First Kiss

Alizée kissing water for the first time! HUGE day today as we launched Alizée and stepped the mast. Nervous, I hardly slept a wink last night and wasn't in the finest form. Suffice to say, recoverable mistakes were made, but we're in the water now! For good luck, I wore the Alizée flip shirt Shelby and Spencer had made when we rolled the hull over upright.

David and I moved into the service bay next to the Travel Lift (the machine with the slings) to step the rig, so we also docked Alizée for the first time. If the weather holds long enough, we'll move her to a regular slip tomorrow. Originally, we were going to move to a marina closer to the Sound to have easier access for sea trials, but I've grown rather found of Mystic and it's nice and more convenient to be up here even it it means 45 minutes of motoring down the river to go sailing.

We definitely have a few issues to sort out. One of the mainsheet blocks has up and disappeared. The trip on the trailer about threw the engine off its mounts. We spent a good part of the day tightening up hard to reach engine mount bolts and I'm sure we'll spend a good part of another day realigning the engine to the propellor shaft. It seems the anchor rollers are still on bolts from McGuckins rather than stainless. It also looks like we need to move some weight from stern to bow to get her into proper trim, though that will be a a progressive project. Tomorrow, just maybe we'll see our sails before the forecast storms move in!