After a long winter, we were looking forward to the calming breeze of the sea. Alas, spring was cold as well, and not all maintenance work could be done in the proper conditions. We’ll just have to see if everything turns out well.

On the beautiful Saturday morning, April 20th, 2024, it just happened to snow. All the ice was gone from the river and the sea, but I had to start the day by shovelling 10-15 cm of lovely powder snow off the boat. She was lowered in, and when we had stepped the mast, the weather had calmed and we had a lovely quiet snowfall dancing around. If I hadn’t known, I could have thought Xmas was just around the corner.

It was cold, the boat was floating, the mast and boom were properly attached and almost all the lines were drawn, so we thought that a sunny Sunday would be nicer to do the rest.

The following morning, we loaded the trailer with everything and drove down to the boat. I wonder, how come when everything works when you lift the boat, something is always broken when you put her in water?

I found two irritating problems. First of all, one of the couplings in the fresh water system was leaking. Fresh water is always preferred in a glass, all other types of water should stay outside the hull. It was still so cold, that I didn’t want to start fixing the problem.

The second leakage was in the cooling system, obviously connected to the hot water boiler. The valve connection wasn’t tight after 10.000 NM of shaking. I did a quick fix with some self-sealing tape and decided to order new parts.

I was hoping to get the parts quickly, and the cold weather had persuaded many others to postpone their splash, so I decided to leave the boat in town, and move it to its own berth the following weekend. The sailing season of 2024 had officially begun.