Pre-launch sortie

Vidas helped to get the boat down from the loft at John's shop. It went better than I had anticipated. Here she is, first time in the open air, ready to hit the water (only one ama fits on top with the main hull):

Thankfully, the only day John had to do this with me (I think he wanted to make sure that whatever was coming out of his shop met his demanding standards ;-) was sunny, with a light wind and no waves.

For the first part, I wanted to see how she worked as a simple kayak, so just put the rudder on and left the rest on the dock:

I know, I look like such a dweeb! The silly lifejacket doesn't help much.

The boat is quite stable as a kayak, and performed very well.

Then, the trimaran was put together on the dock:

The onlooker is a fisheries guy who was on the job getting the Creel stats from in-coming fishers. He was very interested in the boat. It was quite busy at the facility with sport fishermen coming and going.

She sailed quite well, steered well and tacked well.

I had forgot to install a downhaul line, so in the pic above I'm rigging a substitute.

I went outside of the little harbour here and caught some real wind for a few minutes, and it was good. John likes that the amas just barely touch the water at rest. I found that just leaning to windward was a good righting factor.

Official launch party is tentatively planned for tomorrow (Monday, June 20) at Oak Bay public ramp, 10:00 am. Unfortunately, a pretty low tide. But hopefully I'll have some bodies to help carry to the water from the ramp.

Thanks again to John Booth, who made this adventure possible. I'm going to be (happily) working off my debt to you over the next few months...  -e.