Finally, much later than originally intended, we have managed to get the boat launched and tied up at the dock.
We need a fairly high tide to launch the boat – that has been one impediment, as most of the super high tides have been in the middle of the night, this past month. But this morning, at 4 AM, we had a +11 foot tide. 4 AM might sound like the middle of the night, but at this time of year, it’s already getting light – sunrise is around 4:30. It was drizzly, but the tide was high at 3:55 this morning when I took this picture.
So we successfully lowered the boat into the water and floated it around and tied it to the dock. We had some issues with starting the motors, but finally got them running too. Unfortunately, there’s an electrical problem with the downriggers, such that there will still be no fishing happening. We need to get and wire in new connectors for both the downriggers. My evaluation is that it’s just corrosion on the connectors that is causing the issues, but Arthur’s generalized and wide-angle pessimism seems to feel that there are other things to worry about.
Here is the boat down at the dock, as seen at 5:30 AM. We were running the big motor for a while to make sure the batteries are charged up properly – now that it’s out in the water, the bilge-pump needs to work.
