the rudder to keep me down. The buoyant wetsuit pushed me up against the hull and wedged me in place. I examined the propeller, twisted the blades – they moved freely – tugged the propeller from side to side – it didn’t budge – and checked for any play – there wasn’t any. By that time I needed air so I surfaced, took a quick breath, and went down again to repeat the process and got the same result. The propeller and shaft were exactly how I would expect a properly functioning drive train to be.
I clambered back onto the boat, put some warm clothes on and started making calls. After a long discussion with the Maxprop agent and another with the engineer, we decided that the noise must be normal. Neither of us had ever been on an Ovni before and the only other aluminium boat that we had sailed on was so different that a comparison was pointless. None of the GRP boats we’d been on had ever made a noise like that.
We decided that it was probably a combination of the shape of the aluminium hull and the four-blade propeller. There are also two cockpit drains below the sugar scoop, above the propeller, which might have contributed to some kind of resonance. Since then, we have traveled over a thousand miles and the engine and propeller have performed flawlessly. But the noise persists.
We cast off for the second time and set course for La Ciotat. Once we were clear of the harbour, we raised the mainsail and unfurled the genoa. In twelve knots of wind Alter gathered herself and surged across the bay. We turned off the motor and revelled in the silence. We were both wearing silly grins, both utterly happy. After years of searching for our boat, months of working on her under difficult conditions, and then missing our launch date, we were finally on our way and free.

Chateau d’If

We were just gathering our thoughts, thinking about getting the camera out for a picture of the Chateau d’If as we sailed past, when something large appeared from behind the sail on our port side. The enormous yellow marker buoy had been hidden behind the sail and we had been too busy celebrating to see it.
Nicky and I watched wide-eyed as the buoy disappear behind us. We should have been mortified that on our first day out we had nearly hit an enormous yellow buoy in the middle of the bay. But we both burst out laughing.
The adrenaline was still buzzing in our ears when we dropped anchor off La Ciotat at eight o’clock that evening. We popped the cork on a bottle of Laurent Perrier that we had been saving for the occasion and sipped champagne as we watched the sun dip beyond the horizon.

Anchored off La Ciotat with a bottle of Laurent Perrier to celebrate our first night at sea.

6 thoughts on “Countdown and Launch”

  1. Really enjoying reading these with my coffee in the morning. I get to live vicariously through you two. (Now I’m off to my office and will stare at my monitor for the next 9 hours…)

    1. Good to hear from you! And glad you are enjoying the saga. Not much sailing this year for obvious reasons, so I am trying to catch up with last year’s stories so that I can finally be writing about this year’s.
      Next one might be a little while, as I’m on the move over the next week. But it should be worth waiting for as it’s about our first crossing, from Porquerolles to Calvi in Corsica.
      If the stories so far have had you staring at the monitor, I’ve got bad news about your productivity….

  2. Looks like excellent fun Brady and Nikky! Well done intrepid adventurers

  3. I have read your episodes in reverse order, intrepid adventurers. … Part adventure, part anxiety and terror as a good cruise tends to be! Go well.

    1. Fortunately this year has been a lot more relaxing. We’ve been sailing around the very benign Ionian. But next year promises to be more eventful with longer passages planned as we wend our way back to France. Glad you’re enjoying the blog.

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