She's Over

The flip was a complete success. Not only did the boat get on it's keel for the first time, but there were no injuries (it was close for a bit there) and everyone had a great time.

It started out as an extremely rainy day. Over an inch had already fallen from dawn until people started showing up. We had started out inviting only a couple of people, just for muscle to turn the boat. Once word got out about this once in a lifetime (for most people) event, it quickly bloomed into a Friday night barbecue with about 40 people coming. Good thing I had fixed the tree house because it had whole bunch of kids in it the entire evening.

The ceremony was supposed to start at around 6:30 but like everything else in this project there were delays. The main one was that we had to feed everyone first. 20 lbs of sausage and hot dogs later, we got started at around 7:30.

We started with a safety brief for everyone, which like most safety meetings no one took seriously. The then the entire crowd gathered in the boat shed. It was a good thing we enlarged it because it was jam packed. Mercifully, the rain had been coming down fairly straight so it was dry in the shed.


I decided that since this was the first time she would be on her keel to make this the keel laying ceremony. The first part of this was the laying of coins on the keel for good luck. In a ship, the weight of the ship would drive the coins into the wood and make them a permanent part of the keel. In this case we used super glue. Each of my daughters placed a gold coin just behind the false stem (see pic). Then I said a few words of thanks and dedication. Then I threw out everyone who wasn't going to lift.

I gave the lifting crew some instructions on what we were going to do.

The boat was lifted off the jig and shifted to starboard

Then it was lifted up

And Up

And up until she was all the way on her side.

Then we shifted it over on the jig as far as possible.

Then the hard part came as we started to lower her down onto the cradle. Those orange straps you can see around the boat's waist in earlier pictures are ratchet straps that were only the safetys. The cradle was mostly strapped down with 1/2 in. nylon braid through screw eyes that connected to the 2X3s that I had screwed into the frames near the sheer

Then it got a little dicey. I didn't make it quite clear to everyone that once it started coming down there was no need to actively lift, only to prevent it from falling too fast. As a result the lifters in the back continued to do exactly what I had told them to do, lift. Meanwhile, I had left my position at the bow to help lower it down and so took away the counter force which caused her to dip in the bow as you can see in the picture.

This dip caused all the weight of the boat to momentarily rest on one 2X4 in the middle of the jig. It was very dicey, and would have resulted in crushing everyone there under the boat, as my brother has been telling me since it happened. As luck would have it, it held and we managed to get her down without incident.

Here's a group shot of a good many of the people who helped flip the boat. There was about half this many more around that missed the shot. To everyone who helped out this weekend, my heartfelt thanks. It would never have been so easy to do without you, and you all turned the event from a chore I was dreading into a really great time.

And the end result was perfect. Now onto the deck.